Hello Connecting Bristol, and thank you for asking me to be guest blogger for the week – I feel privileged to join in. I thought it would be useful to reflect each day on my role as Regional ICT Champion for the third sector here in the South West, as well as on my role as Chief Executive at COSMIC – and there’s always plenty to say about both roles.
Well what a start to the day – storms overnight meant a collapsed fence first thing at the office – we decided that we would wait and see if the weather got worse before fixing it. Sounds like an analogy for a few organisations I know recently!
Last week, on Wednesday 5th March, we ran the Rural ICT Conference at Lackham College near Chippenham and today I have been pulling together presentations, reports and feedback to complete a post-conference report. It has reminded me of the value of documenting events and reflecting on their value, for the benefit of those not able to attend but also to remind people who were there what we achieved in just one day! It really was a great event and lots of discussions and debate focussed on initiatives, campaigns and collaboration which will help to make the work of rural VCOs more effective using ICT. I will be posting a full copy of the event report on my Champs blog soon.
In the process of pulling the conference report together I have been using SlideShare to upload and share the various powerpoints from the day. If you haven’t used it already then its worth a try. You can upload full copies of powerpoints to the online store and then share them with contacts or the wider world.
Here at COSMIC we have been reviewing recent decisions and some others which are imminent which could offer more funding for the delivery of ICT support to third sector organisations across the region. Both Capacity Builders and the Big Lottery BASIS programme are looking at their funding programmes and making announcements in the coming weeks. We will be looking for as many opportunities as possible to boost the ICT support available to organisations. Good news is that Regional ICT Champions funding will continue for a further three years, and we are hopeful that the powers-that-be at the lottery will also identify ICT as a key support issue in its BASIS round 2 funding.
This week I am writing in three separate blogs – this one for Connecting Bristol, my Champs blog as shown above, and also one as Social Enterprise Ambassador. I just hope people are reading them all … or at least one of them!
Julie Harris, COSMIC
