1530 BoscoWiki - conversation begins
austraLasia 1530

The conversation has begun - let it continue!

ROME: 17th April 2006 --  The first brave individuals have found their way into BoscoWiki and begun to add their comments, additional information.  This is a 'conversation' that is to be wholeheartedly encouraged for the benefit of the Region.  It is, after all, a new opportunity - the opportunity to share ideas and to animate in an easy, region-wide fashion.  The audience is only that of the Salesian Family since the BoscoWiki address is only known to those who read and receive austraLasia (and the address is not replicated in the Bosconet version of this news).
    The Salesian community in Darkhan, Mongolia, has added some additional information to #1528 on new Catholics at Easter, so you might want to check that out on the austraLasia page of BoscoWiki.  Someone has also asked a question of a technical nature, and another has offered comment on the news over these last couple of days including the sudden death of Fr Valentin de Pablo.
    A 'resources' page has been added.   Requests come through austraLasia on a daily basis for this or that resource, and of course you may continue to do that, and these resources, if in existence, will be indicated, forwarded, whatever.  But here too, a change of mentality offered by wiki technology can benefit everyone.  Your question may be someone else's question and more to the point, with 1500 very active SDB members in the Region, as well as several thousand others from other groups in the Salesian Family, there's a good chance that the answer to your question will come much more quickly and much more effectively from someone else, once people are in the habit of regularly checking BoscoWiki for new items - the 'recent changes' or even better, the 'history' pages will give you any and every item added.  But then there's also the wonderful reality that around the region, these active members are producing good resources for local use - why not share them?  If you have them in digital form and available for download somewhere, put the URL (the link) up on BoscoWiki.  Just remember that you need to prefix a web link with http//: as well as the www.  In other words, we need the full link.
    One final comment - don't worry too much about putting something in the wrong place or getting your language wrong.  The beauty of a wiki is that if anyone else thinks it's in the wrong place they can move it, or if they think your English needs tidying up, they can tidy it up! Then again, if you want to write in Vietnamese, or Chinese, do so!  Someone will understand you, though not everyone!
    Should a group from the Salesian Family see the obvious benefits of BoscoWiki for their 'internal' use, they have two possibilities - one is to add themselves as a group in the side bar.  And rather than just adding themselves as a page, they can actually add themselves as a group by clicking the 'edit' sidebar and typing, for example for the Salesian Cooperators, [[Coops/Coops.Homepage]] which will create a Cooperators' Group with its own homepage (don't forget to save).  Then if someone goes into the Cooperator's Homepage - to which something sensibly needs to be added, a word of welcome, etc. - when they add another page, it refers itself to the Coop homepage automatically, rather than to the BoscoWiki homepage.  The group can leave it all open for everyone else to hop in and take a look. The other possibility is that they can close it off to only Cooperators. That could be done by you yourselves, or you can ask the BoscoWiki administrator to do that for you, since some may be unsure of how to achieve that.  It's up to you.  The possibilities for use are endless.  Over to you.

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AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com   Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml