2012 Conference Working Party Announced

We are pleased to announce the members of the 2012 Australian Community Engagement & Fire Awareness Conference Working Party.


Region East
• Gary Walker – Gosford District
• Anton Arathoon – Hills District/North Rocks Brigade
• Hugo Floriani - Hornsby/Ku-Ring-Gai Support Communications



Region South
• John Taubman – Lake George Zone, Wamboin - Palerang Brigade
• Robin Philp - Bega Valley District, Bega Valley/Eurobodalla Team, Brogo Brigade



Region West
• Kevin Heerey - Region West, Mid West Team, Hay HQ Brigade



Region North
• Nicole Vidler - Northern Rivers, Ellangowan/Support Brigade



These members have a wealth of community engagement experience and we look forward to ‘picking their brains’ regarding speakers, the program, and the ranking of abstracts. Members will meet via teleconference and will be of great assistance to the Community Engagement Team here in HQ.


 We’d like to thank everyone who submitted an application to join the Working Party. We appreciate the time taken to do so and for sharing your experiences.


Thanks to the Community Safety Officers (CSOs) and staff that helped us to assess the applications.


A quick reminder – We are now calling for conference abstracts, posters and video submissions. The deadline is 24 February 2012. For more information and to download an application form go to - http://bit.ly/hdXIs8


Kind regards,


Nicole

Nicole Miller
Community Engagement Coordinator
NSW Rural Fire Service
community.engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au

Calling for conference abstracts & new video category

We are calling for abstracts, posters and videos for the 2012 Australian Community Engagement and Fire Awareness Conference.

The conference will be held from 31 May - 2 June 2012 at the Novotel in Wollongong. For more information and to download an abstract submission form go to the NSW Rural Fire Service website - http://bit.ly/hdXIs8

Applications to attend the conference will open in January 2012 (exact date to be confirmed). An online registration form will be posted to the website in the coming months. We'll let you know when the form goes ‘live’.

We are excited about the new video category! For tips on making your own masterpiece this website has some great advice for novice filmmakers - http://bit.ly/cxlKof

I worked in film and television production including many hours spent making low budget short films. Below are my 5 top tips for making a short film.

1. It's all in the planning
Plan your story before you turn the camera on. What are you trying to achieve? Who are your audience? What is your start, middle, and end? Most short films are between 3-7 minutes. Can you tell your story in this time frame?

2. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)Keep the number of locations to a minimum. This will save you a lot of time and you can film more footage each session. Keep the number of actors, characters or presenters to a minimum as well.

3. Watch your shooting ratio
The more you shoot the more footage you have to watch, then edit. Some filmmakers aim for a shooting ratio of 5:1 (i.e. that ratio of filming compared to the final run time of your project). Shoot more than 20:1 you may have an epic on your hands … ‘Gone With The Wind II’?

4. Great catering, stay hydrated and breaks
Trust me, this is essential! I have been on too many short films with terrible or stingy catering. Include lots of protein at lunch and produce sweets for a 3pm ‘sugar hit’. Keep your fluids up and take breaks. Without catering, water and breaks you may have a crew mutiny on your hands.

5. Giving thanks and crew screening
Don't forget to thank your cast, crew and others that have helped you, especially those who offered their homes or businesses as a shooting location. If you have promised your cast and crew to list them in the credits don’t forget to do so and carefully check the spelling of all names. A nice touch is to provide everyone involved a copy of the film and to hold a screening party.

Good luck!

For more information regarding the conference please email community.engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au or call 02 8741 5416.

Kind regards,


Nicole

Nicole Miller
Community Engagement Coordinator
NSW Rural Fire Service
community.engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au

Planning for Our 2012 Conference is WELL underway

Our conference theme is ‘Fire Up Engagement!’ The conference will focus on ways to encourage responsiveness to, and support for, Community Engagement within small groups, communities and organisations.

Shortly we will be calling for abstracts (expressions of interest to present at the conference). We will be seeking abstracts and speakers from a range of backgrounds including, but not limited, to the below sectors:

 

• fire and emergency services
• community relations and community engagement professionals
• government agencies
• research institutes and agencies

 

Some areas of particular interest are:

 

• social analysis – understanding communities before engagement
• building support for community engagement
• tools, techniques and approaches
• research results on behavioural change
• communicating during times of crisis
• marketing messages in a saturated environment
• volunteer projects and tools
• learning from community engagement projects

If you are a NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer or staff member we particularly welcome your submissions. Share your successes and motivate others!

 

Watch our face book page NSW Rural Fire Service Community Engagement or this blog for more information!



Cheers from Tanyia

2012 ACE&FA Conference Update

Hello All.


Here's the new logo for the 2012 Australian Community Engagement & Fire Awareness Conference to be held from 1-2 June 2012 at the Novotel, Wollongong.  The theme is 'Fire Up Engagement!'

