Jet lag, an iron infusion, and a lot of caffeine couldn't stop this one - Becky and Dan are joined by Michelle Welsby, a self-confessed "local government tragic" with a career spanning community engagement, place activation and community development, for a wide-ranging conversation about where our profession is headed.

What we cover

• Michelle talking about hosting a welcome night for her council's Community Voice Panel, a demographically representative panel scaling toward 400 members, and why the room full of past and new members told her everything about the value of showing up in person.
• AI: help or hazard? - Where AI is already doing 90% of the heavy lifting (data consolidation, theming, transcription) and where Michelle believes it can never go: the relational, trust-building work that sits at the heart of engagement.
• The Silicon Valley promise, revisited - Dan draws the line from Friends Reunited to MySpace to Facebook to ask whether we're finally learning that tech promises connection and too often delivers the opposite - and what that means for how we let AI into the relationship between government and community.
• "Can" versus "should" - Just because AI can run the Zoom, write the email or summarise the workshop doesn't mean it should, if doing so erodes the trust a practitioner builds by being a consistent, known human presence.
• Beyond consultation: enter the "democracy designer" - Michelle and Becky push past the idea of engagement as a consultation specialism and land on a bigger frame: practitioners as democracy designers, with a role in helping communities navigate polarisation and have the hard conversations we're currently avoiding.
• Are we teaching anyone to disagree well? - From council panels to next-door neighbours arguing about a parking restriction, none of us are well equipped for respectful disagreement - and Michelle's team is now building conflict-conversation training into panel inductions.
• The flip Becky proposes in her book - Revisiting the IAP2 spectrum from For the Love of Community Engagement: what would it take to make community the default decision-maker, choosing how much it wants government involved, rather than the other way around?
• A sector at a tipping point - Michelle and Becky worry engagement is sliding from organic practice into tick-box compliance just as governments legislate their way out of genuine consultation - and that AI might be the shiny distraction that lets it happen unnoticed.
• Where's our evidence base? - Revisiting the oft-quoted Infrastructure Australia finding that roughly $20 billion in infrastructure was cancelled or delayed due to poor or absent community engagement, and asking why the sector doesn't have a hundred more statistics like it.
• Measuring what matters - A shared frustration with counting survey responses and workshop attendees instead of measuring impact: did what community said actually change the decision?
• Building the tools - Michelle walks through her council's 18-month build of an in-house community engagement portal - an IAP2-based calculator and resource library that helps any staff member work out what level of engagement a project needs, and what tools to run it with.

The takeaways

1. Don't let AI become the engagement - it's a tool to support the work, not a replacement for human trust.
2. The practitioner of the future is more than a consultation specialist - think democracy designer.
3. Community engagement needs to hold onto being both an art and a science.
4. The future of the role is about building and strengthening community, not one-off transactional consultations - and that starts with genuine community education.

About our guest

Michelle Welsby currently works as a coordinator for community engagement in local government, with previous roles as a community engagement lead, in place activation, and as a team leader of community development. By her own description, she's a "local government tragic" — and this episode shows exactly why.

Fair warning: this one starts differently.

No guest. No agenda. No plan. Just Becky and Dan hitting record on what was supposed to be Episode 4 and seeing what happened.

What happened was a genuinely unguarded conversation between two people who've spent the last six months in the trenches together - and it turns out, when you take the structure away, that's when things get interesting.

Before we get to the big sector stuff, you'll get the behind-the-scenes version of Dan and Becky - including Becky’s earliest life memories (it involves a push-along toy and a step she couldn't get past - and yes, it tells you everything about her), as well as her first birthday memory running on a Welsh beach, Dan's pre-engagement career as a competitive rower and DJ to 3,500 people, how he ended up pitching to venture capitalists at 25 and landing $250,000 in funding for CommunitiLabs, voice notes as the future of human communication, and a genuinely funny exchange about what "roasting" means across generations.

Stick with it. The personal stuff is the context for everything that comes after - and what comes after is some of the most honest conversation we've had all season.

Then we get into:

• When the industry doesn't resource its own innovation - Dan reflects on winding down CommunitiLabs, and what three years of building AI tools for the sector taught him about the gap between what the sector says it values and what it actually funds.
  

• Whether our work is consequential enough - a deliberately provocative question. Not whether engagement matters - it does, profoundly — but whether the way it's currently deployed allows it to have the consequence it should. Dan doesn't hold back.
  

• The accountability gap - what if there was a public dashboard where communities could see every submission, every theme, and what decision-makers did with it? What would change?
  

• Regional councils doing it right - without budget, without razzle-dazzle, just a CEO and a mayor getting in a car and driving to the footy club. Yarriambiack. Murray Bridge. The councils that make it work because they have to.
  

