Sowing the seed

THE CONVERSATION began as a blog - this blog in fact - but it didn't stay that way very long.  Below is the first and only entry that went into this format of THE CONVERSATION.  Within a couple of days we went live on our new home at Ning.  Things went really well there for the better part of a year.  I want to say now that Ning offers an excellent product, and if it wasn't for a change in their monetization policies, coupled with a slow shift in the focus of this "group project", we'd probably still be there.

There's been a handful of people working working in the South Australian Government have been contributing to THE CONVERSATION on and off, with Emmanuel Santos and myself doing most of the heavy lifting.  Ning allows you to post blog entries, but to also put up discussion starters, events reminders and some other cool stuff all laid out on different parts of the page.  With the shift to Ning came a subtle shift in the focus of the discussion, from purely economic issues to a broader public policy forum.  This is the focus we'll be bringing to THE CONVERSATION's new (old) home.

It was always the intention of THE CONVERSATION to be a two-way discussion, rather than a megaphone for the contributors to spout off about whatever was vexing them.  Hopefully we'll be able to keep that alive here, and in future face-to-face events.  In the interest of getting the back-and-forth started, I'll be re-posting here some of the material from the Ning page.  If you want to respond to something, please feel free.  Say what's on your mind.  Tell us we're wrong, if that's what you think.  If you've got something you want to say, send it to me and we'll put it up (so long as it's not defamatory or just straight-out vitriolic).

So read, think, and engage.  And tell your friends, colleagues, etc.