Doug's Blog
Communities Without Boundaries
This morning I had the distinct pleasure of joining a video conference that included over 20 communities with over 200 people on the use and future of video conferencing. I served as Chair of Rural Development for four years for this province and for those of you that don't already know, rural development is my passion and purpose and the reason why I first ran for this position.
There is so much opportunity to utilize video conferencing and communication tools to enhance the opportunities in rural Alberta. I visited Capital Health Region a few years ago and they were so please to point out that they could have a team of specialist who could now do remote diagnostics and telehealth to a community like Hinton, and they demonstrated it to me. I was quick to point out to them, however, that communication tools is a two way system and a team of specialists in Hinton could do remote diagnostics and telehealth into Edmonton as well.
Education strikes me as a fantastic medium for teleconferencing. When we first proposed that every student in grade 4 and up would learn a second language the notion was brilliant but the logistics were nightmarish. Now, the chance for someone to teach French or Spanish, or even Portuguese or Hungarian from anywhere in Alberta to a group of students spread around the province is a reality.
The locations are there as well, with Libraries and Community Futures and a host of other venues, the only thing left is to develop a culture of use. That culture has to begin with me and my collegues. Although I attend virtually any town or county council meeting in my constituency and find that they have no paper (all correspondence is place in folders on a central server) and all have access to the internet, the same situation does not exist with MLA's. Many of the meetings I attend still occur in places without internet access and with reams of paper at the table.
I hope that someday soon I will be able to sit in my office in Edmonton (like today, when I still have meetings up here to attend) and do a video conference with a constituent from my office in Wainwright. Or better still, sit in my office in Wainwright and talk to a school class in Daysland in the afternoon, or a constituent with an issue in Castor in the morning, so that none of us have to drive 60 or 80 miles just to have a face to face.
I would like to say that this is all the wave of the future, but after witnessing this morning the birth of an all day conference that brought so many people from so many places together, I would have to say . . . . the future is here.