• Open Space Technology - Becky's favourite engagement method you've probably never used, and why the best conversations always happen in the coffee break.
  

• Swipe to unlock - Dan's analogy for what the sector's next innovation challenge actually is.
  

• The love letter - Dan wrote something called Crawling Over Broken Glass: A Love Letter to the Engagement Industry. We finally talk about where it came from, what's in it, and why Becky asked him to write the foreword to her next book using it as the starting point.
  

This episode has an explicit rating. You've been warned.

Connect with Becky: beckyhirst.world / LinkedIn
Connect with Dan: LinkedIn

The white paper - Engaged or Obsolete? What the Next Decade Demands of Community Engagement Practice - is in progress.

Recorded on the land of the Kaurna people and the Wadawurrung people.

In the last episode, Becky Hirst and Dan Ferguson explored AIin the room. This episode they flip the question: what happens when digital fails?

They're joined by Darius Turner of Captivate Consulting, who runs the Community Engagement Summit Series and Engagement by the Beach events in Manly.

The conversation ranges from the pandemic-driven shift to digital-by-default engagement, to the value (and fear) of face-to-face work, to what "reach" and "success" actually mean, to vibe coding, AI benchmarking, and where genuine innovation in community engagement needs to come from next.

Before the main topic, Dan shares the news that Communiti Labs is winding down, and the trio reflect on what it built and what comes next for him.

Content note: this episode briefly references suicide(around the 40-minute mark, during a discussion of gun culture and safety). Listener discretion advised.

AI has entered the room - or at least, it's entered the sector. In this episode, Becky Hirst and co-host Dan Ferguson sit down with Lisa Ippolito to talk about what AI actually means for community engagement, with a particular focus on local government (though there's plenty here for anyone doing this work, anywhere).

This is Episode 2 of a six-part series building toward our white paper, Engaged or Obsolete? Each episode adds another voice and another layer - and this one digs into the question underneath all the hype: if AI gives us time back, what do we do with it? The argument we keep landing on is that the future of community engagement is more human, not less - AI as enabler, not replacement.

Across the conversation, we get into:

• What genuine AI capability building looks likeinside a council - moving people from hesitation to confidence through clear policies, practical examples, and strong safeguards
• The four types of AI users in any workforce (non-adopters, novices, explorers, power users) and why each is held back by something different - and why sending a non-adopter a "how to prompt better" webinar lands as an insult
• Why some of the most thoughtful people opt outof AI on ethical grounds - and why that's a principled choice, not a skills gap
• What community engagement practitioners are mostanxious about, and whether that anxiety is well-founded
• Using AI to pressure-test survey design beforeyou go to community - generating dummy data to check whether your questions are leading or biased
• The ethics of synthetic audiences: helpful for testing, dangerous when they start replacing real community voices
• Communities now using AI to engage with us - including the Bondi Junction residents who built their own AI tool to help neighbours have their say
• The authentication problem: how do we know feedback is coming from real residents, and what that means for digital participation
• Why we need to slow down even as we're all being pushed to speed up - because trust, once lost, is hard to win back

About our guest - Lisa Ippolito

Lisa Ippolito leads the exploration of AI in local government at Whitehorse City Council - testing tools, building practicalresources, and learning alongside other curious minds. She's developed Whitehorse's AI guidelines for responsible use, run hands-on workshops, built a central resource hub, and created a safe, supportive Collaboration Network where staff can explore, ask questions and share what's working.

Right now she's leading a whole-of-organisation AI capability and uplift program, supporting more than 100 leaders through workshops, use-case pilots and tailored training. What excites her most is helping teams move from hesitation to confidence - grounded in clear policies, practical examples and strong safeguards.

Beyond Whitehorse, Lisa co-leads the LGPro AI Enablement Special Interest Group and ALGIM's AI, Web and Digital Community of Practice, and she's a regular speaker on responsible AI adoption and practical local government use cases. Her philosophy: learning is most enjoyable when shared - whether you're an AI sceptic, an enthusiast, or somewhere in between.

The report

Lisa has just launched AI Adoption in Victorian Local Government - Sector Baseline Report 2026 (LGPro + Whitehorse City Council) - the first sector-wide baseline of AI adoption across Victorian local government, drawing on responses from around 2,500 staff across 22 councils. You can find it on the LGPro website.

Connect with Lisa

LinkedIn is the best place to find her.

Welcome to Season 6 of For the Love of Community Engagement - and to a brand new chapter for the podcast. Host Becky Hirst introduces her co-host for the season, Dan Ferguson (Founder & CEO of ⁠Communiti Labs⁠), as the two join forces to explore The Future of Community Engagement across six episodes and a co-authored white paper.

