I was recently asked to talk (twice) about how the Bish dot net web site was set up and how it is used. Of particular interest was how local government in general, and wards and parishes in particular are involved in 'hyper-local' web sites.
The Bish site has pages by its local councillor (one of only 2% of Conservative ward councillor who have pages in the country - the Lib Dems have 7% and labour 1%), and by its Parish Council.
So its disappointing to see that the ward councillor has not been able to keep up his pages since he became Lord mayor - surely some interesting tales to be told about this ancient post! More of a problem is the failure of the Parish Council - always concerned to engage more people in its activities - to provide a more detailed account of what it is doing on your behalf. For example the significant re-opening of the village hall - just reported - deserves a prompt and full news story with plenty of pictures. But the council also needs first to provide full details about itself, and then encourage people to use the web site to air their views on what is important in local affairs. As a (random) example of the first look at Ashover PC's site (http://www.ashover-pc.gov.uk/id_index.html). Or look at http://www.parishblog.org/ to see another example where people do comment on local affairs.
Bish dot net has a growing national reputation for its village web site - and residents should be as proud of that as they are of the other amenities there - and they should make their voices heard on local affairs.
Its the 21st century way, right?
Just in defence of myself, yes finding the time is a bit difficult but more importantly I do find the programme a little clumsy but I also accept the possibility of my own lack of expertise. I have always tried not to be political and I hope I have achieved that. In passing I tried to put a number of stories and photographs on my part of the site last week and failed miserably to manage it. I will try harder!!
I agree with what you are saying about 'input' Linda but personally I think that it would be better if the Parish Council had their own website and were not featured on Bish.net.
Bishopthorpe.net needs to be independent and indeed sometimes critical of our elected members!
Linda - so far as I am aware, the dot net pages will still be used for 'front page' style news and general interest items regarding the PC. It may be that these become one-liners with a link to the PC web site. I see no benefit in removing all PC info completely from dot net; rather it should become a channel to the full site.
Stewart & Tim - If the Parish Council publish an independent website, would this mean losing the PC input on bish.net? If it does, it will be a great pity. We now have the PC Minutes which provide an excellent information service to the community. It would also be a bonus if Stewart's informative Link articles were repeated on the site - although I note this happened for the first time on 3 Oct.
There are, sadly, too few volunteers who contribute to bish.net - and all have various constraints on their time. Please reconsider your decision.
I have just opened both of the sites Martin links to in his article and it is interesting to note that the former is already out-of-date and the latter is in a 'blog' style (as the URL suggests!) and apart from the home page is also (in places very!) out of date.
Maintaining a community web site and keeping it 100% current is very time consuming and unless you are a paid professional assigned with that task, it is likely that there will be time lapses and 'catch up' to do.
Stewart Harrison and I are meeting shortly to design and publish an independent web site purely for the Parish Council. Hopefully we can make a better job of it than either of the two I've just looked at!
To reply to Martins original article - I think you'll find that the PC site has copies of all approved minutes up to August 2009 - we can't publish the minutes for September until after the October meeting.
The October meeting to be held on the 27th is already advertised on the web page and reminds all parishioners that they are welcome to raise any comments or queries at the beginning of each monthly meeting!
It would appear that our web page is more up to date than either of the web sites you mentioned!
Thanks Phil for your comment - it is true that we all have jobs and families and also like to enjoy a social life!
Ian - I think I have answered your comment re PC pages in my reply to Martin. And yes I agree that it may be useful to look at the web site of any place you are visiting and if you looked at Bish.net you would find articles about the re-opening of the Village Hall, the Youth Award Scheme etc. both on the front News and Views page but both associated with the Parish Council.
1. Stewart writes the PC notes anyway for the "Link". The PC has a village website sub-committee which would surely be keen to do the necessary technical bit to put them on the site.
2. Not everyone understands the importance of bishopthorpe.net outside the village. The "Link" and the website have different but overlapping functions. The "Link" has many more readers in the village than has the website, but it has almost no penetration outside. If I were thinking of visiting or moving to a place nowadays, the first thing I would do would be to look it up on the web. Wouldn't you?
I think you have some valid points Martin, i.e we are all proud of Bish.net
However, people also have other things to do in their lives as well as serve their local community. Most of the Parish Council either work full time or have families. John Galvin has many, many more duties and responsibilities including working for his nominated charities during his year as Lord Mayor. It asks too much of these dedicated people to also write on Bish.net.
You have the luxury of retirement with much, much more time on your hands!