Stap isi

17 August 2009

Putting LGWN09 tweeps on the map

Another string & sticky tape home craft session. See the result. The nice bit is that people can add themselves to the map. Here are the steps taken:

1. A Google Docs spreadsheet form collects Twitter name, suburb (optional), city/town and country from those attending the conference
2. When submitted, the form populates a Google spreadsheet
3. The spreadsheet uses functions to generate latitude, longitude, Twitter URL, Twitter profile image URL and a HTML description for each tweep
4. The sheet is set to ‘publish to the web’ as a text file – CSV format – with option ticked to ‘automatically republish when changes are made’
5. A Yahoo! Pipe transforms this data into a GeoRSS feed
6. The feed gets chucked into Google Maps and you can see which tweeps will be at the conference (and where they’re from)

Those Twitter pics…

… are generated courtesy of the SPIURL web service. It provides a static link to Twitter profile images.

Limitations

1. Locations are being dynamically geocoded via Google and returned to the spreadsheet using the ImportData function (refer to Geocoding by Google Spreadsheets). But you’re restricted to 50 of these functions per sheet – so there’s a hard limit on the number of tweeps that can be added.
2. More than one tweep may enter “Sydney, Australia” as a location – resulting in multiple markers on the same point, with only one visible and clickable. The sidebar gives access to all tweeps but that’s a consolation prize at best. A random number could probably be added to the tail of each coordinate to push markers slightly apart? Update: truncated the lat/long and added a random number – kinda works but a cluster would be better.
3. There is no error checking. “WE Believe in Community”!

— b3rn   community of practice, lgwn09, maps, web teams   Aug 17, 11:04 PM   #   Comment

15 June 2009

WE Believe in Community 09

Over the last few years, I’ve been able to make a case for attending the Web Directions conference in Sydney. Training is rarely inspiring, unless you’re listening to people like Doug Bowman, Joe Clark, John Allsopp, Cameron Adams, Jeremy Keith or Andy Clarke.

But government has its own challenges. It can’t cut corners or take risks like private or business startups (not necessarily a bad thing) and it doesn’t have the benefit of a neutral (at worst) or evangelist (at best) constituency with which to work. So last year’s LG Web Network conference was fantastic.

Prior to the network, supported by the LGSA, I wasn’t unique in having little or no contact with fellow local government web workers in NSW. Professional groups in this field favour IT managers and administrators. Kudos to the prime movers, Diana Mounter, LGSA Design and Development Coordinator, and Reem Abdelaty, LOC&L Program Director.

Registrations are now open for this year’s conference in August.

I’m looking forward to hearing Jason Ryan of the N.Z. State Services Commission on Government 2.0 without the bullshit (my words) and attending the sessions on WCAG and digital recordkeeping. But most of all, talking with LG web people. (And it’d be great if more library people joined the network.)

Register now at WE Believe in Community 09.

— b3rn   community of practice, web teams   Jun 15, 05:39 PM   #   Comment

6 April 2009

Introducing LGi a.k.a. Local Government Eye

• Update 2010-01-11 Today I turned off the Pipes and both Twitter accounts are now inactive. Twitter’s new Lists feature provides similar (and better) functionality. Follow twitter.com/b3rn/ozgovlocal or make your own!

I’ve set up a couple of Twitter accounts that aggregate and relay tweets from Local Government Authorities in Australia and their elected representatives:

• OzGovLocal
• OzGovLocalClrs

If you’re a Council (or Shire or Town or Borough…) or a Councillor, follow the relevant Twitter account above, and you’ll be followed back – automatically adding you to the stream.

Credit to Barry Earnshaw in the UK, whose Pipe I cloned.

For more on Oz LG, see:

• Local government in Australia – Wikipedia
• Councils on the web – Australian Local Government Association

— b3rn   community of practice, councillors, councils, twitter   Apr 6, 07:49 AM   #   Comment

3 November 2008

Community of Practice in NSW

Are you in local government and work on the web?

• Editor, writer, librarian
• Designer, coder, information architect
• Manager, strategist, IT officer

Join the LG Web Network.

Please.

— b3rn   community of practice   Nov 3, 06:07 PM   #   Comment