2011 Conference

The first phase of the “Just a Click Away” initiative featured a successful two day conference held in Vancouver, BC. Our conference report summarizes the activities and learning from this event.

National Conference in Vancouver on February 23 & 24, 2011

The “Just a Click Away” initiative features a national conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 23 & 24, 2011. The conference is aimed at those who provide and support public legal education and information, and want to improve how the Internet and emerging technologies can be used to deliver “PLEI”.

Conference Program and Speakers

Our conference program includes plenary sessions, smaller hands-on practical workshops, opportunities to learn about what others are doing and explore ideas for collaboration, and an innovation gallery.

The conference features a dynamic group of speakers and panelists, from a range of backgrounds: public legal education, legal aid, community workers & advocates, libraries, web development, social media, government, courts, and evaluation experts.

Conference Venue: Four Seasons Hotel

The Just a Click Away conference is being held at the Four Seasons Hotel, located at 791 West Georgia Street in central downtown Vancouver. More on the venue.

Registration

To register, please complete this online registration form.

Free seats are available to Canadian organizations who do PLEI work, and funders (one per organization). Please register by December 15, 2010 to take advantage of this offer. The discount code is available from Brenda Rose from Courthouse Libraries BC at brose@courthouselibrary.ca.

Who Should Attend

If you provide or support public legal education and information, we invite you to join us in exploring new strategies and tricks that you can use to help you better serve your audiences online:

• Focus your attention on making the Internet work for you and your audiences – why, when and how.
• Find out who you can share with or steal from: tools, resources, programs, strategies to create, expand or maintain your sites.
• Explore evaluation: discover how to make Google Analytics and other measurement and evaluation tools work for you – to improve your site, to persuade your funder, to change what you do.

Come enjoy Vancouver with us in the early spring (ok, technically still the winter, but the weather was great during the Olympics at this same time last year)!

Key Themes

During the two-day conference, participants can think, discuss, learn, and share on key themes:

• Best practices in building public legal education websites
• Evaluation of online PLEI
• Using social media and web 2.0 tools to deliver PLEI (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, wikis)
• Provincial and national models of providing access to PLEI online
• Technologies for self-help such as interactive court forms and live “chat help”

Subsidies

We have a limited number of subsidies available to Canadian non-profit groups who do PLEI work, who do not have the financial means to attend this conference. When you register, please enter the discount code (available from Brenda from Courthouse Libraries BC at brose@courthouselibrary.ca), and indicate on the registration form that you are applying for a subsidy, and how much you would require to be able to attend.

We will contact you by the first week of January to let you know if we can provide you with a subsidy.

For more information about subsidies, please contact Brenda from Courthouse Libraries BC at brose@courthouselibrary.ca.

Stay Tuned for More Details

Sign up for updates by email or RSS, like us on Facebook, or follow the “Just a Click Away” Twitter feed.

In the meantime, please contact Brenda from Courthouse Libraries BC at brose@courthouselibrary.ca. We welcome your suggestions and involvement and hope you will attend!