"If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do."
anon. (Often attributed to comedian Lucille Ball, but known as far back as William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
It seems a lot of people have taken that old saying to heart and the demands on my time have been rather heavy in the past month. Since returning from July's Local Government Conference in Dunedin (with a good dose of norovirus to recover from) time has just raced away. I'm never much good with enforced rest, which may be why it took me a couple of weeks to recover from norovirus, but as soon as I was back to normal I found my days completely filled. The Standard has been reasonably good lately in reporting back on civic events and on council meetings so I won't bore you by writing about those.
On 25th August, I was elected President of the Mambo Foundation, Inc. The Mambo Foundation is an Australian non-profit organisation that is tasked with promoting, protecting and enabling the development of the Mambo open source content management system. Mambo is seven years old now, which is pretty ancient in terms of free, open source software, and is entering a milestone year in its development. I have been developing with Mambo since 2003 and it was this that formed the foundation for my work with Disastersearch. I was seconded to the Board of Directors just before Christmas and am delighted that I was elected by the membership to take Mambo forward for another year. Mambo has had over 7 million downloads and is used for websites as diverse as Cr. Jono Naylor's mayoral campaign site to the web site for the French Parliament. It is a volunteer organisation with members from all over the world. Governing such an organisation and dealing with the challenges of being a "bricks and mortar" registered non-profit that operates in a virtual world will be both trying and a lot of fun. I am looking forward to the challenge!
Things are getting busier for Disastersearch too. The Atlantic hurricane season is already becoming busy and is predicted to become busier.
NOAA is predicting a very high likelihood (85% chance) of an above-normal 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season, according to a consensus of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Research Division, and Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.
NOAA Press Release
The Disastersearch web site is in the process of being overhauled in preparation for any need for action. A lot of work is going on in developing the software for the site. Probably one of the saddest things about that web site is that people are still, two years on from hurricane Katrina, trying to find out what happened to loved ones.
August also seems to be the time when many community groups have AGM's. Due to time constraints, I have not attended many but I am very pleased that many organisations send an annual report out which helps me to keep in touch with what they have been doing through the year.
These, then, have been the highlights of my month. Before writing this I sat down and made a quick list - it came to four pages of notes! It has been a very busy month and, for me, the old saying has proven to be true.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
