eGovernment, blogs, knowledge disbursement and windpower!

["David Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Folks,

Just wanted to share some thoughts on using blogging technology as
both an effective external communication medium, but also internally.

My use case here is the State of WVa and its lurching moves toward
deployment of wind farms in the State.   As with any new technology
the legislation and best practice management lag behind what is 
happening on the ground - and so enlightened companies are
using state-of-the-art equipment with responsibly located sites and
local communiy involvement, while others are using cheap antiquated
devices in highly questionable environmentally sensitive areas with
potential major damage to endangered animal species!

The ability to inform is key.  The UK government commission 
just published an excellent peer-reviewed report on on-shore
windfarm projects in the UK.  And they have a discussion forum
with truely excellent comments and suggestions.

This shows that using web-technology to get the information into
the hands of legislators, state and local government staff and 
citizen groups can provide critical tools to make sure the right
decisions are made.

Blogs today have grown from a fringe tool into a powerful and
easy to assemble solution.  Not only is it possible to quickly 
customize a blog, but none technical people can make postings,
and a whole team of staff can share a blog and post to it.

Meanwhile using RSS feed content from the blog can be
rapidly included into websites anywhere - and notifications
sent to staff via RSS feeds.

Just as an examples - check out the resource site here - and
the included feed summary XML code that allows you
to pull that into a remote site elsewhere:

 http://windpowertalk.blogspot.com 

and 

http://ebxmlforum.blogspot.com 

So this can be purposed internally or externally - the blog
can be public or private - depending on needs.  A powerful
suite of collaboration tools that can respond in minutes to
daily operational needs - or notices, planning or alerting 
needs.

The best thing about all this is that it is all free technology!!

DW