Learn How To Use The Blogging Internet

If you are in a active community like Simon’s Town you’ll find people and groups involved with many issues concerning the community. But they are using traditional methods to discuss, escalate and resolve the issues; email, phones and paper. And when they get a solution they have no way of making it public.

Let me give you examples:

I have a problem with a dangerous and collapsing wall at a building site. I phone the relevant person in charges of new buildings and he tells me that many people phoned and emailed him. This poor guy has no way of giving feed back to all who contacted him.

We have a group concerned with conservation and they have what they call a Hawk system. The hawk is the contact person for conservation (and other issues). This hawk is responsible to escalate the problem and then give feedback. But when the hawk talks to the person, who can resolve the issue…..

This is what one responsible hawk had to say:

Council Officials have been most co-operative and responsive but I quite often find that the information has reached them through someone else – duplication which defeats the object of the exercise – and the official has two emails to answer or act upon, not one.

Sometimes I find members of the public or others have set up their own meetings with Council Officials to which I am not a party and so can’t alert him to other outstanding problems. I feel this is wrong – especially during the Main Road Upgrade. If an Official takes the time to come out, he should be armed with a list and inspect ALL the problems in this area which relate to his department – not just that one.

If I am to get a full understanding of requests or problems in the area so as to be able to assess them accurately and forward them to the correct people, I need to be kept fully in the picture and preferably attend the meetings.

There is also a great need for constant feed back on progress ………….or lack of it.

The portfolio then becomes quite a large responsibility if it is to be carried out conscientiously and effectively because it affects people’s lives and takes up a huge amount of time and effort.

Because of the duplication, and the desire and belief that individuals have, that they will personally achieve the best results, I seriously wonder whether it would not be better to put together an appropriate Contact Book giving names and numbers so people can do their own thing.

I am sure you can see the frustration here. When she mentioned to Contact Book as a solution I realised that this is an opportunity for you as community blogger; take hands with civic organisations and help them with a forum on your blog.

Instead of people going directly to officials and other bodies to tell their hawk incidents they go to the online forum, check if the problem has been addressed and if not add it. Or if they want to add their own interpretation they can do it under the relevant topic. And now all the relevant issues are organized. This info, including the process and the solution are then available for other people who may have the same problem in the future.

This is where a community blogger and these community organizations need to take hands. As a community blogger you need to set the forum up and maintain it. You need to make contact with these civic associations and tell them what you will do.

In return they will send people from the community to to your blog and your forum. It therefore give your blog exposure and they get a solution to their problem.

If you want a forum on your blog I can help you set it up: Go Here.

Tags: blog, community, community forum, contact, email, forum