Civic Blogger

Creative, Communicative, and Progressive

2011-11-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Fall issue of Plan Canada (national mag published by Canadian Institute of Planners) contains an article highlighting some of our work here in Collingwood.
It outlines some of the local, regional, and national innovations associated with the Urban Design Manual; as well as, the way we in Collingwood are leveraging creatively (such as the use of online communication tools and 3D simulations for development reviews) to improve our work and community.

Plan Canada UDM Article

OPPI 25th Anniversary video

2011-10-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a paper craft video I created for the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI) 25th anniversary. It was officially presented at the AGM in Ottawa on Friday (October 14, 2011).

25th Anniversary Video for OPPI from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

ULI Paper Craft Video

2011-09-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that my paper craft video for the Urban Land Institute "Why I Love ULI" contest received honourable mention.

Thanks to the people that voted for it.

Why Rob Voigt "Loves ULI" from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

Think It's Hot Out? Check Out Your Local Playgrounds

2011-07-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

On July 18th I conducted a short examination of the temperature differences between playground areas that have shade, and those that are unshaded. The air temperature was 30 degrees Celsius.

While I fully expected the temperature differences to be somewhat pronounced, I was shocked to find a range of 35 degrees Celsius (that's 95 degrees Fahrenheit) between the coolest and hottest. I was also surprised to see that temperatures for cobble walkways were only marginally hotter than well packed soil with turf grass (see slide 17 below).

I recognize that surface temperature can be influenced by the color, texture, and material, and that these measurements may not be the exact temperature experienced by children in the playgrounds. However, many of these surfaces reach temperatures that would cause injury and pain; as well, the range in temperatures between those areas that are shaded or not would have an indisputable impact on people using these spaces, as they would be coming under the same influence of direct sunlight as the surfaces whose temperature I was measuring. These readings are too extreme to not make the point crystal clear.

Given this first hand analysis, and other well documented concerns about sun health from the medical profession, I strongly suggest that more attention must be paid to how we design our public outdoor spaces to ensure that we provide shade (preferably with trees), particularly in playgrounds. This simple awareness in our design exercises can have a great impact on our children's health, and for those of us also minding or attending their play.

Ask yourself if your neighbourhood or community has enough well positioned trees and shade structures to provide sun health, and if not, what is being done to correct this.

View the slideshow of my findings HERE.

Spotlight On Planners

2011-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month I was fortunate to be the first Professional Planner to be featured by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute in their "Spotlight on Planners.

View the Spotlight HERE

Design Standards and Natural Playgrounds

2011-07-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Developing natural playgrounds is unfortunately still difficult in most communities. While these types of playgrounds (when properly designed) can easily meet all safety standards; improve children's health in numerous ways; increase property values; and also improve the overall livability of our towns, there are still challenegs to getting them built.

Part of the problem is a lack of understanding of the effects of the regulatory systems we develop, which often make the best designs infeasable or impossible. The following article (just published in the International Federation of Parks and Recreation Administrators) describes some of these issues, while also highlighting successes in making our communities' playgrounds better for our children (such as the Urban Design Manual I developed for the Town of Collingwood).

The lesson that needs to be learned is that we create, and live in environments of our own making, and we are ultimately responsible for our communities. By better designing our processes and regulations we can achieve developments within our communities that are healthier and support everyone's well-being.

Natural playgrounds article - IFPRA

Efficient Planning = Expected Service

2011-06-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

The first point of my previous post was that many people expect a fast review of development applications of their municipal planners.

With the same perspective of that post I am providing the following list of ten key elements that I believe help create an effective, timely development review process:

1. Well designed application/review procedures and requirements that are focused on efficient communication between parties;

2. Well trained and professional planning staff to undertake and facilitate the process between applicants, the public, and town departments;

3. An open public process, which includes creating easily understood information about applications that is provided to the community/stakeholders in a timely manner (using tools such as social media, 3D modeling, and graphics where applicable);

4. A facilitative role/responsibility for staff that incorporates a pre-application/sketch plan phase to assist possible applicants in crafting well defined and completed proposal packages (with staff acting more as concierges than gatekeepers during this time). This includes face-to-face interaction between applicants and staff when possible;

5. Well thought-out processes, guidelines, and land use regulations that strategically drive new development toward fulfilling the community’s vision and policy direction of the Official Plan (and County/State direction as applicable) and other adopted policies;

6. Regulations that are clearly defined and easy to access and understand (by the applicants, citizens, and elected officials alike), and are more focused on desired outcomes than defining things that are not permitted;

7. A regulatory framework that is equitable, and balances all stakeholders’ interests with those of the community (this includes details such as only “requiring” things of applicants that are supported by adopted policies and codes, not based on personal preferences);

8. Regulations that are performance based as opposed to being prescriptive (where possible) to allow for flexibility and design creativity;

9. A Town Council with a respectful and effective relationship between professional planning staff; and,

10. Cooperative and professional applicants that provide the necessary information for a complete and thorough review of their proposals.

Planning Departments: Providing Community Services

2011-05-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

The relationship between municipal planners and the communities they serve is complex. To help encourage high quality public service I am providing the following suggestions of key areas of concern, from the perspective of a "typical" citizen, relating to the results and outcomes that people desire from an effective planning department.

In the most general terms I have seen peoples’ expectations of planning departments being focused most closely on four areas:

providing services in an expeditious manner;
having staff easily accessible to community members;
limiting the amount and complexity of regulations while protecting the community’s interests and assets; and,
providing professional planning and land use guidance for the community to be “successful” without losing its identity to growth.

While these points are very important, I suggest that a planning department can, and should be expected to provide much more for the community it serves. The following are ten specific expectations of services and outcomes from an effective planning department that I would add. There are many more. Note that in my experience each of these can be achieved without the need for significant increases in staffing or budgets as is often assumed.

An effective planning department should:

1. In all of its efforts be focused on securing and improving the overall livability of the community, based on its distinct assets and population (including economic stability; community health; affordability; growth; and sustainability).

2. Provide clear, consistent, and substantiated professional planning advice to Council, Planning Commission, committees and the public; which also includes integrating contemporary communication and social media, and visually based presentation materials such as 3D modeling.

3. Have an organizational culture that reflects the best of the community’s professional norms, such as being personable and friendly and avoiding unnecessary formality or “red tape”.

4. Manage the development review system so that it does not unnecessarily encumber quality development and capital investment in the community.

5. Provide a system of information/education for the public on planning and land use issues, so that they can better understand: what planning is and how it functions; where in “the process” they can be most effective in their participation; and, what is happening with changes and developments in the community.

6. Maintain and analyze useful statistics (and spatial data) relating to various forms of community information, so that it can be used to support economic development initiatives, existing/prospective businesses, and assessments of needs and levels of service for the municipality.

7. Develop meaningful and understandable benchmarks and service measurements for yearly reporting to Council and the public (as opposed to only developing simple tallies of permits processed and fees received as is typical). This would also be used in developing performance-based budget estimates.

8. Offer leadership on long range community perspectives in partnership with key regional stakeholders (such as neighboring towns and County governments, service groups, and business associations).

9. Have a cohesive and strategic approach to staff training and the use of consultancies that builds existing departmental assets and strengths; as opposed to an ad hoc and project focused approach that is generally more costly, short-lived, and not sensitive to local culture or context.

10. Develop productive partnerships with post-secondary educational institutions which can benefit the town for key projects and raises the profile of the community.

Slow and steady wins the race: incremental placemaking

2011-03-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

Underlying many of the problems of contemporary communities is the unresolved or unrealized necessity of Placemaking. Placemaking is the beautiful and elegant result of building our communities and spaces by combining: creativity; systems and design thinking; and, human centered design. Without Placemaking our communities lack the necessary form, function and aesthetics that support walkability; they lack the structure that facilitates the kinds of informal social interactions that have been shown to build community capacity; and they lack the contextual foundation from which to build a sense of community identity and appreciate cultural assets. The end results go beyond poor aesthetics and a sameness of urban form that can be experienced anywhere; they include reduced community wellness, reduced rents and value of developments, and difficulty attracting new residents, to name a few.

