With landscape-scale thinking and landscape ecology now centre-stage at the science-policy interface, I suggested at an ialeUK committee meeting earlier this year that it would be good to think through what more we might do to achieve our core aims (http://iale.org.uk/mission).
Following a brief brainstorm by the committee, it was obvious that we needed more time, so we agreed to have an ‘Away Day’, which Geoff Griffiths kindly organised at the Earth Trust, Didcot. It proved a valuable and rare chance to sit and talk about the future of ialeUK away from day-to-day distractions and without a long agenda to work through.
Much of the discussion at the Away Day revolved around what more we could do to promote greater interaction and knowledge exchange. Key actions arising include:
- Posting a list of contemporary policy issues on our website to promote ideas for web content, newsletter articles, one-day workshops and conferences
- Establishing a keyword system with search function on our website to encourage people to link up
- Promoting the wiki-style development of quick information notes on key issues (or QuicKey Notes), initially using the ialeUK discussion forum as a means of people working together to generate copy
- Providing a template on our website to encourage people to profile new research and its implications for policy and practice
- Securing an MSc student to review what impact the organisation has had on science, policy and practice, to coincide with ialeUK’s 20th anniversary this year and to help promote ialeUK
- Recruiting an intern to assist with the development of ialeUK.
With particular thanks to our tireless web manager, Jonathan Porter, a number of these actions will be progressed in the very near future. So, it would be great if you could take advantage of the opportunities provided and help to make our website a real hub of information and comment.
If you might like to do more to contribute to ialeUK’s future, please have a think about whether you would like to be nominated for a role on the committee at this September’s AGM. To find out more, please visit http://iale.org.uk/committee. The secretary’s role is currently vacant, so if you could be interested, please contact me at chair [at] iale [dot] org [dot] uk, as the committee might be willing to co-opt you with immediate effect. The treasurer’s role will become vacant in the autumn when Pete Carey steps down after seven years. We are enormously grateful to Pete for all his efforts.