Alice Springs, new media and the internet

If google’s blog search engine and wordpress.com tags are any indication there are only two other active blogs in Alice Springs – Jane Clark’s and Desert Mandala.  This is suprising considering the importance of regional policy reform in the national context (and of interest throughout the nation), although crikey.com.au and other forums carry irregular and unanimous contributions from this region.  However, there appears to be a number of blogs from Aboriginal communities in the north of the Territory.

Updated 5/11 - Alice Online is a site online for some time. 

Recently the local ABC significantly enhanced its content including blogs, photos, features and a range of functions, found here.  These local photos are excellent.

The Alice Springs News continues to display content online and there is limited coverage online with the Centralian Advocate. 

If there are any new Alice Springs (or Central Australian) blogs please let me know.

Alice Springs Innovative ideas forum

Recently the Alice Springs Town Council hosted an innovative ideas forum facilitated by Ted Egan.  I submitted the following ideas (the final one was in the top 4).  Surprisingly, the idea in relation to Slamball received more support than I expected and was spoken to by one participant (only a small number of participants were aware of what it is!).  Other ideas submitted to the forum included extreme sports generally and this idea can be linked into the Slamball proposal.

ideas-for-innovation-workshop_nov-081

Chess

Chess is a fascinating game.  Its a game of risk, calculation and battle.  The game has developed to a perfect form and it did so a very long time ago.  There are no tricks, no easy paths.  No shortcuts.

The concept of chess is often used to explain how the brain functions.  After many games certain patterns imprint in the mind.  Experts look at a board and can see instantly the options presented as if the sub-conscious mind recognises certain patterns without going through a conscious thought process.  Because these conscious thought processes take time the advantage of immediately recognising patterns leads in almost all cases to the correct move option.  As humans have weaknesses errors arise but errors are fewer in-between when memory and sub-conscious activity expands.  The rest comes down to innovation and it is this skill that attracts so many players.