At its best, Placemaking is about more than just designing grand public spaces or interesting mixed-use developments. On a community-wide scale it involves: understanding and connecting physical networks and districts within the built environment; contextual sensitivity (both physical and cultural); and, human centered design. Given the processes of evolution/development of our communities over the past few decades, there has generally been little attention to, or success with this kind of community-wide approach to Placemaking. The challenge now is to realign the priorities of Planning, design, and development interests to correct this for the overall wellbeing of our communities. We should be ensuring that the goals of Placemaking are expressed, understood, and sought-after with an enthusiasm at least equal to the over-simplified catchall goal of "growth" which has to a large part been the antithesis of Placemaking.

Even when its importance is understood, the exercise of Placemaking is very difficult for municipalities. This is especially true for smaller cities and towns that often have more restrictive resources at their disposal and have a hard time with long term scope and community-wide interventions. The result is often simplifying the focus to a grand public space or attaching overblown hopes and good intensions to singular interesting mixed-use developments. While both of these play a role in community-wide Placemaking, they are not the only part. Three main problems that are inherent with these approaches are: they tend to be very costly; they generally rely on projects which are out of the control of the municipality; and, as single projects they do little to impact the daily lives of the community-at-large. I suggest that smaller projects developed as part of an incremental program of Placemaking across the entire community is more effective. This kind of approach is easier to finance, allows for iterative prototyping and experimentation, impacts more people, builds on existing assets, and can be directly controlled by the municipality.

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to develop a simple plan aligned with this philosophy of Placemaking for the City of Oak Harbor - the Downtown Public Realm Plan. This was a plan focused on generally small scale capital projects that: could impact the quality of life for all citizens; enhanced the function and understanding of the downtown/waterfront district; completed active transportation networks; enhanced the sense of place of public spaces; and built upon existing improvements and cultural resources, all within areas under control of the municipality. I am happy to say that since its drafting, a fair number of these projects have been realized. Below is a copy of the Plan.

Downtown Public Realm Plan

Animation + Planning = Knowledge

2011-03-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

For a while now I have been exploring ways of improving people's understanding of Urban Planning issues and principles, and our approaches to communication (see Why Do Planners Need Decoder Rings). My desire has been to develop a tool that not only informs people, but entertains and engages their minds in a way that will shift their perspective.

Seeing things in a new way is far more powerful that just lining up new facts in your mind. When you look at things differently, you draw different connections amongst your experiences and all the other things you "know". I believe that through these kinds of new understandings, creativity is released; something deeply necessary for good urban planning.

Therefore, this significant communication/education challenge I have set, combined with my deep appreciation of 'paper craft' and 'whiteboard' animation, has led to a project I am current undertaking for the Town of Collingwood. This involves the creation of a series of short animated videos (in 'paper craft' and 'whiteboard' style) that describe key contemporary Planning issues. The intent is that these videos will not only be used by the Town, but also freely by other communities, Planners, and citizens to facilitate their communication/education initiatives online or during presentations.

Below are the first two videos which are focused on Active Transportation and Walkability.

Urban Planning 101 - Active Transportation from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

Urban Planning 101 - Walkability from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

Don't control the use of social media. Guide it.

2011-03-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

One question that most often arises when I am working with Planners or municipalities on their use of social media goes something like "How do you 'control' (with air-quotes) the use of those online tools by staff?". The simplest variation of my answer is "I don't. And you won't either, so don't try".

When you are exploring the use of social media tools for your organization and the discussions move in a fear-based direction, ask yourself "What are the policies we have regarding telephones, email, or letter writing?". There is as much potential for 'damage' to be done through the use of other communication methods, but we have developed simple (written or unwritten) professional norms around their use. I suggest that a similar approach be adopted for social media. Don't try to control the use of social media. Guide it.

Looking at the vast potential of these tools, such as: cost savings; facilitating collaboration; improved communication; openness and transparency; community participation, and improved project management, through a lens that is focused on control is wrongheaded. In terms of Planning and municipal service provision & information transfer these tools have more than just the multiple benefits listed above, they also provide opportunities for creativity and innovation. The fear of misuse should not taint decisions regarding the integration of online tools and social media for organizations such as planning departments. Let the discussion focus on the potential creativity and innovation that could be afforded your organization. Don't look to control, but find the necessary structure and insure that it is balanced and context appropriate to maximize benefits.

I fully acknowledge that there are nuances relating to staff experience, expertise, and expectations, which can also be compounded by generational norms; however, there is no need to overreact or become paralyzed by potential hazards of social media. Address key issues in training or individually as the use of these tools are implemented. Don't avoid the potential because of fear of the hazards.

I have used the following six policies for the management of online tools and social media use with all the Planners, municipalities, regional and national projects that I have worked with. These policies are easily understood and build upon existing professional practices, ethics and expectations of conduct. I hope you will find them helpful.

1. Only professional opinion will be included in online content, as governed by the ethics and code of conduct of OPPI (Ontario Professional Planners Institute) and CIP (Canadian Institute of Planners).

2. Only public information and facts about a specific project will be posted online, no editorial comments.

3. Links will only be provided to reputable sources (such as: professional organizations; government sites; research centres; etcetera).

4. Posting shall be done by logging on with Town identities, not personal accounts.

5. No posts that appear to advertise a particular service, company, or product.

6. All comments made by the public will be moderated, with no obligation to respond to rude comments.

The Clock is Ticking: Efficient Development Review Supports Placemaking

2011-03-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

One of the challenges that face communities is placemaking; that balance of maintaining a town’s unique identity and enhancing its function and coherence with careful urban design. Encouraging appropriately scaled and context sensitive developments is one of the best ways of achieving successful placemaking; which provides a safer, healthier, more sustainable, and economically viable community for your citizens and visitors alike.

This is why chains, franchises and big box retailers are often seen as one of the greatest threats to successful placemaking. If one looks at the characteristics of “off-the-shelf” designs that are representative of these developments, which include: brand identity as expressed in context devoid architecture; the guarantee of ample parking advertized with oversized, underutilized, and unappealing parking lots; and, disjointed development patterns, one sees the resulting conflict with creating a highly livable built environment.

Smaller scale projects are generally more adaptable to a community’s sense of place and placemaking needs for a number of reasons (which I will outline in another post). The ability of smaller projects to complete with big box developments depends upon a complex set of characteristics. There are however, ways that planning departments can optimize their work to at least ensure that the municipality does not exacerbate the challenges these smaller types of developments face.

It is not only the rules that apply to a given project that can direct its outcome, but the time it takes to move through the approvals process. We have all heard the phrase “time is money”, and that is truly the case with development reviews. When a process requires proponents to hold land for great lengths of time prior to actually building and opening for business, it favours the national chain and big box retailers because of their greater ability to finance the carrying costs. Smaller scale projects, which are typically less well funded, have an inherent disadvantage when processes become too drawn out. This is why I suggest that once carefully crafted urban design and zoning regulations have been instituted it is equally important for planning departments to address the review process itself. This process must be clear and efficient so that it does not magnify the challenges of smaller businesses and reduce the feasibility of the kind of development most desirable for a community.

Clarity of expectations; open communication; concise regulations and professional staff to help interpret them; all affect the length of time it takes to generate an approvable application. Once you have created the necessary regulatory framework and standards to ensure that the built form of new developments will support improved livability and placemaking, the next step is to make sure that the way information is communicated, and your review procedures, are optimized. In urban planning it is not always what you plan, but how you plan, that has an impact on your work and the people you are planning for.

Community Health and Design

2011-02-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

I have focused on urban design issues throughout my education and professional practice, and am pleased to see that over the past few years the importance of design in urban planning is being awoken in both the profession and general public.

As Professional Planners, elected officials, and citizens alike, we need to understand that all our policy decisions, our official plans, our development regulations, all influence design and result in a three-dimensional world of our own making. The choices we make when crafting these goals and provisions will structure the design decisions that create our communities' built environments; the stages upon which lives are lived. It is therefore important to choose wisely.

Last year I had the opportunity to assist communities in the region with their efforts to create healthy environments for their citizens by working with the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit to write Healthy Community Design: Policy Statements for Official Plans. The areas of focus for this document were defined by the mandates of the Health Unit and provide readers with a series of suggested polices and implementation methods to guide both the short term and the long evolution of municipalities to a built form that supports community healthy.

Healthy Communities Official Plan Policies

Planning Journal Article

2011-02-25T01:32:00.000-08:00

The 150th issue of the Ontario Planning Journal published by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute features an article I wrote about the Collingwood Urban Design Manual.

