David’s contribution as Advocacy Coordinator has been extraordinary.
Well beyond what most people would consider the reasonable boundaries of the responsibilities of the role, he has:
- been on top of key advocacy issues across a huge geographical area with often quite differing cycling issues and needs
- assisted the North Sydney advocacy team advocating for the Sydney Harbour Bridge cycle ramp and negotiating the Western Harbour Tunnel and Warringah Freeway Upgrade projects
- wrangled bureaucrats, councillors and politicians in countless meetings and communications
- written and edited innumerable submissions to local and state level bureaucrats
- progressively learned methods and techniques for engaging bureaucrats, councillors and politicians and guided us in how to do this better
- greatly enhanced the visibility and efficacy of Bike North’s advocacy by embracing the opportunities available through digital media
- envisioned and implemented our online gold-standard pre-election candidates engagement tool, ‘Play Your Part’ (involving intensive engagement with our IT Guru), for elections at both at local and state level
- followed up rigorously with successful candidates after those elections
- developed, strengthened, supported and encouraged the network of Area Convenors (including for example by proposing the thank you dinner).
In addition to this, he provided strong leadership in initiating the transition from our current IT platform. He meticulously built on our previous analysis of the current IT system, took guidance on what the new system would need to provide (the must-haves and the nice-to-haves) and consulted with each of the Executive Committee on the requirements for our particular areas. He carefully framed the Request for Quotation, engaging our IT Guru to ensure completeness and accuracy. He located an extensive range of suitable possible providers and carefully assessed their responses. At all stages, he communicated to the Executive Committee the progress of this acquisition project. He presented the options clearly, giving us confidence that we were making sound decisions and selecting the best available IT platform for our needs. While the transition is still very much underway and a lot of water has yet to flow under that particular bridge yet, David’s role was clear: help us find a suitable IT platform. He was always clear that someone else would then need to take on implementing that transition. The transition is still underway, finding the platform is complete.
Thank you, David, for all these contributions!
Phill Hart (President), with support from Carolyn New, Tony Stanley and Sarah Gillis (Communications Co-ordinator)