No fees
The Board has decided that for the foreseeable future we will not charge fees for full voting membership of Talking Infrastructure. Full membership will, instead, be by invitation to those Community members that contribute in a meaningful way to the work of the Association.
Our first invitations go to
- Kerry McGovern, of K.McGovern & Associates, who initiated, and collaborated with Talking Infrastructure in designing, a 5 day workshop in the audit of infrastructure performance for Auditors-General in the Pacific Islands.
- Mark Neasbey, of the Australian Centre for Value Management, who has contributed many posts for the Blog, that have been amongst the most highly read and commented on.
- Ben Lawson of Common Thread Consulting who has been a regular reader and prolific commentator on the blog
Our congratulations to Kerry, Mark and Ben. Your commitment to the development, information exchange and debate ideals of Talking Infrastructure are putting us where we are today.
Thank you.
Wow, thanks to the Board for the invitation… which I accept, of course!
In doing so, it seems fitting to quote one of my favourite philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre (from his book, After Virtue): he proposes (p.222) a definition of a virtue as an acquired human quality, the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods. A practice is never just a set of technical skills, though: what is distinctive about a practice is in part the way in which conceptions of the relevant goods and ends which the technical skills serve are transformed and enriched by these extensions of human powers and by that regard for its own internal goods which are partially definitive of each particular practice or type of practice. Practices never have a goal or goals fixed for all time, rather the goals themselves are transmuted by history (p.225).
Talking Infrastructure (and related communications with Penny) has been important for me as I’ve grappled with improving AM practice in local government (helping councils, as MacIntyre would say, do ‘good’ things for their communities!)… the recognition that our goals in AM are being “transmuted by history” is inspiring.
I also find MacIntyre’s insights (p.226) into the relation between practices (which cannot survive for any length of time unsustained by an institution) and institutions (characteristically and necessarily concerned with external goods) very insightful: while I’m sure that we do need institutions to promulgate and refine practices, at times they can hold back necessary changes… which is why the informal (un-institutional) blog format of Talking Infrastructure is an important compliment to those formal institutions.
Anyway, thanks again to the Board for the invite… I promise to try and keep my word count down a bit 🙂
What a great honour. I am absolutely delighted to accept.
Kind regards
Kerry
Congratulations!