The article defines four noteworthy innovations of the UDM, specifically because they are scaleable and adaptable for use by other municipalities:

1) enactment of standards not guidelines through by-law;
2) integration of Universal Design and CPTED principles;
3) Natural Playground requirements (first in North America); and,
4) use of online tools for stakeholder engagement and project management.

OPPI Journal Urban Design Standards

Experiences in Cultural Asset Mapping

2011-02-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

The Winter issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal contains another article I wrote about the Cultural Asset Mapping project we undertook in Collingwood.

PCJ Article - Asset Mapping

Cultural Asset Mapping

2011-02-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

The February issue of Municipal World features an article I co-authored with Dr. Greg Baeker titled "Putting Culture on the Map". This article describes our experience with the South Georgian Bay Cultural Asset Mapping project. The Project was a unique partnership between four communities across two counties.

The initiative to develop the South Georgian Bay Cultural Asset Mapping project evolved out of the Urban Design Standards project I was undertaking for the Town of Collingwood. Dr. Baeker provided consulting services to the project and I sat as Co-chair for the steering committee.

MW Article - Asset Mapping

You can read it, but can you understand it?

2011-01-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

A public Planning document should be understandable by members of the community, period.

This was one of the three primary principles (livability, sustainability, readability) that guided my writing of the Town of Collingwood’s Urban Design Manual. In this work it was also critical that the UDM not sacrifice the meaning of technical aspects.

Attention to the “information design” of the UDM was considered critical prior to its publication and adoption by Town Council not only because it improves access/understanding of information; but, by creating a regulatory document that is easily understood by the public it has the real potential to further Municipal and Planning goals of accountability and community participation for the long term.

The UDM is laid out to facilitate easy navigation of the sections, and structured to communicate the interconnected nature of its provisions. The layout of the individual pages include a number of specific design elements to facilitate readability, including: colour coding of sections; section specific page numbering; clear page layouts separating regulation text from examples; green “guide” markers indicating other Sections that are closely related to the current page’s content; and, extensive use of illustrations and photographs showing positive examples relating to the regulations.

A PDF copy of the adopted UDM is available HERE (current copy available HERE).

Take a look, and let me know how successful you think the UDM is in being understandable by non-professional members of the community; as well as, other examples you would like to highlight.

Planner as teacher.

2010-12-21T09:24:00.000-08:00

Municipal Planning departments need to engage their communities with active efforts to teach/inform about planning practices and contemporary theory as it relates to their community's context. This needs to be done in an ongoing manner that is independent of any particular project or application (which is almost exclusively the case and often leads to the forming of adversarial positions and a sense that the municipality is trying to justify their actions, as opposed to providing unbiased information). I suggest we execute strategies that use all the professional facilitation, engagement, and participatory tools we have available to achieve this (for example: social networking tools; walking tours; open space sessions; workshops; charrettes; videos; surveys; lectures; newspaper and magazine articles; posters; TV and radio discussions; publishing booklets; free courses, etcetera).

The goal is to increase the knowledge and understanding of planning within the community. Over time we would be helping to build a citizenry that is able to understand and engage in planning actions with more awareness, effective measures, and participation. The results of this kind of work would bring us closer to municipal planning that is fair, efficient, just, and effective.

If our efforts are focused on building the places of our communities and ensuring that the "machine" runs efficiently, but we lose sight of building our citizens with the assets of knowledge and understanding that empowers them, we as Planners are forgetting who this is all for. People.

Give a community a plan; you have informed them.

Teach a community how to plan; and you have empowered them.

Are YOU Listening?

2010-12-20T17:58:00.000-08:00

The success of communication is measured by the listener. If your message is not understood, you have not been successful. The video below is an example where a Planner has likely had these words in mind, as he developed a slideshow to support a discussion about "density".

What is noteworthy in this video is that effort has clearly been taken to gather and show images that help describe density to the audience in a way that is informative, and will likely also change perceptions about density.

Showing examples of built projects to illustrate points is not a new idea; is not complicated; and, is not technically difficult. Unfortunately it is still far too uncommon, and projects are discussed in a contextual vacuum and with abstractions. Why? What is your excuse?

Performance Based Budgeting

2010-12-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

Now that the stresses of developing yearly budgets are about to begin, I thought it would be a good time to discuss an issue associated with Performance Based Budgeting. This approach to allocating funds is particularly important to municipalities for two reasons:
1) the goal of work programs for these organizations is to achieve the long term policies of the community (bringing them into the future the citizens seek); and,
2) their responsibilities are funded by the citizens.

In simple terms, funding in performance based budgets is tied to specifically identified objectives and measured results. While I can not imagine another way to develop a budget, or compare one budget cycle with another, without defining, measuring and assessing results, I would like to focus on the way performance is to often measured in municipal government settings.

To be effective in performance based budgeting, it has to be closely tied to procedures and strategies that allow for effective monitoring of service provision indicators. If your measurements are meaningless or misguided, your assessment of the performance will be equally flawed. Monitoring activities without integrating assessments of goals, actions, and results, is just the recording of data, with no meaningful conclusions to work with.

For example, one of the indicators often used for Planning Departments to measure service performance is the number variances (or any application for that matter) processed in a given year. This only tells you two things, how busy you have been, and sometimes (when processing time is included in the analysis), how fast these applications have been turned over. If you were in the business of keeping busy this would be helpful. A more meaningful measurement would be to look at the nature of these variances; why they were necessary; what were the cumulative impacts; and, if they indicate a failing in the existing regulatory structure that necessitated them in the first place.

Performance based budgeting can not be successfully supported with shallow, or meaningless data. So if you are involved in budgeting remember to look at your performance indicators to see that they tell you the results of your work; the effectiveness of your actions; and thirdly, where opportunities for improvement lie. Have fun number crunching.

Who are you speaking to: information design.

2010-12-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

Citizens are now faced with new challenges to participating in the governance of their communities. These challenges make access to problem solving and issue identification, let alone change management, increasingly out of reach of most people. The very way people could traditionally influence the creation of the world around them is being pulled from their grasp by the combination of: increasing levels of illiteracy (in terms of general understanding of civic responsibilities, roles, and powers); more complex governmental systems at all levels; and, stakeholder engagement processes which are becoming inherently elitist (requiring extensive and diverse expertise, finances, and influence out of reach for most people).

As Planning professionals we need to ask: “if information is being consistently presented in ways that the audience can not understand (in this case “the government” being the author and citizens being the audience) what is the actual message being sent?”

Information should be designed to inform and empower the public. We do not necessarily need more information; but we definitely need more and better ways of understanding what information is already available.

Who are you speaking to?

What are you saying?

Why do planners need decoder rings?

2010-12-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

I created this short video to show the kind of problems that arise when we don't design our processes in a way that facilitate communication. Here is the LINK

on Vimeo.

Influencing Government - Where is Your Web 2.0 Strategy?

2010-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

There are a number of things that need to be considered in developing social media/web 2.0 strategies, not the least of which is to remember that the end result is the goal to create dialog between people.

These tools enable us to create dialog and facilitate understanding in ways that were quite literally limited by time and space until their development. In no way am I suggesting this is as exciting (or has as high a geek factor) as the TARDIS used by Dr. Who to flit around the universe; but social media opens up possibilities for communications that were previously impossible, and which we are only beginning to understand and harness.

Social media provides more than just the improved convenience, and efficiency we experienced with the shift from snail mail to email. The inherent qualities of social media include the following characteristics:

Creating levels of interconnectivity between people that were previously unimaginable;
Facilitating introductions between people and organizations based on shared attributes that would otherwise not have been evident;
Improving the design and dissemination of information to reach beyond any traditional boundaries of influence; and,
Creating the ability to tap into the power of people’s creativity and knowledge in orders of magnitude beyond any traditional organizational structure or communication method.

With all this potential, you may be wondering how much social media is able to influence government. Below is a presentation that helps answer this question from the perspective of research focused on Canadian federal politics (also see this PDF docment). Within these you will find many interesting points that are likely transferable to numerous different contexts.

After reading this, are you going to change how you communicate?

e-politics project

View more presentations from jasonmeyers.

It's a Wonderful Life

2010-02-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

I just came across this great video from the City of Beverly Hills. It is a takeoff on "It's a Wonderful Life" that explains the value of the Planning Department in a way that is very entertaining.

It is exactly this kind of innovation to community engagement and information design that I have been promoting for years in my professional work, presentations, and here on Civic Blogger. When you realize that this video was completed in 2003 it makes it all the more ground breaking.

