Category: Politics

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My first posts at Topic 9

I’ve started posting things over at Topic 9, the website I set up for my contributions to the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond. Illness prevented me going to BarCampSydney 3 on the weekend, so the question What can we do here? is still open. I’ve also posted a list of the delegates to the governance topic, and a summary of the starter questions in the topic area’s official background paper.

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I’ve linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

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Australia 2020 rejection letter finally arrives

Thumbnail image of Australia 2020 Summit rejection letter

This morning I finally received a letter (pictured) telling me that I hadn’t been selected for the Australia 2020 Summit. Gosh. I’d already figured that out from not being on the published lists of those who were going.

Apart from the rather late arrival of the news and the traditional passive-voice bureaucratic writing style, there’s two interesting points about this letter.

  1. I left the “title” field of the nomination form blank, since I don’t use them. I think titles like “Mr”, “Miss”, “Mrs”, “Ms” etc are an archaic way of labelling people. Nevertheless they felt compelled to use “Mr/s”, even though I had filled in the gender field.
  2. The official website said that people who applied via email, like me, would receive an email reply. They can’t even follow their own published procedure.

I really am trying to find good-news stories about the Summit, I really am…

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Topic 9 website finally launched!

I’ve finally launched the website for my adventures to the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond: Topic 9 at topic9.com.au.

It’s pretty sparse to begin with, and I’m not quite sure exactly what I’ll be doing there — so suggestions are more than welcome. Some thoughts so far are:

  • Gathering links to everyone else’s writing about this topic area for the Summit.
  • Articles on people or ideas on how government could work in the future.
  • Interviews with the delegates before they hit Canberra.
  • Act as a central point of contact for whatever media coverage we can generate out of the summit, whether I go or not.

I certainly need to spice up the design a bit. I’ve kept the Tarski theme as used on this website and Skank Media for consistency, but it needs a tad more differentiation. soon, my precious ones, soon…

Any other ideas?

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I’ve linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

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What should I do about Australia 2020?

OK, so I didn’t make the 1000 “best and brightest” going to the Australia 2020 Summit. Nevertheless I’m still very interested in Topic 9, “the future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.” What should I do?

There’s still the possibility of getting media accreditation, or perhaps connecting to the themes of the event in some other way. Here’s a brain-dump of my thoughts on this sunny Sunday morning… comments appreciated!

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