I’ve just returned from a trip to Vancouver to spend time with Howard Adam, Colin Ellis and Anthea Brown who are the team at SustaiNet who, I am proud to be able to say, are now our partners providing Bang the Table services in Canada. SustaiNet are software distributors who specialise in community engagement and who are actively involved in IAP2. Naturally we were delighted to find they were interested in helping us to provide a service in Canada.

We have worked in Canada before. We did some work with Edmonton City Council engaging the community about the redevelopment of their City Airport but to provide the same comprehensive and supported service in Canada that we do here in Australia we really needed to find local partners to work with our clients. It was a stroke of real luck to find people with such a strong understanding of community engagement.

As you can see from the picture (Howard, on the right, and I in the Whistler ski resort) the trip was not all work. In between taking in the sights and tastes of Vancouver and surrounds I was able to present at two sessions organised by SustaiNet which gave me a chance to meet a range of community engagement practitioners who work in local and State Government as well as from the private sector.

It was great to hear some of the Canadian experiences, many of which match our own here in Australia and New Zealand. At one event my co presenter Kirsten Koppang Telford, Principal of CogencyRGS gave a superb presentation on ‘Building your econsultation strategy’ which she illustrated with her experiences of doing just that for Translink, the local public transport provider. This was a highly successful e consultation and I was interested to see many parallels between their results and those that we see when we do online community engagement in Australia.

We also had a great session with State Government officials in Victoria the State Capital where they shared experiences they had had using wikis and we learned about the forums and other online engagement approaches that they are working to implement. I hope that I will be able to feature some case studies about their work on this blog.

Many thanks to all the team at SustaiNet for organising the week and for looking after me. Crispin and I are looking forward to working with you in the coming years.

All in all it was a busy and productive week and a lot of fun. I can’t wait to go back.