Now what are you going to do to bring this kind of fun and magic to your municipality?

Asking the Right Questions: Building the Right Team

2010-01-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

Somehow you have developed an excellent policy framework; your organizational structure is ripe to facilitate creativity and collaboration; a sound strategic plan which balances goals with available resources is set to direct your work program; and, contemporary technology tools are about to be integrated into your in-house activities while effectively connecting your organization with stakeholders where ever they may be based.

Now you are faced with implementing work programs over a number of years that will successfully bring all this together. To do this there is just one more thing that is necessary, a complement of staff that can fulfill the long list of tasks at hand with expertise, conviction, and enthusiasm.

To have arrived at this enviable position, your organization will undoubtedly have a number of such people on hand, as they will have been instrumental in getting you here. There is a name for these kinds of individuals, leaders! Leaders not necessarily in the conventional sense, but people that are creative, self motivated, and critical thinkers, not followers. However, if you are part of the vast majority of organizations out there, these leaders are too few and far between and are not necessarily the individuals that are "in charge". So your task of implementing work programs is inherently complicated by these gaps in your team.

To solve this problem there are many strategies and techniques that can be used; for example, staff can be trained, roles and responsibilities realigned, and people can be promoted. However, one simple and effective approach that is often overlooked is the hiring process. I am not speaking of head hunting for the “right people”, filling the leadership gaps with ringers from outside. While that can work, what I am proposing is less costly, more systemic and holistic.

This primarily involves changes to interview questions. Why do so many organizations still ask inane questions like "Can you provide me with examples of how you have successfully multi-tasked?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?". Trying to gain insight into a potential team member with interview questions like that will only get you variations of lies. Will an applicant ever provide a truthful answer like "I plan on moving on from here once I have gained some experience, and I eventually get tired of your outdated approaches to things - like these question for example".

Also don't ask people about their skills and accomplishments. Some homework on your part and speaking with references can give you all of that. Ask them about YOU, YOUR organization. Ask “What needs improving?”, and then ask “HOW?” The point here is that to find people with the key qualities you need to fulfill your long term big picture goals, you need to be asking people big picture, long term questions, regardless of the positions being filled. It's your job to find the appropriate big picture questions for each role. Ask people to be critical of the organization; find out how they think; where they think their profession could go; and, what the overall potential the organization has in their eyes.

With these kinds of interview questions, the people you need will provide you more than just answers. They will provide you with questions to frame, or reframe, the original inquiry to make it fit their context. They will give you ideas about processes, policies, and practices. They will show you their level of excitement for change and improvement. They will provide you with a personal vision of the organization that is linked to their view of the world, and therefore how they fit into it. Inspiration, emotional intelligence, and buy-in for your policies and direction is what you want to test in an interview. If you want to implement a strategic sustainability plan for example, you need people that understand and believe in sustainability, not just practitioners that can go through the motions and will rely on management to come up with all the answers.

In addition to this shift in approach to interview questions there is one more thing that you need to do, especially for hiring people in professional or managerial positions. You need to check an applicant’s web presence. Not to see if they have pictures from some crazy college party, but to see what they have published; if they have spoken at a conference; what participation they have had in innovative projects; which professional forums they participate in; and what volunteer organizations they belong to. If your applicant has no web presence, find out why. This form of assessment will of course become increasingly more important and valid as the web 2.0 innovations become common place and 2010 passes into our collective memory.

The ideas I have outlined here, have the potential to be more profound in their effectiveness than other methods for getting the right staff team together on an organization wide scale for the following reasons:
- These can be used for all levels of staff, all roles, all departments, all responsibilities;
- They have the benefit of broad scale implementation during times when organizations are filling in the large impending gaps created by the boomer retirements;
- These approaches help utilize people’s internal creativity and build on the strength of self motivation;
- The incremental effects of change build over time as more staff are hired even with usual turnover rates;
- The need to “make” anyone change through retraining is eliminated as the right team evolves over time;
- The most dedicated and appropriate people to meet your challenges within the organization are promoted; and,
- These techniques are less costly than head hunting and use existing processes.

I hope this overview benefits organizations with their challenges to find the right people to help them evolve and prosper.

How PDF and RSS Can Solve Information Retention Challenges

2010-01-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

What I am about to suggest as a solution to some of the records retention challenges municipalities are facing with web 2.0 tools may, or may not, be mine. I'm not sure if this idea has reached my brain through osmosis during my many readings (I have only seen one article speak to some of the specifics I am writing about here), or if it began as a homegrown spark in one of my synapses. Either way here it is for you.

Municipalities are having to find ways of keeping track of the information being published online when they use social media. Unfortunately, since the information is not hosted by the municipality, they have less control than they typically need, or would like. The potential risks are very real, with freedom of information requests, and various security threats to the information from hacks. The end result is that many municipalities give into fear, don't seek solutions, and give up. Then the message to the world becomes, "No social media for us. We are more of a stone table organization. You know - sturdy, inflexible, not easy to change".

So what is the solution I am proposing? Using the existing tools of email, PDF document storage, and RSS feeds to create a semi-automated records retention system for your organization. This requires three things:

1.   A dedicated email account maintained by the municipality for this specific purpose;
2.   Installing RSS feeds on the social media site(s) being used by the municipality; and,
3.   A server folder in which to save PDF documents.

The implementation then requires a few short steps. Through a variety of ways (either copying-cutting-pasting-saving as PDF; or printing as a PDF; or exporting as a PDF) the municipal blogmaster regularly saves the contents of the social media site(s) as a PDF document. This can be done at whatever intervals are determined appropriate my the municipality based on site activity.

In addition to this, or perhaps in some cased instead of, a dedicated email address is set up by the municipality to receive automated RSS feeds from the site(s) in question. Once the RSS is set up, the municipality signs themselves up, and then forwards these feed on a regular schedule to the dedicated email address (again using something like PDF files). This way the municipality is able to archive whenever there is new information on the site. With this done, all posts and comments from the site are forwarded to the email account and stored on the municipality's server.

Now your organization has its records retention problem solved. So get (back) online!

The Hand in Front of Your Face

2010-01-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

Twenty-Ten. New approaches to online business, communication, and social networking are surely not going to stop at this latest turn of the calendar page.

Thoughts of what the future can bring to your organization are likely filling your mind, and strategy meetings of these early days of the new decade. During this time, while you are peering into the cosmos of web 2.0, and all the things that it will mean to your organization, remember to check if you can still see your hand in front of your face. In terms of using web 2.0 for your endeavors don't let the fog of web 2.0 uncertainty or overwhelm control your decisions. Know who you are; what you have to say; who you are saying it to; how you want to say it; and, why. Then decide to take ACTION based on what you know and not on what you fear or don't know.

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" RUSH, Free Will.

Flashy Flash.

2010-01-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

When setting up a new web site of any kind, the layout and structure is a more involved design process that just simply picking a template; or at least it should be.

For example, using Flash on a site is still a tricky proposition, even after it’s extensive use for quite some time now. I am still surprised by the number of sites that use flash in unproductive ways that are distracting and eat up online time.

This practice far too often leads to sites that act more as advertising for the skills of the web designer (a portfolio for which you are paying) than furthering your message.

Flash can also make your site difficult to find through search engines if specific care is not taken to optimize your site.

One final point about the use of flash. Unfortunately there are still (far too) many areas of both Canada and the United States that still have poor online access speeds available, and as a result, if your site is too “flashy” it can reduce people’s access because of the bandwidth required.

When developing your organization’s online presence, keep your eye on the intent, process, and overall communications strategy; and, don't let your inner magpie get fixated on only the the fancy ‘flashy’ gimmicks.

Get On Board: Bus Tour Meetings

2009-11-19T19:38:00.000-08:00

I am often asked about how to engage community members and stakeholders in planning or municipal projects. In fact, this is pretty much the most common question asked of Planners, by other Planners.

WE all seem to see the need as a profession to improve on our various levels of success with bringing together the stakeholders necessary to move projects forward. WE all have great stories of the times techniques have worked to draw people into a discussion; processes that have surprised us in their ability to mobilize citizens and facilitate communication; and most of all, the far too many times WE have sat alone during public meetings at City Hall waiting for ‘the people’ to show up. Unfortunately, the last of this list is the typical state of affairs.

