Panculturale-e

Thank you Mr Learnscope!
One of the really nice things about Learnscope is the access to PD it wisely promotes. At the start of the project Georgina suggested we engage a suitable person to upskill we 3; Georgina, Li Ting and myself, and that Georgina would workshop with Li Ting and I for a day or so either side of the training. Collaboratively we decided on Macromedia related tuition for Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator. Both Li Ting and Georgina knew of a woman in Alice Springs referred to as Net Grrl, AKA Jane Clark.
Jane Clarks' a bit like Superwoman, in the daytime she's an Alice Springs Alderwoman [who offers info exchange with her constituents via her avatar on 2nd Life Janey Marsala, at night she morphs into Jane Clark- Mother, and at other times runs a successful web training enterprise: http://www.netgrrl.com.au/
Serendipity and raw luck allowed us to engage a busy Jane for 2.5 days training in late August [Tue, Wed and .5 Thu] and it was great.
Prior to the training on the Monday Georgina, Li Ting and I met in the IAD library and practiced that ancient art of face to face collaboration. There are so many 'strands' to Pancultural-e project [design, content, media, culturally sanctioned information etc], that we needed as a team, to tease out the tangles and lay them out straight. In her inimitable fashion [known in the trade as FULL THROTTLE] Georgina helped us tease out the tangles and start tossing ideas around. I really enjoyed this part, mainly because everyone was so open to 'ideas' per se. Of course we all had our individual notions but nothing was set in stone and gradually it all come together into a united multilateral way forward. For me, a really beneficial aspect of this type of work is this process of collaboration, whether it be digital or F2F. Its a right brain activity.
For many years computing has been a real male-ish left brain number, linear and logical.
Social networking, online collaboration, mutual reality [like 2nd life] etc has marked what I see as a turning point. In regard to business models its a bit like the difference between right-brain QANTAS and left-brain Virgin, QUANTAS is a lock step model with Virgin more open to new feeds and practice. Whatever, the 'grid' is now weighted towards interaction and this project was hurting my right brain!
A good example of this was my notions of a lock stepped mp3 podcast and Map moving from point A to B and so on. [my model being that of the ABC's podcast tour of Melbourne] In reality, trying to model this around Alice Springs' Geography, Topography, Climate and the users mode of transport [Bicycle, walking and or driving], made for a horribly complicated conundrum that I'd been wrestling with for weeks [that is until the session when Georgina come up with the idea of ditching the ABC model and making it just a series of 'chapters' and allowing the user to choose] It was that simple, and oh what a joy.
An almost complimentary spin-ff was the fact that Marcus Ragus [Learnscope M-Learning] and Daniel Dacey, are collaborating in the production of application software "Virtual Guide" to run on an ASUS PDA with GPS. It turns out that content files stored on a PDA/GPS can be 'triggered' by moving into a specific location, perfect for what we want happening as users move around Alice taking in the sacred Sites Tour. So Georgina's idea of de-linerising Vodcast content will work beautifully with this software. Daniel and Marcus have kindly agreed to allow us in on their project to act as beta testers, thanks guys. Gotta love this right-brain, womenomics collaborative stuff eh?
So, either side of the organised 'NetGrrl' training we had working sessions that were hard work but worth the effort.
NetGrrl

Training was conducted in the IAD board room, close to the executive Tim Tam biscuit barrel and Jane hit the ground running, dragging us screaming into maw of Macromedia. The schedule was heavy duty, hard work and rewarding. We covered all sorts of digital magic from 'tweening' in Flash to 'rollovers' in Dreamweaver.
Of real value to IAD is the way that our web presence is metamorphosing, guided by the deft hands of Li Ting Lee, our erstwhile and versatile IT administrator . As well as a major overhaul regarding the graphics, the site is now steadily gearing up to be able to add value in a wonderful variety of ways; online education, multilingual capacity, pay-per-view commerce, an IAD Press who are now seriously looking into their own capacity to digitally delight and deftly distribute. The list goes on. There is real value in that old TAFE exercise of sending folk back to 'industry' to get back in the swim of things. Albeit we had 'Industry' come to us, but it was reassuring to know that Jane had her finger on the pulse. Also, being an Alderwoman, Jane was well placed to offer quality advice on our product. A real Gem suggestion for instance was that we should take our proof of concept product to the NT Tourism Commission and sound them out on a variety of issues; funding, visibility, assistance etc. So, its nice to have some take off points at the end of this years gratefully received funding and support from Melanie's [SITAC] crew and Learnscope.
And Finally, the "Work Song" Jane had us chant mantra style as we engaged our tuition. Its really hard to sing and multi task collabourataenously.....