Ideascale

Wednesday, 21 January 2015 05:39

County's Sustainability Steering Committee once again asking for ideas on ways to make the community more sustainable.

OXFORD COUNTY - Oxford County's Sustainability Steering Committee has launched their latest engagement campaign called Ideascale.

This is an online forum which allows residents to share innovative sustainability initiatives and actions as well as vote on their favourite ideas.

Chair of the Committee, Chris Friesen says there is no registration required. "If people live in that world of putting things on Facebook, making postings on websites, it will be no different then that. It will be pretty easy to follow, the instructions will be right there. It's just a matter of thinking what you want to say and hopefully put it in a way that hopefully other people will also understand the point you are trying to make. Then they can agree/disagree with you and make some comments."

"They will basically have an opporutnity to put a comment. It could be something like a belief about the role of agriculture in our community or they could be for or against wind turbines or solar panels," continues Friesen. "They can put a statement that can show what side of the fence they are on -- if it's that kind of issue and then people can go and say if they agree or disagree and then you will start to see the tally."

Friesen says members of the Committee will likely populate the Ideascale to begin with so that people can see what postings should look like.

While he says there isn't a word limit, he would recommend making comments short and to the point to ensure others will take the time to read them.

"When it's all said and done, when we close off the ideascale, we will be able to tell not only what people are thinking and what statemetns are importatn but what other people think of them and is there a general agreement that 'ya that's really important' or was it a mixed bag in terms of people on both sides of the fence. In the end it's going to give us, hopefully another summary of what people are really valuing."

This online forum can be found at FutureOxford's website until February 9.

At this point the committee is still in the information gathering stage.