I don’t have THE definitive answer to the community participation question but with this post I would like to highlight one way of successfully getting people interested and participating in your Planning work that I have had the pleasure of seeing first hand - the bus tour.

It may sound simple, but this approach is a great way of getting stakeholders together in an environment more conducive to communication and away from the unfriendly boardroom tables, lousy coffee, poor lighting, and formalities that usually kill creativity and are the hallmarks of typical meetings.

Today I had the opportunity to be part of one such tour facilitated by the Environment Network, and a number of their partners here in Collingwood, Ontario. All the participants were asked to hop onto a municipal transit bus and hit the road for a series of site visits focused on stormwater management techniques and strategies. There was enough time allowed for us to get off the bus and use our feet at the various sites as well. At the end of the tour we convened for a time at a meeting room to allow for some additional discussion and brainstorming.

I also participated in a similar event while I was working in Washington State in 2008. That event, dubbed the Transportation Tour by the event facilitators/sponsors the Island County Health Department, was designed to explore active transportation initiatives and projects throughout the County. I presented the successes WE had with our projects at the City of Oak Harbor. The discussions that resulted from our time together on this magical mystery tour of sorts were far more engaging than your typical meeting.

If you are a Planner wondering if this really works, I point to one aspect of this approach that exhibits its potential, the ability to draw participants (walking tours can also be designed to see similar successes). Just ask yourself when you were last able to bring together the mayors of three communities; councilors and planning commission members from neighbouring towns; County representatives; State representatives; health department staff; and community interest group members, for the better part of a day to focus on one issue as WE did with the Transportation Tour.

The next time you are looking to stakeholders for their participation in a project that deals with development, urban design issues, or any other project that has implications on our built environments, I suggest you pack a lunch and invite some friends to hop on the bus for a road trip. At the very least, there is no way this approach could be as mind numbing as a multi-hour meeting in a boardroom, or as lonely as a public meeting at City Hall.

Story Time: The Blog that Jack Built

2009-10-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

For the 2009 National Main Street conference, I developed the short story below to explain how a structured social media strategy using free web tools can be built to support your organization's efforts.

The Session was titled "Blogs, Multi-media and Bunnies; Three Things You Need Not Fear". The slideshow below was modeled after the children's story "The House That Jack Built" and I featured it as story time as the Session wrap up to cover the concepts discussed in a way that is memorable and easy to understand.

I am posting "The Blog That Jack Built" as a silent movie so that readers can use it for their own work, while providing the narration them selves.

Enjoy.

The Blog that Jack Built from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

A short story about mixing it up in the world of "free" web tools.

Building Citizens

2009-10-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges of municipal planning is engaging people within the community, and having them participate in meaningful and productive ways. Unfortunately there are a number of issues that make this daunting, and no doubt also a challenge for other municipal services.

I believe much of the cause rests with having people that are outside of the process by means of lack of information and/or lack of understanding. Both of which are often outside of their direct control, given the increasing complex municipal planning systems dominated by experts and professionals. I think it is fair to say that average (whatever that may be) people feel unequipped to participate in planning projects because they feel they don't know "enough" about them. Many others do participate, but in less than effective ways, because they don't know when or how to enter the process to have the best impact.

What is missing is a citizenry that has the tools to be part of THE PROCESS; and let's not forget it is THEIR PROCESS.

I feel that the need for Planning education for communities is critically important, and that it is one of the roles of municipal Planning departments to fulfill this need. Municipal Planning departments should be engaging their communities with active efforts to teach/inform about planning practices and contemporary theory as it relates to their community's context. This needs to be done in an ongoing manner that is independent of any particular project or application (which is almost exclusively the case and often leads to the forming of adversarial positions and a sense that the municipality is trying to justify their actions, as opposed to providing unbiased information). I suggest WE execute strategies that use all the professional facilitation, engagement, and participatory tools WE have available to achieve this (for example: social networking tools; walking tours; open space sessions; workshops; charrettes; videos; surveys; lectures; newspaper and magazine articles; posters; TV and radio discussions; publishing booklets; free courses, etcetera).

The goal is to increase the knowledge and understanding of planning within the community. Over time WE would be helping to build a citizenry that is able to understand and engage in planning actions with more awareness, effective measures, and participation. The results of this kind of work would bring us closer to municipal planning that is fair, efficient, just, and effective.

If our efforts are focused on building the places of our communities and ensuring that the "machine" runs efficiently, but WE loose sight of building our citizens with the assets of knowledge and understanding that empowers them, WE as Planners are forgetting who this is all for. People.

Give a community a plan; you have informed them. Teach a community how to plan; and you have empowered them.

If You Have Nothing to Say, Don't Say It Online

2009-10-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

I saw this video a number of months ago and wanted to share it, as it does such a great job of stating exactly what is wrong with social media when there is no thought put into its use.

If your municipality, non-profit organization, project team, community group or whatever is about to launch a new communication or outreach initiative that uses the latest web 2.0 tools, be sure to at least ask "Why?", "What?", "How?", and "Who for?".

If you can't come up with really good answers for these questions, then maybe the next question should be WTF?

LOOK! Moving Pictures! Top 10 tips for making online videos.

2009-10-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Online videos can be a strong engagement and promotional tool for community organizations, municipal departments, and commercial associations.

To create online videos you don’t need a fancy camera or video professional to be effective. I am posting the following TOP 10 tips on creating online videos from a Crash Course I presented at the National Main Street Conference in Chicago this spring.

These tips will teach you the basics for making effective videos to showcase your work and engage stakeholders, whatever your profession or project:

ONE POINT
Don’t be too ambitious, begin making video projects with a single point or message. You can always do more videos later. Think of it like a commercial, not a movie; less IS more. Too much content makes the videos longer, can overload viewers, and makes the project that much more difficult to complete.

TWO MINUTES
Keep first projects short and to the point, around two minutes long. Longer videos are less likely to be viewed, and less likely to be forwarded to others. Got more to say, make more videos; improving your skills and creating more product to support your work. This time more IS more.

THREE SETS OF EYES
Avoid the memory and personality black hole created when looking into a camera. Stage live action shots with a speaker, an interviewer, and an observer - the camera. Have a conversation between the speaker and interviewer and capture personality, passion and excitement with the observer.

TELL THE STORY WITH NARRATION FIRST
Avoid the difficulties with presenting to the camera, numerous takes, and lighting, and begin your journey into video production with narrated slide shows.
This also allows greater control over video length, message clarity, and flexibility for the time and people involved in making the video.

SOUND CHECK
Although perhaps counter intuitive, sound quality trumps image quality for online videos due to the size and resolution of the screens that will be playing your videos. Invest in a good quality voice recorder, and/or microphone, and audio software to fix the basics such as volume levels and background noise.

MIX IT UP
As your skills improve, being interspersing your video slide shows with short takes of live action. This begins to make the presentation more personable and engaging; while still allowing you to use the slide show structure to keep the entire project focused and under control.

ONE TAKE
Do all live action in one take. If you mess up, pause, and move on. This avoids what I call camera fatigue; where you repeat the same script over again and again, only to drift off message and stumble at the same points. Edit the mistakes, add transitions between good takes and end up with a very viewable project.

CUES
For longer live action speeches use cue-cards or teleprompter. Don’t rely on your memory until you are really comfortable in front of the camera; you may be surprised about how much of a memory black hole is created when looking into the camera lens. A free online prompter is available at www.cueprompter.com.

SET THE STAGE
Create the environment that best fits your project and speaker. If your subject feels most natural at a podium, in a boardroom or in front of a chart, then by all means shoot your video with laser pointer in hand at the white board. A comfortable speaker will give you a far better project then one mesmerized by the camera lens.

LAYERS
As you get more advanced with the layout of your projects start overlapping sounds from one take, or image, to another. This slight detail adds a flow and pace that makes the project less choppy and more interesting to the viewer. With practice this technique can be used for surprise or as an introduction to elements.

Leap in the dark: what's your social media strategy?

2009-09-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

For many municipalities the rush to use social media tools is a flawed exercise in tactics unsupported by strategy. Simply using web 2.0 technologies with their exhibited potential for significant and far reaching impacts, is not the same as integrating them into ones work programs, and the function of an organization. While these tools are often no more complicated to use than existing word processing programs, when municipalities or other government organizations use them for stakeholder engagement; networking; communication; crowd sourcing information; or any number of other activities, the potential risks are as high as the potential payoffs. For example, the breaching of confidentiality and security by US federal officials using Twitter within meetings and during visits abroad earlier this year. Municipal problems resulting from unskilled use of these kinds of tools may be slightly less dramatic, but with no less potential impact on the local scene.

