Integrating the Horizontal Themes

It does not seem so long ago that I worked on a multimillion pound project to provide support to the Romanian Ministry of Development on ways of integrating Sustainable Development into their Regional Operational Programme, regional development funds known as EU Structural Funds. The programme to 2013 was to be worth a…Continue readingIntegrating the Horizontal Themes

Better Rural Buses

Originally a free standing website, Better Rural Buses was ported over to Ourlocality.org when the domain was due to expire, to keep the project as a demonstration. Now it is only available as fragments via the Web Archive project. Functionally, the site was intended to allow anyone in the street…Continue readingBetter Rural Buses

Project Insights with Insight.ly

  Every so often a new and eye-catching online application appears on the scene. In the parallel world of the iPhone, they can take only seconds to learn and a seconds to forget, before they are consigned to the dustbin. Nevertheless just because something takes minutes to learn and no…Continue readingProject Insights with Insight.ly

Ingredients to success

We’ve supported rather a lot of community projects, but the results are not always up to our usually high standards. So what are the ingredients of success? In a nutshell, some dedicated time, a plan, a desire to get it completed to a timescale and the freedom to decide all…Continue readingIngredients to success

Community Mapping

The facility was set up to allow Sustaining Dunbar projects to access various digital data sets using a variety of free or very low cost GIS tools. The viewing facilities used Mapmaker, which has tools to create high quality printed maps, while ArcView was employed for rapid screen query, exploration…Continue readingCommunity Mapping

Transport Surveys

Connecting Dunbar set out to survey travel behaviour of residents and local visitors to Dunbar, focusing on journeys of less than 5 miles which could transfer to walking or cycling. Responses from 520 households, 450 school pupils and 80 employees from all areas of Ward 7 were gathered in. The…Continue readingTransport Surveys

Carbon Neutral Stenton

We received a design from Steven McGregor, commissioned by Carbon Neutral Stenton. Still untested, we uncovered a few issues that we quickly fixed. However there were some limitations with the template, including the lack of support for WP3’s dynamic menus and image handling support. In the end we decided to…Continue readingCarbon Neutral Stenton

WordPress Training

Just got a freshly pressed WordPress website, but cannot get your developer to provide support for love nor money? (Some designers and developers are so darn good that they can be kept very busy) Or perhaps you underestimated how little time you would have to get to know your system?Continue readingWordPress Training

First baby steps

After some toing and a bit of froing, OurLocality was launched last week.  You didn’t hear the fanfares?  Alas there were none. The idea behind Our Locality is a simple one: connecting all things local. To kick off with, we migrated Sustaining Dunbar onto the platform and created a number…Continue readingFirst baby steps

Migrating to Google Apps

There are around a dozen email users at Sustaining Dunbar.  Staff and volunteers have been using a variety of email clients and email providers to keep in touch.  Some were already users of consumer Gmail accounts, Google Calendars and Google Docs, while others used a range of email applications or…Continue readingMigrating to Google Apps

Website Self Sufficiency

Our aim is to help you become more self sufficient and get more from a small budget. Whether you are looking at being be more productive or collaborate more effectively or simply want to create a conversation with your customers/audience.  Or perhaps you are looking to better integrate your systems.Continue readingWebsite Self Sufficiency

Something Couthie

There’s an obligation to pull up your sleeves and get your hands dirty to help family, which extends to friends and neighbours, especially if they ask nicely. In 2008, Couthie was a modest Greeting Cards venture (with 100s of different designs), and then newly incorporated. Based on the wife’s notion…Continue readingSomething Couthie