In this first episode, Becky and Dan are joined by Mel Hagedorn, Client Executive at ⁠Capire⁠ and board member of the ⁠Engagement Institute⁠, for a conversation that gets straight to it: has the sector lost its boldness - and if so, why?

Together they trace the shift from rich community conversation to data collection at scale, unpack why practitioners so often find their hands tied despite their best intentions, and ask what it would actually look like to do engagement differently. From the dominance of the survey as a default tool, to the untapped potential of AI for genuine listening, to a future where communities own their own conversations - this episode is a provocation, not a prescription.

In this episode:

• Why declining trust scores may signal a sector going through the motions
• The hidden cost of bold engagement - and why doing it well can actually punish practitioners
• What "engagement theatre" really means, and how to move beyond it
• The case for getting back to face-to-face, street-level, conversation-first practice
• Becky's vision: voice-noting your council. Dan's: sitting on the sidelines, listening in.

"The future of engagement is not about getting more people in the room or more people to complete the survey. It's about creating the conditions where people's involvement genuinely matters." - Mel Hagedorn

In this deeply personal episode, I share my breast cancer story - from the first symptoms and diagnosis, through mastectomy, radiotherapy and hormone treatment, to the eve of my second mastectomy.

I talk honestly about the shock of hearing the word “cancer,” navigating the public health system, saying goodbye to “lefty” in a waiting-room poem, and being wheeled into theatre singing Fame.

I reflect on recovery, prostheses, radiation, and the strange emotional milestones that follow treatment - including finishing without a bell to ring.

I explore identity. What does it mean to be feminine without breasts? Why is reconstruction often assumed? And why am I choosing to remove my second breast and live flat?

This isn’t a pink-ribbon story. It’s honest, reflective, sometimes funny, sometimes raw - and still unfolding.

This is my breast cancer story. So far.

In this unfiltered fireside chat, Sadie Goddard-Wrighton and I chat after nearly two decades of friendship - recorded at my home with a child in pyjamas, a barking dog, plenty of laughter, and absolutely no pretence.

From our beginnings in local government, the conversation opens into something much deeper: midlife, menopause, breast cancer, identity shifts, and the quiet pressure so many women feel to keep holding it all together.

Sadie shares her journey into menopause and wellbeing coaching, and together we explore what it means to let go of perfection, accept change, and keep moving forward with compassion, humour, and honesty.

A real conversation for any woman navigating life’s messy middle. Grab a cup of tea and join us. 

Who is Sadie Goddard-Wrighton?

Sadie Goddard-Wrighton is an HCANZA accredited Health and Wellness Coach and Menopause Coaching Specialist supporting women in midlife to navigate stress, overwhelm, and life transitions with clarity and confidence.

Through coaching, workshops and events, Sadie helps women reconnect with what matters most, weaving everyday wellbeing - movement, rest, nourishment and reflection - into real life with warmth, honesty and compassion.

In this fireside chat, Becky Hirst is joined by AI strategist and health consumer advocate, Tessa Kowaliw, for a real, human conversation about how ChatGPT is quietly transforming the patient experience.

From the birth stories that sparked Tessa’s lifelong advocacy, to the recent accident that left her with broken bones and a hospital stay, Becky and Tessa explore how a digital co-pilot can help us document our story once, ask smarter questions, interpret information, stay connected and feel more in control of our own care.

Becky shares her own examples of using ChatGPT through cancer treatment and parenting, as the pair unpack what it means to walk into healthcare with a “robot advocate” already in your pocket - and why health systems must urgently keep up.

A hopeful, practical insight into the future of being a patient, where compassion, lived experience and technology work together.

In this episode, host Becky Hirst is joined by Lynne Welch, an accomplished communications and public relations professional with over 15 years’ experience driving innovative, collaborative and meaningful interaction between individuals, governments and communities.

Becky and Lynne talk about the concepts of lived experience and intentional neighbouring, as well as their own experiences in being diagnosed as having ADHD - and the superpowers that this gives them.

In this powerful episode, Becky Hirst sits down with Emma Broomfield of Locale to explore the complex and growing influence of social media on local government and community engagement. Together, they unpack the impacts on elected leaders, council staff, and engagement practitioners, especially in light of growing online toxicity and public hostility.

Emma shares her journey from lawyer to mediator and community facilitator, and the conversation touches on real-world challenges faced by those working in civic leadership and engagement - including mental health, conflict management, and public expectations.

Listeners will hear strategies for self-care, fostering civility, and creating supportive systems that empower democratic participation while protecting those on the frontlines.