I was interviewed in a podcast by Lindsay Pica-Alfano from Govlaunch about the City of Adelaide’s digital innovation program and content marketing regimen. The podcast is available at: https://podcast.govlaunch.com/episodes/govlaunch-ep25-adelaide-au
Interview on ABC Breakfast with Spence Denny about Minecraft
I was interviewed by Spence Denny on ABC Breakfast on New Year’s Day about our Minecraft project. The audio is expired, but here’s the link. My notes for the interview: The City of Adelaide has created an ‘Adelaide’ world in the popular children’s computer game, Minecraft. What is Minecraft? Played by over 126 million people…
Christmas edition of the Minecraft Adelaide 2021 world
We’ve just released a special edition of the Minecraft Adelaide 2021 world in time for Christmas. This special release contains the Victoria Square Christmas tree and decorations, as well as the Town Hall, GPO and other surrounding buildings, as built by David Poli (aka David Cubic).
CoA Advent Calendar
We’ve built an advent calendar for the month of December. Customers visit the calendar at https://explore.cityofadelaide.com.au/advent-calendar/ and then click on the current day to reveal a cracker. Pull the cracker and you get a nice little content ‘reveal’. There’s also a nice analytics dashboard that tracks use, including ‘Cracker Pulls’: https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/3c65b20f-394a-47e0-be68-6bac9cca7a9f
New Food Truck directory on CoA website
The City of Adelaide has retired its old ‘Street Eats’ app in favour of a new Food Trucks directory on the CoA website. The app wasn’t being used widely and had come to the end of its useful life. The new Food Truck directory is at: https://explore.cityofadelaide.com.au/eat-drink/food-trucks/
New Event Parking notifications system
We recently put in place a new Event Parking notifications system for our friends in the Parking Team. The old system kept failing (a ClickDimensions/MS Dynamics CRM solution), so we built them a simple system that utilises our forms builder, Open Forms, and integrations with email marketing software Campaign Monitor and SMS gateway BurstSMS. New…
A day in the life of a council marketer
Your name is Alex and you work in the Marketing Team at the City of Radelaide. It’s February. Festival season is nigh and you’re super busy putting together marketing materials for the busiest time of the year in Radelaide. You’re sitting at your desk responding to emails on your computer when you sense a presence…
Assessment Books available digitally
Accessing these massive, bound, gold-embossed Rate Assessment Books used to be one of the main reasons why people would visit the City Archives in Topham Mall, Adelaide. These enormous books record the property owner and rateable value of every property in the City of Adelaide dating back to 1847. But it’s no longer necessary for…
Search function improvements on City of Adelaide sites
We have gone ‘live’ with some changes to the on-site search function on the CoA website. The search results are now more Google-like: they’re delivered in an integrated fashion (rather than segmented by ‘document type’ as they were before), the search is faster, and there are a number of cosmetic improvements (eg. outline box, thumbnail…
Staycation and Trails now available in chatbot
We’re continuing to add new functionality and content to the City of Adelaide chatbot. Have you tried it yet? Search ‘City of Adelaide’ on Facebook Messenger to give it a go. We’ve just added our popular ‘Staycation Deals’ for city-based accommodation, tours and attractions, as well as access to our 70+ city trails and guides….
Minecraft project in KPMG Smart Cities paper
Our Minecraft project has received a mention in a KPMG Smart Cities paper. Here’s the text: To engage the community and relieve boredom in isolation during school holidays, the City of Adelaide released two Minecraft challenges. The city asked citizens to become chief town planners and engineers and build a new city based on the…
The Resilience Project
Last week I read a book called ‘The Resilience Project’ by Hugh van Cuylenburg. Craig Burton brought the book to my attention and lent me his copy (thanks Craig, it’s mine now – haha). The Port Adelaide Football Club use ‘The Resilience Project’ as part of their player wellbeing programs. Indeed, the program has been…
UPark Cost Estimator
This one was difficult! This new tool provides a cost estimate for customers who wish to park at UPark on a casual basis. For example, if I enter UPark Grote St at 8.30am on Monday and then leave at 4.45pm on Friday, how much will it cost me? The algorithm that Halton Stewart has built…
Popeye article on Adelaide Living
I’ve just published a new article on Adelaide Living about our ride on Popeye. https://living.cityofadelaide.com.au/adelaides-popeye-boats-heritage-icon-and-childhood-memories/
70+ trails in our Adelaide Trails and Guides collection
We’ve released a collection of city trails and guides. There’s no better time to get out and about in your own backyard. We’re inspiring local exploration of Adelaide with a collection of 70+ city trails and guides that are available online at https://explore.cityofadelaide.com.au/see-and-do/adelaide-trails-guides/. Whether you’d like to check out North Adelaide’s highly-acclaimed Musée Extérieur on…
Staycation dynamic pages with offers
This week we spent some time building out a series of dynamically-driven Staycation offers pages, powered by the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse database. We were able to turn these around in quick time with the help of Blis. These pages replaced a set of manually maintained pages – the new pages are much less labour…
Stobie Pole story on Adelaide Living
I wrote a story about stobie poles on Adelaide Living. The first stobies were erected on South Terrace back in 1924. Despite being an enduring solution for power poles in SA, they haven’t caught on elsewhere. https://living.cityofadelaide.com.au/stobie-pole-adelaide-icon-or-eyesore/
Smart City section on City of Adelaide website
We’ve taken a new section live on the City of Adelaide website – Smart City Adelaide. You can see it here: https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/about-adelaide/smart-city-adelaide/ The section contains information about all our smart city initiatives, including projects that I have been heading up: chatbot, voice assistant and virtual tours
Pitching to be the ICF’s ‘intelligent community of the year’
We’ve spent the last two days pitching to be the ‘intelligence community of the year’.
Minecraft presentation to Intelligent Communities Forum
Today I delivered a ten-minute presentation about our Minecraft project to the Intelligent Communities Forum Adelaide pitch. I was supported by Josh Roberts who drove Minecraft, while I did the speaking. Here’s the narrative: Hello again gentlemen. My name is Clayton and I’ve got a colleague Josh helping me today with the presentation. He’s driving…