During 2008, I was a member of Gold Coast City Council’s Bold Future advisory committee within a project that aimed to create a 30-year vision for Gold Coast City, built largely upon sustainability practices and principles. It was a real honour, priviledge and learning experience to be part of the committee and I got quite a bee in my bonnet about ensuring participatory community engagement and governance were put on the table for discussion and hopefully inclusion in the Gold Coast’s Bold Future vision. To that end, I wrote a discussion paper for the committee called “Turning on a Sixpence: Creating a learning foundation for community engagement”.

I enjoyed that research and writing process so much that in early 2009 I wrote a conference paper for the International Association for Community Development’s conference about community-centred economy. The paper was called “Learning as We Go: Cross-boundary collaboration to grow local living economy in South East Queensland” and was a writing collaboration with my wonderful colleague and friend Nick McGuire from the Logan Office of Economic Development.

Now I’m finalising a discussion paper about social-ecological resilience called “Exploring Resilience and Prosperity as Pathways Towards Integrated Sustainability” which I intend to post on the Ethos website in August 2009.