Churchill Manitoba Are Us! | |
| |
Aerial View of Churchill Town Site. Churchill has a population
of only 1000 but with the help of its dynamic town web site
it attracts visitors from around the world
Photo courtesy of: The town of Churchill MB
Iceberg chunks float by the shore of Churchill. Churchill is
Canada's only inland sea port and is a major re-supply
centre for Inuit communities along the coast of Hudson's Bay
Photo courtesy of: The Town of Churchill MB
| |
Churchill Manitoba Are Us!A town website where citizens to talk the world
Almost every Canadian has heard of Churchill Manitoba. With a population of 1000 it is located on the shores of Hudson Bay and is famous for both polar bears and military bases. The U.S. and Canadian military bases moved out in the 1970's but the polar bears are still very much a part of Churchill life. What many people don't know is that Churchill is Canada's only inland sea port, shipping significant amounts of Saskatchewan grain every year. It is also an important service hub for the Inuit communities along the coast of Hudson Bay, also it is a well-known tourist destination, especially for anyone who wants to see polar bears or beluga whales.
Losing the military bases in 1970's was a blow to the community, however Churchill has recovered and is stable at a population of 1000, down from a one time high of 6,500.
When Town CEO, Darren Ottaway set about to obtain a municipal web site he had big ideas but a small budget.
What Darren wanted was a web site that would tell the whole story of Churchill, about the town, its services, its businesses, tourist attractions, tour providers, hotels … in short he wanted the site to be a dynamic web portal for eGovernment, eBusinesses, municipal services and tourist attraction.
Darren's development budget …. under $10,000! Darren's maintenance budget … pretty much $0.
In a community of 1000 you can't afford to pay for ongoing web maintenance consulting services and even dedicating a full time employee to the task was pretty unrealistic. But the web site would be of very little use if it wasn't dynamic and current and didn't allow the people of Churchill to communicate with the municipality, each other and the world.
Anyone with any experience in web development would have told Darren that he was wasting his time, and that he had to be realistic about his expectations given his meager budget. In fact many people did, until he encountered Bruce Hardy and a not for profit organization in Winnipeg called Cimnet
( see: www.cimnet.ca ) .
The web site that Bruce Hardy and Cimnet were able to provide for Churchill Manitoba met all of Darren's expectations and more. The current Churchill town site ( see: www.townofchurchill.ca ) allows hotel and tour operators to maintain their own information section; citizens can access |
The power of the Churchill web site comes in part from the self-maintenance aspect, where everyone from the dogcatcher, to the hotel operator, to the mayor, maintains their own content.
|
the minutes of the last town council meeting; send anonymous messages to the mayor; tourists from Japan can see photo's of polar bears in Churchill during the winter, which change to photo's of beluga whales in the spring and rare species of birds in the summer. Darren says, "We've had tourists from as far away as Los Angeles tell us that they came to Churchill because they learned about us off of our web site."
The power of the Churchill web site comes in part from the self-maintenance aspect, where everyone from the dogcatcher, to the hotel operator, to the mayor, maintains their own content. This eliminates the costly process of using a human web master to change every element of the web site, every time you need it. This also ensures that web content is alive, accurate and relevant. In effect the site is one part "town web site" and other part "community bulletin board".
Bruce Hardy explained that the technology behind the Churchill site has been the product of a long process of research into the community planning process and the development of a software tool designed specifically to empower communities to work together by communicating with each other and the world. Cimnet maintains about 140 different community web sites similar to the one used by Darren Ottaway at Churchill, addressing the needs of a diverse collection of community groups. Examples of the types of focus these communities can have, include: disability support ( disability.cimnet.ca ); golf superintendents ( mgsa.cimnet.ca ) , toy swapping networks (cfan.cimnet.ca); community skill development (westbroadway.cimnet.ca); seniors ( seniors.cimnet.ca) and the list goes on.
If you are represent a community of any sort, and believe that you can't afford to build the kind of web site that draws tourists from Los Angeles California all the way to Churchill …. then visit www.cimnet.ca and learn how you can follow Churchill Manitoba's lead to "join the world"!
|
