#communityofx

We're excited to have our first co-workers join us in the IDX Hub. Steven and Mihau from StoryMaps joined us for their first day in the Hub last Friday, and we hope to see a lot more of them in the coming weeks. We're speaking to two other potential co-workers today—if all goes to plan they'll be joining us later in the week. We hope that these new folks joining us will continue to build on the really positive energy is emerging in the space.

The past two weeks have seen our newest team members, Angie and Michael continue to ramp up. Angie has been been looking at some early opportunities for us to co-develop what we think is some really interesting workshop activities for delivery in the Hub. Coding sessions using MIT Scratch and a community-led robotics session are among the ideas being considered. As with all of our activities to date, we hope to prototype these sessions first, to learn what works, what doesn't etc. with a view to get a more structured events program off the ground in due course.

These workshops and sessions would complement community-led sessions in the Hub. We've had a few folks come and visit us to check out the space, to see if it might support their events. If you've got an event coming up, and you're looking for a dynamic and creative space to hold it, we'd love to hear from you...

Last week we posted the first of what we hope will be regular emails for Community of Excellence members. We featured an interview with Rhyan Clapham who has come up with some killer beats and words for our up-coming ad, which is also approaching completion.

We've got a few updates to the Community of Excellence platform on their way as well. These changes will make it even easier to use the site on a smartphone—notifications will now take you directly to the information that's been commented on/respected etc. and we've fixed a bug with the "Remember me" functionality that means you'll be able to get straight to the page you're after without having to login (well, far less often anyways).

From the very beginning, a key aim of the Community of Excellence has been to connect as many Indigenous men, women and jarjums with each other as possible. The month of April has seen us reach 1000 members from across Australia join up and start the conversations we’ve been missing.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the strongest link you can have is between kin and with the land. Throughout Australia’s history, we have held onto our culture as much as we could, and have begun restoring what was lost in the torturous years of settlement, wars, pillages and dehumanising of our race and of our culture. We have survived. But not without a heavy price.

Australia’s shared history with Indigenous people was a hard one. We lost language, we lost kin and our young ones through stolen generations and massacres, and for many, there was a huge loss with the land and our sense of Belonging.

In this day and age, I have seen much and heard of much more. I don’t know my traditional Bundjalung language, I cannot tell all of the Bundjalung stories, as they weren’t told to me. Raised by my non-Indigenous mother, all I can tell you, is that the blood that runs through my veins is drawn to the rivers and the ocean. It is drawn to the land and the mountains that covet the Bundjalung Nation. My heart sings when my feet touch the sand and the water ripples through my fingers.

Moving from Tweed Heads to Sydney for school and then uni was both the hardest, but best choice I have made for me. In Sydney, I have had the privilege to meet and work with numerous Indigenous Aunties and Uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces. Leaders in their own rights and strong culture bearers and wearers. These people are who led me to my current role as Community Catalyst at the NCIE. Prior to this, I was inspired on a daily basis working with the young Indigenous kids in schools along the east coast in the Australian Indigenous Mentoring experience (AIME) Program. I was able to see Mickey Kovari work to create the platform for the Community of Excellence (CoE) in its earliest stages. Originally being open to a small close-knit group of people in its beta stage, to expanding the team behind the scenes in 2013, where opportunities, events and blogs were posted and conversations really started to stick. And the present year, April 2014, has seen the membership grow to 1000 and it’s only going to reach bigger numbers.

This is something we can be proud of.

You might be reading this thinking, “What the heck does the start of this blog have to do with celebrating 1000 members?”

Well, let me tell you…

With such a history as we’ve had, both negative and positive, Indigenous people across Australia have regained a lot of equality, reconnections, and have demonstrated inspirational movements and leadership through adversity. From our young men and women fighting in civil and international wars, movements such as the Freedom Rides with Charlie Perkins, Mabo fighting for his people’s land, the Tent Embassy, silent protests that spoke volumes across the world. These historical moments and people built platforms for future generations to take their own lives in their hands and do what they will with it.

