Dipping into the Blogpond

The Australia 2020 Summit will be held at Parliament House on 19-20 April 2008.

The Summit will bring together some of the best and brightest brains from across the country to tackle the long term challenges confronting Australia’s future – challenges which require long-term responses from the nation beyond the usual three year electoral cycle.

One thousand “leading Australians” will be chosen by a ten person (independent) panel – the expense for attending the summit will be the responsibility of the attendee.

Nominations are open until close of business Monday 25 February.

The Web Community Gets Involved

Not quite up to a trip to Canberra? There are a few other ways to get involved.

Stephen Collins and Laurel Papworth initiated a 2020 Summit blog.

Tangler created a 2020 Summit forum.

Jim Rettew has created a Wiki called Oz Ideas. Jim writes:

On April 19, 2008, Kevin Rudd is inviting 1000 “experts” for the Australia 2020 Summit to come up with Australia’s next big idea. For the rest of the 20,699,000 people in Oz, here’s our forum to list and vote on the best ideas to improve Australia.

It’s free. It can be anonymous, and I’m not doing it to make money. I just think mothers, tradies, and bloggers probably have better ideas for this country than the ‘experts’.

Edit 27/3: Open Forum also have a specific 2020 Summit Section. Brand Manager Jeanne-Vida Douglas says:

We’re a non-for-profit independent think-tank, and we’re looking at ways to use blogging and web-based forums to feed into government policy development.

We’ve just posted an Australia 2020 Online Summit page, and we’re inviting Australian’s from all walks of life to get involved and post their ideas as to the policies we need in place to create a better future for all Australians.

As the discussion forums fill up in the run up to the actual summit, we’ll be using the topics and themes that come up as the basis for briefing notes for the actual participants.