Turning on a light does not make one an electrician, and in terms of social media use, municipalities need more electricians than switch flippers.

The skills needed to successfully design structures and methods for integrating web 2.0 into the organizational and legal parameters found within the realm of municipal governance are complex. Expanding or enhancing any activities with such potentially powerful tools should at the very least be done with understanding of: notice requirements; communications policies; records retention requirements; issues of vesting and legal standings associated with various applications; codes of professional conduct and ethics; accessibility issues and requirements; economic and cultural cohorts within the community; and, in camera procedures.

Organizations need people with more than just web 2.0 end user skills, they need people with creativity and broad minded problem solving skills. These individuals will help maximize the potential of social media tools, by adapting their use beyond common limits and/or initial design and integrating them into existing structures and procedures without conflict to policies. For example, blogs can used as management tools for monitoring resources for major projects and employee teams if they are designed appropriately and published internally. These kinds of blogs can reduce reliance on meetings, facilitate telecommuting, improve access to and dissemination of information, remove organizational silos, and enhance succession strategies and training for new staff.

At the very least, knowing how to design and use social media to maximize their vast potential, requires more than switch flipping but also the ability to generate communication policy; understanding of organizational development; strategic systems thinking; and facilitative leadership skills. If your organization has web 2.0 electricians with these kinds of skills you will likely find yourself happy on target and not be taking leaps into the dark when someone flips the wrong switch.

Urban Design, Context, Online Tools - My upcoming presentation

2009-05-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that on May 20th I will be giving a presentation here in Collingwood titled "An Exploration of Context".

This presentation is sponsored by the Town of Collingwood Heritage Advisory Committee and Architectural Conservancy of Ontario - Collingwood. I will be talking about the importance of contextual understanding as it relates to the Urban Design Standards Project I am managing for the Town of Collingwood.

Not only will I be exploring our local sense of place and the physical environment, but the inherent tools we all have to develop a better appreciation of urban design in our daily lives. I will also be discussing the various analysis methods I am using for the Urban Design Standards Project, including online tools (see the project blog site at www.yourcodes.blogspot.com - another of the project specific municipal blogs I have developed).

My discussion will begin at 7:00 pm in Town Council chambers, Town Hall and admission is free. I look forward to people coming out and getting engaged in the discussion and hopefully deciding to participate in the project to develop Collingwood's Urban Design Standards.

Community Engagement: It's all fun and games, if done right!

2009-02-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

It may be the graphics that remind me of happy youthful hours spent watching the Electric Company, and School House Rock, or the interface that mimics that of Sim City (reminding me of many other hours spent playing Sim City in University, the first and only video game for Planners). But I’m sure it is far more than the nostalgia trip that makes me recommend YourPlayground.org, as amongst the best executed community engagement approaches I have seen, off or on-line. Let me explain, as I do not make this statement lightly.

Having used numerous participation/engagement approaches in my practice, such as charrettes, visual preference surveys, open space, and all forms of meetings; I am always interested in methods that can engage people, empower them by building upon their assets, and are fun and inspiring. Your Playground is an excellent online tool to develop the design of a new community park developed, in support of the Allstate and the U.S. Olympic Committee's joint effort to create an Olympic bid for the city of Chicago (where this year's National Main Street Conference is being held - check out the Conference Live Blog). Take a close look at what is being accomplished here, this site is more than just catchy web design.

In addition to all the benefits inherent in on-line tools such as few time restrictions and freedom from location, the reason this site stands alone are multiple, including:

the presentation of the requested information and directions are clear and to the point (excellent information design);
given the stakeholder audience who may be particularly interested in the project, kids, and parents, the playful game-like format is ideal (empowering, awareness of stakeholders);
the approach to sharing ideas, a contest, is perfect, adding the kind of energy you often get with team workshops, open space, or design charettes (engaging);
the scope of the project is well defined by the features that may be included (practicality); and,
it sure is fun (the key to community engagement success most often missed).

What can YOU learn from this site?
First, that building parks on-line is more fun than YOU likely thought.
Secondly, with a well defined strategy coupled with creativity YOU can develop highly specialized on-line engagement tools for YOUR organization to boost YOUR assets and success.

Conducting this kind of work on-line does not relieve YOU of the need to carefully design YOUR stakeholder engagement process. Don't let YOUR inner magpie get caught up with the shiny newness of web 2.0 and lose sight of YOUR purpose, scarfing effectiveness for flashiness (careful with using Flash). Remember that engagement strategies need to be well thought out, managed with an eye to detail, and creatively framed within the scope of the entire project.

Now go build YOURSELF a park!

National Main Street Conference Blog

2009-02-05T17:36:00.000-08:00

It is official, the proposal I put forward to develop a site and live blog the National Main Street Conference in Chicago (March 1-4, 2009) has been accepted. The theme of the Conference is Becoming Main Street 2.0.

I have built and launched www.mainstreetlive09.blogspot.com as of yesterday. Over the next few weeks Cac and I will be providing content and blogging on the Conference preparation. We will also have some assistance from the wonderful people working on planning and managing the Conference.

The live blogging of the Conference will include: video reports, post presentation interviews, event photographs, google maps of walking tours, and a variety of other fun and informational elements.

In addition to blogging the Conference, I will be presenting on Monday afternoon and conducting a technology tutorial on online videos. If you have a chance to attend the conference, please stop by and say hi.

What is it Worth to You? The Value of Online Video to Your Organization

2009-01-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

Value: /ˈval-(ˌ)yü/ the relative worth, utility, or importance

When assessments are made of projects requiring community participation, such as those associated with Urban Planning, the word cost is an all to often used as a replacement for, or falsely equated with value.

Cost, in this context, is a reduction not only of the number of syllables necessary for pronunciation, but more critically a significant reduction of focus. The resultant impact on the project being assessed is often immeasurable and compounded many times over as opportunities to education citizens, and build upon previous Planning efforts are passed over. By designing and executing projects based more on assessments of cost over value, short-sightedness and simplicity are often favoured over the longer term and more complex criteria and benchmarks. Decisions relating to producing online videos for projects often have these hallmarks.

Videos with high production quality generally require contracting expertise that is outside of the scope of municipal budgets. Producing these “in-house” to save on contracting expenditures usually results in products of lesser cinematic and audio quality and can require large amounts of staff time. Therefore, in terms of developing videos for Planning projects, the product is not always as good as hoped for, while the value can be quite high and potentially coming at a significant cost.

For recent municipal planning projects I have developed a series of short videos to describe the characteristics of the initiatives to interested stakeholders in a more captivating way than typical Planning reports. These videos have been made available through the project specific blog sites (here and here and here). It is important to note that the time and effort it took to develop these was by no measure incidental.

However, in less than an average of 8 months of access each, the videos associated with a subdivision code project, have proven of extremely high value. They have provided a consistent message and afforded access to project information outside of standard office hours. Also, looking at the following statistics one can see that in this short time staff have already been saved the tedium of 352 repeated conversations (equivalent to at least entire week's worth of working hours).

Online Videos:
- Subdivision Intro, length 0:34, 105 views
- Subdivision Public Engagement, length 2:40, 90 views
- Subdivision Park Board Meeting March 10, length 2:29, 95 views;

- Robert Voigt's Delayering Presentation to the Planning Commission, length 22:15, 46 views; and,
- Subdivision Project Update: Length 17:41, 16 views.

Total video views 352; with a potential total viewing time of 1941 min. or just over 32 hours.

Even this simple examination should make it clear that if videos are developed for Planning projects, and designed with value considerations for a systemic approach to stakeholder/citizen engagement, a municipality can build a resource library of compounding value that informs, educates, and empowers its citizens, while multiplying the efforts of staff. The benefits for the organization and community in the short, mid and long-terms are many, and while creating these videos can be high in cost, their potential as an asset is of higher value and worth the expenditure.

NOTE: In addition to my presentation on Web 2.0 tools at the upcoming National Main Street Conference in Chicago, I have been invited to provide a tutorial on video production for Main Street organizations. Please stop by and say hello if you can attend either. rjv

Put Your Boots On: Here Comes the Future of Blogging

2008-12-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

When I explore my thoughts about the future of blogging I see numerous connections and similarities in mind set and vision with those presented by a collection of bloggers recently featured on ProBlogger.

