One of the great things about our industry is being around people who are passionate and motivated. People who take ideas and make them real.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be part of the first Local Government Web Network conference - We Believe in Community - run by Diana Mounter and Reem Abdelaty.

Colin and I met Diana at Web Directions South 2007. The three of us traded war stories about building developer networks within large organisations - we'd done it at Griffith University, while Diana was working to connect local government web developers across NSW. Anyone who thinks that sort of thing is easy probably hasn't tried it!

It's great to see how well the LGWebNetwork has come together in the past year. We Believe in Community was a slick, professional conference with greate energy amonst the attendees and speakers. I was particularly chuffed to be asked to do the second day's opening keynote.

Photo: me speaking at LGWebNetwork (Photo by Ruth Ellison)

In my talk I discussed some of the lessons learned trying to achieve change in large organisations. I think I also increased sales for the coffee shop outside, after extolling the virtues of espresso as a social networking tool...

You can now listen to podcasts of all the talks via the LGWebNetwork speakers and pressos page (if you're really keen you can go straight to the podcast of my talk).

More about the event:

Photo of the conference swag

I also feel compelled to mention the bright red swag bag was one of the coolest conference bags I've ever received; and the speakers' gift was a knockout - a custom engraved red iPod Shuffle. Talk about the joy of the unexpected! :)