Unanticipated Problems
- As we were getting ready to conduct training sessions in each county, we realized that some of them didn't have adequate facilities to conduct such activities. This may have impacted the quality and effectiveness of some training sessions.
- We realized that we did not have a publicity budget for this project. This hurt our efforts in promoting the project as effectively as we would have liked in some counties.
- Hindsight leads us to conclude, that calling the citizen's team a 'technology leadership team' may have intimidated non-technical people who may have thought that it was for tech savvy individuals and therefore didn't join the team. With a different name, we might have attracted individuals with a broader range of non-technical skills e.g. writing, group facilitation and publicity.
- Turnover caused project delay which frustrated residents of counties who expected to see results sooner than we could deliver and possible loss of active participants. Similar efforts that were intended to be cooperative moved ahead because of the delays resulting in this project being viewed as competing rather than complementing the other efforts.
- We also found ourselves lacking appropriate resources to provide direction on policy issues related to the appropriateness of content on a family oriented community Web site.
- In some counties the resistance to Take Charge due to the reliance on an existing County planning document resulted in fewer individuals being brought into the process and lack of specific goals pertaining to the inclusion of technology in economic development.
- The time commitment in the early stages of this project was more than expected both for VCE agents and TLT members.
- Geographical disparity i.e. the distance between the various counties caused some logistical problems in terms of training and travel schedules.
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