Conference planning is well and truly underway.  The submission form calling for abstracts and posters will be circulated shortly.

This year we are opening a new category for submissions - a video category.  This is an opportunity to submit a video that demonstrates how you are firing up engagement in your area. Maybe you'd like to celebrate your successes, pose some questions, show us a community engagement event, share the props and aids you use to engage, interview some members of your community or brigade or set a challenge for others.  Get creative!  Submissions will undergo the usual review process by our Conference Working Party (still being assembled).  Finalists will be screened in a designated screening room with videos on a loop and we'll also post to our social media.  Submissions will be required on CD or DVD rather than sending us weblinks to YouTube.


Conference Working Party expressions of interest have been extended for Region West and Region North only.  The extended deadline is Fri 9 Dec.  We'll confirm the final Working Party shortly.




Kind regards,


Nicole
Community Engagement Coordinator
community.engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au

Calling for EOIs for Conference Working Party

Dear All,
The Community Engagement Team in HQ has started planning the 2012 Australasian Community Engagement & Fire Awareness Conference. The theme is ‘Fire Up Engagement’ and the event will be held from Fri 1 June – Saturday 2 June 2012. The venue will once again be the Novotel in Wollongong.

We are calling for expressions of interest (EOI) for members of our Conference Working Party. Working Party members will help us to shape the program and workshops, rank abstracts and poster submissions, and provide other feedback.

We are calling for 8-10 volunteers who would meet via evening teleconferences as required (teleconference dates and times to be confirmed). Working Party members are not required to travel to HQ for meetings. We hope to get a good spread over the state.
To submit an EOI volunteers are to send a short email (short paragraph or two) that outlines why they would like to be involved and what they can offer the Working Party/Conference. The email must include:

■Name:

■Region/District/Team/Zone/Brigade:

■Email address:

■Contact telephone:

EOIs are to be emailed to community.engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au by Friday 18 November 2011.

Successful and unsuccessful applicants will be acknowledged by email. We will forward both meeting dates and teleconference details by email also.
If you have any ideas or feedback about last year’s conference also feel free to pop us an email.

Kind regards,



Nicole

Nicole Miller
Community Engagement Coordinator
NSW Rural Fire Service
community.engagement@nsw.gov.au







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Off 2 Parliament House for award ceremony -Canyonleigh Brigade will receive an award for a community engagement program they developed RFS

Why I'm addicted to 'Six Thinking Hats'

I’m a big fan of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ - http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm 

Kurwongbah State School in QLD has shared some good tools and activities that may be handy if you find yourself stuck - http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Hats/hats.htm

This site brings you up to speed on the colours of each ‘hat’, definitions and how you can apply each one. Click on the link to their ‘annotated bibliography’ for lots of great resources.

For me the Six Thinking Hats are handy when:

• brainstorming

• planning an event or activity

• for problem solving

• report writing

• project planning

Once you work through the ‘hats’ you cover a lot of ground.

Who is your audience? Have you anticipated their needs or reactions? Are you missing something? Are there other opportunities you hadn’t thought of? Are you using the right tools or format?

Any other planning or thinking tools that you like?

Nicole

Social Media in the 2011 Victorian Floods Report http://ow.ly/6JdKh found over 320 000 social media mentions . . . . . .

SHAPE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT in the RFS. Nominate to join the Community Engagement Consultative Sub-committee
http://ow.ly/6IYcp

Greetings from new team member

Hi everyone!  My name is Nicole Miller and I'm a new Community Engagement Coordinator here at HQ in Lidcome.


My LinkedIn profile is http://www.linkedin.com/in/millernicole so you can read a bit about me.


My career includes film and television production, project management, internal and external communications, and community engagement. My previous position was at the University of Western Sydney where I managed a free community legal clinic and legal teaching program.  I grew up in the Hawkesbury Region (Bowen Mt, Kurrajong and Richmond) and was a member of Grose Vale brigade as a teenager.  Cumberland Zone HQ took very little time to sign me up on Open Day (see pic below).  My father, Rick Miller, has been a volunteer for Hawkesbury brigades for as long as I can remember and he is a volunteer fire investigator on the Central Coast.


I look forward to meeting many of you and sharing Community Engagement tips, resources and strategies.

Some interesting reading:

Liverpool City Council's Community Engagement toolkit - http://bit.ly/q2siLU. I like their ‘10 Principles for Community Engagement’. Their planning tool on page 2 initially looks a little scary (lots of coloured cells on a grid) yet it actually is quite a useful tool for breaking down a big program or project into bite sized jobs.


Best wishes,

Nicole

PS - I hope your Open Days were a great success.


Photo caption: Senior Deputy Captain, Ron Freeman, signing up Community Engagement Coordinator, Nicole Miller, at Cumberland Zone HQ Open Day 2011.