As computer resources (hard and software) and increased web speeds allow for greater access to information and the necessary publishing tools, I am sure that the multi-media components of blogs will undoubtedly double and redouble again and again. This will help continue the transformation of blogging as a communication platform and enhance the benefits of the virtual time/space travel WE get from online contact. It may also have interesting impacts on those that utilize the anonymity of blogging to their advantage.

These advanced resources, while reducing or removing barriers of access or expert skill thresholds, will also raise the level of mediocrity; lowering the overall expectations of the quality of communication provided through blogs. WE should to some degree expect a future with the kind of increased noise and loss of connection the Boss referred to in 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).

However, I also believe OUR human drive to create and connect with community will eventually guide US through the evolution necessary to again clearly hear voices and songs above the racket.

For the kinds of blogs I develop for Facilitative Leadership and Stakeholder Engagement purposes in the larger context of Urban Planning, I need to ensure I receive high marks for communication from the audience, or my failures potentially impact the physical community, the “real world” of homes, businesses and cafés (you know, those places where WE plug in our computers and go online). It’s a fine line that I must walk successfully.

As WE go through this online (re)evolution WE must remember that WE are not dealing with magic windows that do all the work FOR US; specific skills will continue to be needed (however, and wherever you may define that for your blog audience). Clarity of message; presentation design; and timeliness will continue to be important. Success of communication is measured and judged by the receiver. If you can not connect with your audience, you fail!

What are the impacts of your blog/message being lost in the rising tides of the oceans of mediocrity? What skills are you going to develop and bring to the party? Put your boots on, time will tell who gets wet.

Blogging from the Other Side of the Continent

2008-12-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a new Planning blog I have developed for the Town of Collingwood in Ontario, www.yourcodes.blogspot.com. YourCodes is the stakeholder engagement, and monitoring site for the project I am managing to develop Collingwood’s Urban Design Standards. As previously, I have developed the entire project framework to build upon the benefits of the blog platform. It is strangely exciting to be creating these Planning blog sites on the opposite side of the continent from where I began this work in Washington; returning to where I began my Planning career years ago.

The design of YourCodes addresses many of the concerns I have repeatedly heard relating to online presence and blog site integration. As a result of my previous post, where I contrasted aspects of free and proprietary blog hosting, I have been asked about the impacts of free hosting on “brand” or “corporate identity”; the fear being of a diminished brand.

Careful attention to the design details of the blog assist with avoiding the impacts of this very real concern. This includes the use of color, images, etcetera to communicate a cohesive design sense that visually links the sites. Think of it in terms similar to a design package for a range of print materials such as letter head, business cards, advertising and reports.

One technical solution that further aides the cohesiveness of the experience for OUR users is to integrate the free site into existing web pages as WE have done at the Town of Collingwood. While the YourCodes site exists outside of the Town website, a “viewer” page has been included that allows people to see the blog without leaving the Town pages.

Blog pages should in all cases be designed to provide as seamless an experience between them and OUR other online resources as practicable for OUR users. Keep in mind that this is equally important when designing a blog that is hosted directly within an existing website or when using a free off site service, no excuses!

Free. Free! Free? What does it cost to develop a blog?

2008-11-10T12:58:00.000-08:00

Upon introducing blogging as a Planning project framework, government and non-profit agencies alike often pose the same questions to me. Looking past the long list of advantages over traditional Planning and community engagement methods the questions focus on “the cost” in the most narrowly defined terms. Those seeking monosyllabic answers are often disappointed that these overly uncomplicated questions require a more comprehensive understanding of an intricate set of elements, including: the project terms-of-reference, organizational structures, and available resources.

Of particular interest, and perhaps the most common questions, relate to decisions between utilizing free hosting and blogging tools and paying for proprietary site designs and management delivered by web site designers. To be most effective, incorporating blogging as a project platform for Planning involves designing an entire management and stakeholder engagement system. Free blogging services and those provided by web designers bring varying resources to bare and require different sympathetic assets from within an organization. The challenge is developing the most advantageous mix.

Based on honest internal assessments, organizations can determine which blog site development approach best suits their needs. When facilitating blog development I work with groups to evaluate their available assets with more than just rudimentary cost based measures. This includes determining if they have the following characteristics to support this innovative approach:

A change oriented culture;
People with the necessary skills to design the site;
In-house skills to provide content for the blog, and overall project management;
Time within work programs for blogging; and,
An organization that is willing to accept challenges to current project management and stakeholder engagement approaches.

While the results can be magical, there is no magic in blogging; it is what you make it. As long as a systems approach is used when incorporating blogs into Planning and similar projects, and they are structured with sufficient thought and assets devoted to crafting quality in content; procedural methodology; supportive stakeholder engagement techniques; and sound Social Planning methods, the benefits can be outstanding.

Understanding, Identity, Vision: Lessons from the GTDI Conference

2008-10-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

To create great communities and nurture those in OUR care for future generations requires meaningful information, a sense of context and identity, and a vision that transcends current reality.

On October 17, 2008 these topics were addressed by speakers Dr. David Foot, Dr. Greg Baeker and Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson, under the theme of "How Place Matters" at the Georgian Triangle Development Institute’s Conference

Dr. Foot ("Boom Bust & Echo") presented updates on his continually insightful work of examining social and cultural mega-trends "through the lens of demographics". The Planning implication of Dr. Foot’s findings is unquestionable; however, I wanted to highlight his approach to information design because it is in this area that equally as much can be learned.

The success of communication is measured by the listener; and through Dr. Foot’s use of graphics, complex information was distilled and disseminated to the audience skillfully. His presentation gave listeners a sense of empowerment and inspiration that comes with newly acquired knowledge, and will undoubtedly influence their future endeavors.

When working with communities, asking them to gaze into the mirror for self reflection can elicit blank stares or Narcissus like self admiration. Dr. Greg Baeker explained how he uses the mirror of Cultural Asset Mapping to gain uncompromised access to the souls of communities, upon which future plans can be built and communities can “create urban wealth”.

Dr. Greg Baeker (Senior Consultant with AuthentiCity of Navigator Ltd.) is nationally recognized for his Cultural Mapping and Community Engagement leadership. Dr. Baeker’s anecdotes illustrated how cultural asset mapping can be more than just an exercise in reflection but a powerful Planning tool to foster heightened awareness of community identity, and strengthen cooperation. Most profound was the way that his projects have had the surprising ability to enlighten communities about themselves.

This marriage of the heartfelt collective memory with understanding of spatial relationships is empowering and can influence municipal Planning in ways that traditional engagement methods are incapable of. As Dr. Baeker spoke I was happily reminded of architect Aldo Rossi’s work and the necessity of urban artifacts, in both their physical and mental forms, to the health of communities.

Dr. Baeker’s work takes these concepts, meshes them with participatory planning techniques and technology; imbibing digital maps with the life of the community. His approach is both cultural mirror and monocular. He shows US the lines life has imprinted on OUR faces, while allowing US to gaze out and image a wonderful future.

Mayor, Dan Mathieson described the future he is helping to champion for his home of Stratford that includes a new partnership with the City, Open Text Corporation and the University of Waterloo. This will involve the development of a new campus dedicated to research and innovation in digital media.

Mayor Mathieson highlighted that the unique skill of those involved was in their ability to see the challenges of many different parties as potential opportunities for mutual benefit. The University of Waterloo and Stratford see answers in things that do not yet exist; they trust in a path chosen in partnership and they trust in what the future holds.

Place mattered in identifying the opportunities that led to this partnership. It will also matter as this project evolves and integrates into the fabric of Stratford. The place that mattered most to the Conference attendees when Mayor Mathieson spoke was right there, right then, so that they could see the power of inspired vision.

The Conference was an excellent event, merging many different interests. The themes I saw and heard will undoubtedly differ from others in attendance. However, everyone I spoke to agreed on the value of having spent the day together. Perhaps someone heard the same subtexts I did, and the next GTDI conference will include online content such as pod casts, live blogging, and post event access to information?

Giving Voice: Online Tools Provide Unmatched Communication Opportunities

2008-10-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

The current incarnation of the web has given US on-line tools that are unmatched and unprecedented in their ability for US to reach, and be reached, by the most diverse groups of stakeholders, citizens, professionals, and community interest groups. So why aren't more Planners; municipalities; associated urban design professionals such as Engineers and Architects; and, non-profit groups using them?

