Local Government Convention 2010 Day Three

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki led the opening session on Friday 6th August. His fast-paced rapid-fire presentation left us all feeling a little dizzy. His topics included and eclectic range of ideas, facts and figures such as Moore's law:  
Transistors shrink in size every 18 months.
So, the silicon chip will soon be almost invisible!

If you cover your roof with solar panels and feed back into the grid, you will have an energy payback time (the time it takes to create enough power savings to payback the cost of purchasing and installing the system) is only 19 to 40 months. The systems should have a life of 30 years.

My ears pricked up when Dr Karl discussed the lack of government funding for alternative energy research and promotion. That's something I find untenable, given the issue of climate change that dominates the political landscape. But, what really made me mad was hearing him state, "Fossil fuel companies have received around $9billion worth of subsidies." I'm not sure of the length of time being discussed here, but it makes any climate change policy that either political party spruiks sound pretty lame...

The Danes have the largest alternative energy system in the world with their Wind Energy industry. Why isn't Australia tapping in to the most abundant form of energy in our land?

My belief? Developing a Solar Energy Industry should be a major policy for any government serious about doing something to help stop the use of fossil fuel for energy purposes.

Following on from Dr Karl's energetic presentation, Laurel Papworth, a social networking expert held my attention. If you click here, you can go to a slide show of the presentation which she offered. Her topic centred around the clever use of social media - eg, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. She advocated the use of these various applications for local governments to connect with their rate payers on a more personal level.

One Council went as far as to put up their budget online and allowed community input into the development of the budget for the coming year.

If you look to the side of my blog and down a little, you'll see a real time Social Media Count. This shows the incredible reach and power of social media sites.

An interesting snippet from Laurel showed that Facebook is being used by a huge number of over 50's people to keep in touch with family members. I find that so encouraging and think it's a great positive in reconnecting the GenX and Y to those born up to fifty years before!

I now have a Twitter account which I use to keep up with Laurel, Dr Karl, ABC Q & A, ABC News and various other Twits.

The next session was entitled "A Ministerial Dialogue". We endured incredibly boring speeches from Minister Castrilli, Minister Day and a reasonable one from Eric Ripper, Leader of the Opposition.

Following that was a presentation by Lord Mayor of Perth, Lisa Scaffidi, which should have been entitled, "Look at me, aren't I gorgeous".  I did enjoy the light entertainment prior to this, an enactment by Edith Cowan's grand niece, playing her grand aunt. What an amazing woman she was!

I then chose one of the concurrent sessions being run and that was Laurel Papworth's. I was a little disappointed as she really didn't address the issue that most of the audience seemed to want and that was, the 'how' part of getting into social networking. Laurel focussed on the 'why' part, reasons we should be involved.

After joining Twitter and trying to find out more information, I now realise that it wasn't necessary to provide the answers as to how to get started as all that info is already available on Twitter sites. Laurel explains carefully how to start using social networking sites like Twitter here.