West Cork Development Partnership

On Friday last, I traveled to Bantry, County Cork to speak at the West Cork Development Partnership Rural Development Conference.   Some interesting speakers from UCC provided the audience to a demonstration on CSO and mapping, while Dr. Brendan O Keeffe, University of Limerick gave an excellent presentation challenging the future direction of rural development policy.
My presentation, Shaping Intervention for Sustainable Rural Development, was based on research work carried out on the DERREG (Developing Europe's Rural Regions in an Era of Globalization) Project.  In many respects there is a difficulty in presenting for an audience consisting of rural practitioners when one is more familiar with presenting at academic conferences.  As such, my presentation required a practical element which was relevant to individuals and groups working within rural communities, and on rural specific projects.  In realizing my objective, I provided the context for my presentation while presenting relevant case studies, which appeared to stimulate some interesting questions within the audience.