Web workers make links at inaugural conference

The inaugural Making Links conference for people working with websites in non-profit and community sector organisations in Australia took place at the University of Technology in Sydney over two unseasonably cold days in early November.

The high-tech world of Meta tags, cookies, HTML, HTTP, FTPs, URLs, downloads, uploads and reloads would be enough to bewilder most community workers, but for the diverse range of participants at Making Links it was an opportunity to meet their contemporaries, compare notes, learn new skills and discuss the challenges and opportunities facing community organisations that are taking the plunge online.

It is now more or less accepted that online communication has much to offer community organisations, as a cost-effective, accessible medium for a wide range of tasks - from information provision, fundraising, outreach and event promotion to volunteer recruitment and co-ordination and even the creation of 'members-only' spaces. There are, however, also many traps for new players. Making Links brought together novice, intermediate and seasoned web workers to share experiences and learn how to avoid those traps when representing their organisation online.

The conference got underway on day one, with Tanya Plibersek, ALP Member for Sydney and Shadow Minister for Work, Family and Community; Youth and Early Childhood Education (amongst other portfolios) welcoming participants and expressing her belief in the integral role that online communication is increasingly playing for community organisations. She concluded by saying that the Making Links conference was a timely way to support web workers, who can at times feel isolated and overwhelmed, and that it was a great opportunity to share ideas for managing websites with minimal resources.

Three 'themed' streams were offered simultaneously throughout the conference, focusing on community building; developing, restructuring, promoting and evaluating websites; and technical issues. Many chose to surf between all three while others, especially those more technically inclined, got down to nuts and bolts (or bits and bytes?) in the computer lab.

On the first day participants were offered presentations on a vast range of issues. These included website development management, the creation and development of online community interaction, the ever-present issue of funding, web publishing standards, incorporation of websites into organisational policy, collection and analysis of website statistics, user testing of websites, the possibilities offered by open source software (any program in which the source code is freely available for users to look at and modify) and even a presentation on the challenges involved in developing a multi-language website. Tired yet?!

Dr Andrew Arch's morning presentation was one highlight of an exceptional first day. As the manager of the accessibility consulting team at the National Information and Library Service, Andrew provided insight into the issue of online accessibility, discussing how common web design mistakes that impact on people with disabilities or specific information access requirements can be avoided. He also recommended a number of simple, practical ways that people can evaluate their own organisation's website accessibility.

The organisers had an excellent understanding of participants' needs as we eased into the end of a busy first day with a cocktail party and the launch of an exceptional new (and free!) online resource for evaluating community web projects in an inclusive and participatory way. The EvaluateIT website was developed by the Queensland University of Technology and partners over three years of intensive participatory community research. The resource is available at www.evaluateit.org and is well worth a visit.

Day two also began bright and early, with the community building stream offering an engaging and thought-provoking presentation from the Scarlet Alliance (the National Forum for Sex Worker Organisations and Projects) and discussion of the challenges faced by the Australian Illicit and Injecting Drug Users League in their quest for a website. Gay Men's Health (AIDS Council of South Australia) provided an overview of their innovative 'Netreach' pilot project, which uses the popular medium of online chatrooms to offer anonymous yet personalised sexual health information for gay men.

The second stream focused on the promotion and evaluation of websites, with presentations from AFAO's online educators and a well-received and attended presentation by the creators of the EvaluateIT resource. Another popular presentation was given by Brett Rolfe, a 'Digital Strategist', on the ways that community organisations can promote themselves online - using websites as media relations platforms, promotional tools for campaigns, online community forums and much more.

The technical stream tackled the use of open source software with presentations from the Wilderness society and a discussion about the 'Plone' open source content management system or CMS (aka: the way that most of us non-tech-savvy people are able to access and update web content!). A hands-on computer lab session concluded the technical stream's day, with a well-attended workshop on the use of Photoshop to prepare graphics for the web.

The closing sessions of most multi-day conferences are not renowned for the vigour of participants, most of whom are flagging somewhat by that stage, but it was an extremely animated discussion that took place under the facilitation of Tim Leach on the challenges, barriers and solutions facing the future of web workers in the community sector. Challenges that many participants nominated included fundamental issues such as how to choose between the myriad types of software available, how to decide what features to include or exclude on a website, how to master the lexicon of 'tech-talk' and broader issues such as the risk that online communication about political or sensitive topics may endanger funding from sponsoring bodies. The outcomes of this final session included acknowledgement that we still face many challenges as community workers in an area that has traditionally required many resources to get underway and maintain momentum with, but that the positives definitely outweighed any negatives.

One of the most significant outcomes, for me, was a feeling that this was the beginning of a new and active community within the NGO/NFP community itself. Agreement was unanimous that the conference had been a success and that participants wanted to stay in touch (using the online medium that we had met to discuss), in addition to an overwhelming 'yes' vote to subsequent conferences.

In the spirit of 'online community', the presentations from Making Links are available for available for all to download at the conference website: communityweb.ngogeeks.com/Archive/CWPresentations.html

Participants came from a wide range of Australian community organisations, although the public health and HIV/AIDS sectors were slightly over-represented, owing to the fact that much of the dedicated organising committee (spear-headed by the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations' Website Officer Jill Sergeant) was drawn from the various AIDS bodies. The undisputed success of Making Links 2004, however, leaves no doubt that subsequent conferences will be much larger and even more representative of the numerous diverse community organisations that keep Australia safe, healthy and hopeful for the future. A future that will definitely feature the voices of Australian community organisations online - thanks in part to the pioneering efforts of those at Making Links 2004.

© Alice Clements, Researcher, RMIT University

Please contact web@afao.org.au if you wish to publish this article in any form.