The CoE is aiming to connect our peoples in an online forum so that connections can be made and kept without the bull. An Indigenous only space, we aim to facilitate the conversations around tough issues, to link Indigenous professionals with others wanting to get into the field. Where generations mix and mingle and where we can promote the Indigenous events around the country so all of our members are aware and can connect in the physical realm.

Wow. March already! Hope your year is progressing apace as much as ours is...

In preparation for some internal strategy work we're doing we've had occasion to (re)visit examples of IndigenousDX from around the country. It's always inspiring to be reminded of the awesome work already underway—we hope we can contribute positively this growing sphere in due course!

But we're also hungry to learn more about what all you folks are doing in terms of IndigenousDX. So if you're involved in a project, or have just heard of some deadly peeps doing great stuff, please share your story.

The most visible change this past week is we've transitioned the IDEA Summit 2013 to the new IDX website. We hope that the new site provides better insight into what we're currently working on and how you can get involved. Drop us a comment with your thoughts...

Lots of behind the scenes stuff still going on with the Hub—orders placed for our workshop space chairs, carpets, and the like. Looking forward to seeing it all come together in about 8 weeks time, when all the orders start to arrive.

Our friends at Digital Eskimo are close to having a much more friendly mobile version of the site up and running—we'll hopefully be able to share that with you in a couple of weeks' time.

We're dipping our toes in the water with the Startup Lab and are looking for participants. If you have a great app or business idea, please let us know...

The Community of Excellence has been picking up a bit of steam lately with a lot of new members in the past week or so, and a lot of new energy and thinking about how we use this platform to not only connect with and support each other; but to challenge our thinking, speak out about issues we are passionate about, stand up for ourselves and each other, and of course to simply have fun.

We have been squashing a number of bugs and planning a number of new features the last few months and this process had distracted me from the true strength of the CoE platform; you mob. The deadly, funny, passionate and compassionate people who have signed up to the CoE hoping to connect with others and either get support with what you are hoping to achieve, offer support and guidance to those who are still striving to achieve their goals, or like me, a bit of both.

While there are still quite a lot of tech changes we plan to introduce and we of course will always be on the lookout for ways to improve the usability of the platform, this should not stop us from pushing what we do have already, focusing on making great conversations, connections and collaborations.

This quickly led me to thinking about the activity that has been happening on the site. It's awesome to see that a lot of people have been making, updating and achieving their goals. But we'd love to see more activity in terms of conversations and connections. This has reminded me of the crucial need for us all to feel comfortable saying the things we believe need to be said; raising the difficult issues; finding meaningful opportunities for respectful dialogue; and supporting each other in our day to day challenges, setbacks and triumphs. That is, after all, what the CoE is all about...

I would like to encourage everyone to make a few posts this week about whatever you would like. Inspire us, challenge us, have a laugh with us. Share your favourite songs or pics or links with us. Let us know how you are going, what is happening in your school, uni, TAFE, workplace, or home. What are you excited about, what are you worried about, is there anything we, or others, can do to lend a hand or offer support?

We are the Community of Excellence—there is no shortage of excellence amongst the thousand or so people signed up, now we just need to come together as a strong community; and what could be more excellent than that?

I didn't get an update up last week, in part because we were pulling together our first quarterly report as part of our reporting to our project sponsor the Telstra Foundation.

One of the benefits of doing these reports is the chance to reflect on what we've achieved. In my experience it can be very easy to lose sight of progress amidst the day-to-day happenings—how all the small things start to add up to more significant progress.

So I thought this week would be a good opportunity to reflect on those things publicly as well, with a summary of what we've achieved since we kicked things off late last year.

Three employees now comprise the IDX team (IDX Director, 2 x Community Catalysts)

The Community of Excellence project has been successfully transitioned into the IDX Initiative

The IDX team are operational in the IDX Hub space on NCIE’s Redfern grounds

We successfully hosted the Sydney Sustainability Jam, part of a global initiative, in Nov 2013. This resulted in many learnings for the development of the IDX Hub.

The initial fit-out of the IDX Hub has commenced. Key supporting vendors have been appointed. Scoping of technical infrastructure is complete.

