The Australian Community Network

The main benefit of this social network is that it helps to breed activity in the community, new connections are made with new people. The network helps to inform customers and also re-connect friends.

The Austcom network has been designed to support rural communities.

The Austcom network is self supporting, always growing and improvements are constant.

What makes the Austcom network valuable is:

1. The networking happens in a geographic community website that already serves many people in many ways.

2. The network is about us and supported by us in our communities.

3. As a not-for-profit community enterprise we are focussed clearly on building strong, sustainable communities from within.

Here are some more tangible benefits...

An example of online and place based community network building from Geoffrey Grigg, a builder of sustainable communities.

Geoffrey is responsible for client support at Austcom, "The Australian Community Network". You can learn more at http://austcom.org.au and at Sustain Magazine http://sustain.org.au where Geoffrey is publisher.

More:
Austcom - The Australian Community Network
http://austcom.org.au is a shared network shaped by a real community. It is a collection of groups who, by their presence, have crafted a working array of tools such as web pages, on line database applications, events notices, news systems, public access areas, email mailing lists and more. Our core precept is that we help build social, economic and environmentally sustainable communities.

New Models for Content Creation: Page2Pub

Guy Paddock, Social Networking Game Team Lead & Page2Pub engineer at the Open Publishing Lab (OPL) @RIT, describes Page2Pub, an innovative publishing tool to aggregate content from the Internet into a portable, print-ready format.

Open Publishing Lab projects like Page2Pub leverage the interactivity of the web to strengthen the connection between people and their ideas – open knowledge networks - to social and economic investment in communities and their regions.

Page2Pub is an Open Source software project that OPL hopes will provide others with as a platform for research into this area of publishing.

Link: http://opl.rit.edu/projects/page2pub/about

Learn more about the Open Publishing Lab across these I-Open platforms:

I-Open http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net
Facebook I-Open http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35942064712&ref=ts
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/iopen/sets/72157623351094216/
Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/iopen
Livestream http://www.livestream.com/iopen/
Posterous http://i-open.posterous.com/
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/I-Open
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/IOpen2
Twitter http://twitter.com/iopen2
Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/user1999383
You Tube http://www.youtube.com/user/IOpen2

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open.org/. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA

New Models for Content Creation: the Open Publishing Guide

Rachael Gootnick, Project Lead and Designer of Open Publishing Guide, Open Publishing Lab (OPL) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), describes the Open Publishing Guide as an important tool for civic leaders and their communities, organizations, and government to strengthen information sharing in education, economic, and workforce development.

The Open Publishing Guide (OPG) is an aid to people interested in self publishing. OPG is a repository of self publishing information such as: book templates to advice about self-publishing processes, an online coaching process of how to publish, an archive of print on demand services, and publishing resources available in the public domain.

Link: http://opl.rit.edu/project/open-publishing-guide

Learn more about the Open Publishing Lab across these I-Open platforms:

I-Open http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net
Facebook I-Open http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=35942064712&ref=ts
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/iopen/sets/72157623351094216/
Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/iopen
Livestream http://www.livestream.com/iopen/
Posterous http://i-open.posterous.com/
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/I-Open
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/IOpen2
Twitter http://twitter.com/iopen2
Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/user1999383
You Tube http://www.youtube.com/user/IOpen2

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open.org/. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA