To the Sydney Anglican Diocese managers / administrators:

These forums seem to be quite successful in stirring thoughtful discussion. Out of curiousity does the Sydney Anglican Diocese team take away any of the creative discussion from time to time and consider putting it in their own strategies?

Normally in my industry you would have to pay customers alot of money to talk about a service and develop an actionable report from their thoughts. Yet here we’re getting alot of thoughts for free, it would seem a waste for the Diocese not to consider the information gathered from the forums. They could put out issues for discussion to get new ideas.

I don’t think forum participants would necessarily represent all Sydney Anglicans, but at least you could get new ideas worth discussing internally? Perhaps you guys are already doing this?

Hi Simon, speaking as the marketing manager of Anglican Media Sydney, I can say that we often mine the forums for good ideas and feedback, and pass them on to the appropriate channels.

If we could, we would send forumites a can of coke and chips that most focus group facilitators provide, but we can’t work out how to do it electronically. In the meantime, please accept our thanks for all the good ideas and suggestions that come through the forums.

And speaking as the site editor, the forums often generate news story ideas, MP3 sermon series, and whole sections have been lifted and posted as more prominent articles for our greater community to share. We even go so far as to ‘crowd source’ our reviews, with an entire thread being devoted to recruiting opinion writers for Christian and secular books.

The forums have also become the basis for a number of innovative group projects, not the least of which is the Quest project, the re-writing of Pilgrim’s Progress in a style accessible to the 21st century reader. I won’t go as far as to say that Sydneyanglicans.net has worked out how to fully utilise the potential represented by our forum users, but we certainly haven’t run out of ideas yet.

As to whether or not other Diocesan officials give consideration to the opinions voiced there, I cannot give any definitive answer. However we are often made aware of just how close attention is paid, particularly when something controversial is said. We also often receive informal feedback that shows all manner of ministry workers are thinking about the ideas that are floated, as well as suggestions regarding what other ideas would make for good discussion.

Speaking of Quest, what is happening with that??

Hi Craig,

As per the last email to all of the writers, we’re keenly chasing up some people who are having difficulty finishing off their chapters. Not far now!

Haha - it’s gonna be quite a job to edit it, I imagine!

Thanks guys for the response. That’s definitely good news to hear for eveyone participating in the forums. I wonder if there is a way to promote the fact that forum discussions are considered in related action in some way? That could help drive forum discussion and increased use.