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Local Hubs - win-win options

March 11, 2008 Posted by julzswitch in : Environment, South West region, Flexible Working, Guest Bloggers , trackback

I am doing some research today ahead of an event next Wednesday in Devon which is bringing together people from public, private and third sector organisation to look at the development of local ICT ‘hubs’. The event is being promoted by Community Council of Devon and COSMIC jointly and has already engaged interest from the County Council, BT, University of Plymouth, RDA and others.

There are several counties already running projects in the UK which provide ICT resources in local communities using facilities such as village halls, post offices, libraries and pubs and its interesting to see how these are now developing a new level of support given the need for everyone to take environmental issues more seriously. Examples I am looking at include - Somerset Broadplaces, Connecting Dorset and Switched on Shropshire

By providing access to services and resources in local communities we should be able to reduce the need for travel and our ongoing reliance on so many vehicles. I also think that if we extend this to shared work-based use of local facilities such as community centres and village halls it becomes a win-win situation. Many of us know about the issues with homeworking (isolation, lack of social support, etc) and so if we developed locally shared workspaces which could be used by a range of employers not only do we provide people with improved working arrangements, but we also develop new and much-needed income streams for local venues. I am going to encourage many more people to think about local hubs in this way and increase the debate as much as possible, starting with next Wednesday.

Julie Harris, COSMIC

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Comments»

1. Bristol bloggers galore!!! « The Bristol Blogger - March 11, 2008

[…] And today Julie's doing some research ahead of another - no doubt great - event, "which is bringing together people from public, private and third sector organisations to look at the development of local ICT ‘hubs." Because, apparently, sticking computers in village halls in Devon is going to save the planet. […]

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