Swanreach.sa.au is a community website for Swan Reach, South Australia and surrounding districts.
 

The custodian of the website is the Swan Reach Progress Association.

 

To guide the Swan Reach Progress Association in the planning, development and sustainable operation of the website, the Open Technology Foundation's whitepaper on "Developing a sustainable community digital presence" was followed.

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For a community geographic website of this nature, co-production with a suitably qualified academic project team is ideal and offers significant benefits for all. Academic teams from major universities across the globe are always looking for work experience opportunities for Masters students to develop real world platforms and give something back to the community.

For the community groups, this approach will keep capital and resource costs of development to a bare minimum but still achieve a quality outcome.

 

To plan and develop the website, The Open Technology Foundation linked the Swan Reach Progress Association with its major academic partner - Carnegie Mellon University Australia - which was exploring work experience opportunities for Masters students.

 

The academic project team focused on designing the site and building the pages required and the Swan Reach Progress Association focused on providing the content to the team (images, events, written content) 

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The Open Technology Foundation provided guidance on how to implement a financially sustainable website for a community, platform choices, branding, use of open standards, and ongoing maintenance and support.

 

Now in final stages of configuration, the launch of swanreach.sa.au is Thursday April 4th at the Swan Reach Town Hall.

 

Different community groups within Swan Reach and surrounding areas will provide ongoing updates to the website to ensure it remains an important asset for the township.

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