Hi, everyone,
ANTS encourages all members to contribute as individuals to our national efforts, that said, a large amount of ANTS work is regional based, eg seminars, workshops etc. We can only succeed if we have Branch Committees to support these regional efforts. This creates a situation were we need to support both centralised and decentralised work. We would like to see “Key Topics†and “Key Events†seen as “whole-of-ANTS†focused albeit that an event may physically occur as a regional event. We are hoping over time event coordinators will use the Key Events area to develop their regional events “online†with event resources and outcomes available for all members to see.
One of the tools available to all members is our forums. The ANTS site can support any number of forums for general, event coordination, or specific topics of professional interest. Forums are a fantastic tool; however they can be the cause of a lot of work and a source of considerable confusion and duplication.
The ANTS Site has a main “Site News†forum. This is available to all members to make posts as they see fit. At the moment we have passive moderating of the forum, however if we have any trouble with things like spam, etc we may have to introduce some form of active moderating. All members are “Subscribed†to the Site News which means an email version of a post is sent to all members.
We have a small number of Topic Areas, eg ANTS Constitution, and Nurse Teacher Competencies which are of interest to all ANTS members. These areas also have forums and although they haven’t had much recent activity they sit ready to be used. We await your insights into Nurse Education!
We have a Key Event Area which is where we would like to see event coordinators develop their physical events, in a way that engages as many members as possible. We hope in the future to have some online/virtual events as well. Each of the event sites can have a dedicated forum. All an event coordinator needs to do is send me an email and I will setup an event area.
With Branches in NSW, WA, and QLD starting to develop their online presence each Branch area has been given forum to help them. So we will have many forums for many purposes and this can be quite confusing as we start doing more work online.
At the moment all members are subscribed to the Site News and if you are from a State with a Branch Committee you will be subscribed to your Branch forum. You are free to subscribe to any and all forums of interest to you. We encourage the exchange of ideas between the members and Branches alike.
We all have busy lives and with the ability to create many topic areas you can see we could have lots of forums. At the moment the National Committee is trying to balance the needs of ANTS as a whole and the need to give the Branches the ability to conduct regional ANTS activities.
Please feel free to give feedback on what we are doing.
Regards
Stuart