A number of IDEA Summit participants have been engaged to determine ‘next steps’ for Summit project concepts. Additionally, a number of community members who are engaged in activities related to IndigenousDX (but who did not attend the Summit) have also been engaged.

Significant media coverage for the IDEA Summit project concepts achieved, including a feature article in Business Review Weekly (BRW) magazine

In addition, a number of promising developments are underway:

The part-time Hub Coordinator role has been advertised, with an appointment expected in the next week or so

An updated IDX microsite is nearing completion

An exciting media partnership is currently under discussion, with an emphasis on opportunities for promoting IndigenousDX

Planning for the National IDX Strategy co-design process is well underway

We're excited about the momentum that's building, even if that isn't necessarily outwardly apparent as much as we'd like at present.

As is so often the case, the end of the year always carries with it a flurry of activity as loose ends were tied and everyone prepared for the holiday break. We hope you had a positive time, with the opportunity for some time away from the daily grind to spend with friends, family and loved ones, over the past few weeks.

So what did we get up to before the break? It may not seem like much, but we ordered a printer! We started working out of the Hub a few months ago now, with the explicit intention of prototyping the space and working out what we needed to do. We've been "bootstrapping" (to borrow a term from the tech world) with basic internet connectivity, a few borrowed desks and a computer or two. We've been caught short a few times needing to print, so it's great to finally have one on the way (though probably a week or two away from being delivered yet). It's an A3 colour printer from Fuji-Xerox with some fanciness to help us reduce waste and keep track of costs for when we have co-workers in the space with us. We looked at some options from Ricoh too, and it was a close call to decide. In the end it mostly came down to reputation—every person I spoke to in my personal and professional network recommended Fuji-Xerox. (Which, as an aside, is an timely reminder on the power (and importance) of a strong brand!)

Other small wins (which are always important to celebrate!) is our kitchen appliances have arrived (plus a few bits for our fridge) to help us get a more functioning kitchen up and running. Which is super important, in our view, for a happy and healthy team! We also tried out a few different potential office chairs, started arranging signage so that it's easier to find the IDX Hub when you come to the NCIE grounds, and made arrangements to get the EORA Computer Lab up and running (a small iMac lab in the NCIE's EORA Fitness centre, which is used by the NCIE's After School Program).

We've also been speaking to the good folks at TACSI about potentially helping us out with the development of the National IDX Strategy, but also prototyping some of the various projects that we have in mind for IDX. At the same time, we've struck up some promising conversations with Gavin and the team at PwC Indigenous Consulting with some similar aims in mind. It's wonderful to be able to connect with such energetic, passionate and experienced folks to see what we can do together to advance IndigenousDX.

Over the break our friends at Digital Eskimo made some tweaks to the Community of Excellence so you can now sign-in using your Facebook account. One of the side-benefits of this is that once you've signed in via Facebook, you can jump straight into the site without having to enter your sign-in details, which should make responding to notifications and the like a bit easier/simpler.

As you may or not know, the Community of Excellence was initially created as way for young mob that came through the NCIE to keep in touch and continue working collaboratively once they left and returned to their own communities. This helped people stay connected, maintain new friendships, and continue working on various projects and initiatives started here at the NCIE. However, now that the Community has opened up we've found that the initial points of contact and options for people to connect with kindred spirits have been limited to existing networks, friends, family and peer groups.

The NCIE's online Indigenous youth empowerment network, the Community of Excellence, is moving out of private beta and into open access mode. After more than a year of piloting the online network with NCIE program participants, we are now keen to make the network available to all young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

The Community of Excellence is founded on trust and respect, and is a safe space for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and role models, to support and encourage each other to set, track and achieve goals to realise opportunities. Currently, the network—which is curated and monitored by NCIE team members—has over 700 members, about 600 young Indigenous participants and about 100 Indigenous and non-Indigenous role models.

If that sounds like a space for you, and you are a young Indigenous person aged 13-30, you can sign-up as a pathfinder. Or if you believe you're role model material (regardless of age) you can sign-up as a role model.