The questions of HOW, WHEN or even WHY these groups and individuals should use a web site, blog, or other on-line resource are unfortunately common. It is still acceptable to delay the inevitable on-line evolution of our professional practices by debating HOW and WHEN, often reframing them as decisions dependant upon the nature of the work, available resources, and skill levels. Even if WE are to accept the premise that these are wholly sound arguments and not pretext, I believe the benefits inherent in the answer to the question WHY will diminish them significantly and make the value of integrating on-line tools into OUR practices unmistakable.

I ask that you take the next few moments to think beyond your profession. I would like to introduce you to someone that has made a deep impact on my world view and perception of the potential of on-line resources.

I have not met her in person, yet Glenda Watson Hyatt has greatly influenced me and her blogging is one one of the most profound examples of how the web can empower and connect people. She shares her experiences living with cerebral palsy to motivate and inspire people to think about how they perceive their own situation and the world around them; doing all this by typing with only her left thumb!

Back to HOW, WHEN, WHY? I suggest the answers to these questions should come easier now, given that the results include providing meaningful access to stakeholders where it never existed before such as in Glenda's case. But it goes well beyond that, including improved access to information in terms of convenience and location in large regional contexts; or expanded ability for internal and external monitoring of projects; or developing communities of interest and knowledge networks that can enhance project outcomes.

Glenda Watson Hyatt shows that you have nothing to fear about "going on-line"; as well as, the unimaginable potential to connect with people you and your organization would never have otherwise. That's good for our professions, our communities and our spirits.

I have had the opportunity to develop municipal communication strategies, and suggest checking out Soaring Eagle Communications, Glenda's Web Accessibility business, before you move ahead with your's.

Design is the Key - Know Your Audience

2008-10-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, has been working on using new technology to reach a broader and more engaged audience. They have created a site for their long-range comprehensive plan for transportation and land use, GO TO 2040 .

I have had the pleasure of exploring GO TO 2040 and it’s really quite good. One of the authors Lindsay Banks explains why they chose this approach here.

The site’s language is concise, the message clear, and the layout is coordinated. The citizens of the area have a really good resource available to them with this site. I especially enjoyed the information about urban design, because it is written in a way that nonprofessionals can get a clear understanding of an often confusing subject. This is key to a well designed web site or blog. Unfortunately this is to often not the case.

Before developing project specific municipal blogs, I had been involved in developing communication strategies and new web sites for a number of municipalities throughout my career. What I brought to the table was an antidote to the excessively technology focused perspectives that often override sound principles of communication. These substitute flash (quite literally) for content and message.

When dealing with government web sites and blogs it is critical that the technology does not outshine and obscure the message. Don’t fall for the sales pitches that will have your site ringing and chirping with every bell and whistle, if the subject doesn’t call for it, or your organization doesn’t have the money, people, skills and time to maintain it. The result is a great looking site for a short time that later results in something I call “website entropy”. I’m assuming that doesn’t need a definition.

Web sites, blogs, social media, web 2.0 tools, all have the ability to enhance the work WE do as Planners; and conversely they have the ability to amplify our mistakes if WE are not careful. In the simplest of terms they are publishing and communication tools and the 101 principles of communication, process design, attention to detail, and appreciation of your audience all still apply.

So, is it better to design a site that reads like a romance novel or encyclopedia?

You decide.

Garbage In Garbage Out

2008-09-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following article for the June 2008 Northwest Architect, an AIA Chapter publication. In it I make the point that for Planning and related urban design professions, content, design and professional skill are all critical when blogging.
Don't just blog to publish! There is greater potential in the blogosphere for Planners - unfortunately the technology lends itself to a high level of mediocrity. Remember GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out.

TIME TO BLOG(?)

CHOICE
"Planners and Architects, are challenged by choices about designs, presenting information, and conducting strategic planning. These directly affect the quality of stakeholder participation and the end product of our efforts; this in turn influences the livability of our communities.

The elegance of two poignant phrases, coined by fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan, “global village” and “the medium is the message”, will help me highlight some new approaches I am using to address these challenges.

MESSAGES
When reading between the lines, what does a single legal document/specification/drawing represent when written in a way that is wildly incomprehensible to the average citizen or stakeholder? What is the message, and is it intended? Perhaps it is merely a well crafted tool fulfilling a particular purpose. What if it is one of countless other similar documents that influence how our communities look and function? What message should we take from this body of work in terms of the value of stakeholder input and participation? Finally, what is the potential if this information were more accessible and easily understood?

TIME LINES
“Global village”, refers to how technology assists us in relating to each other at a personal level, typical of small communities, even when separated at global scales. Physical proximity is no longer necessary to engage in meaningful dialogue with online tools now available. For example, blogs facilitate participation by people separated by distance, and at a time that is convenient to their schedules.

Numerous social networking web sites and blogs exist, and the numbers and complexity grows daily; however municipalities, the development industry, and urban design professionals have not made the leap to integrate these into their work. The time has come where this is a vital step for both public agencies and private firms to be current and facilitate meaningful input; develop public support; manage conflict; drive solutions; and create beneficial partnerships.

BLOGGING
It is relatively common for Cities to use blogs for general communication, a kind of voice mail on growth hormone. By developing project specific blogs for the update to subdivision regulations (www.cohsubdivisions.blogspot.com & www.cohdelayered.blogspot.com) I have begun to use these online tools in ways that are innovative for municipalities. These blogs are designed to enrich participation; advance citizenship; improve access to information; and integrate greater accountability. The blogs provide a central platform for the entire system of the project which includes: urban form analysis; mapping; video reporting; polls; code analysis; urban design proposals; and action research. A video describing how this system works is viewable on the main blog, or search YouTube for “Subdivision Public Engagement”.

MAGIC
Blogging as I am using, and propose, is not only a tool but an entirely new platform for community engagement. Standard methods of stakeholder participation typically achieve less than desired results; often caused by the increasing complexity and busyness of people's lives and processes designed toward expert participation. By designing the subdivision project to include facilitative leadership, alternative meeting and presentation methods, and accountability features within the blog framework this has been greatly improved.

Creating a blog does not turn desktop screens into magic windows; be prepared to have the curtain pulled back to reveal the great Oz. Using blogging in your project management and strategic planning requires a committed that is not disingenuous, tokenism, or decorative. The content must be robust, the site well designed and functional, and you must be prepared for the necessary time commitment.

DESIGN YOUR INFORMATION
To achieve the benefits of blogging you must be aware of how your information/content is designed/presented – back to messages. For example, with the ability to generate more and more information, we often fall into the trap of increasing the complexity of what is being represented; sacrificing clarity, for comprehensiveness. To counteract this tendency for the urban form analysis component of my project, I used a mapping technique called “delayering” (based on the work of architect Mario Gandelsonas, The Urban Text, MIT Press, 1991) to highlight specific characteristics and improve comprehension. This approach allows professionals and lay persons to see aspects of their community that often go unnoticed and was best suited for posting to the blog.

ENJOY
Becoming the Chief Blogging Officer is potentially appealing to the designer in all of us. Have fun, enjoy, and prepare to be surprised by how your work can be improved with these new approaches to strategic planning and design, these new ways of thinking about messages and the global village. I end with the words of an artist, and designer whom I greatly admire: “The more I play, the larger my world does become”, Xavier Voigt, three years old."

Believe It or Not – Blogs Work

2008-09-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

With this post cowritten by Cac and myself , we describe our initial municipal planning blog successes. We also outline why the Planning profession, and for that matter all professions associated with urban design, and development of the PUBLIC realm or community assets, should embrace blogging and other social media.

"If WE told you that you can get over 50% participation from a PUBLIC notice would you believe us?

If WE said that with creativity and existing technology you can get valuable input from a significant number of community members throughout an entire Planning process from beginning to end, would you believe us?

If WE told you that by adapting your project framework you can have more citizens engaged in a single project than all PUBLIC meetings and hearings combined in a given year, would you believe us?

WE can go on and on, but you may raise your eyebrows, roll your eyes and sigh a big “WHATEVER DUDES!”

Well it is possible and has been proven in Oak Harbor, WA. Believe it or not, the tool we are using to achieve these results is this very thing you are reading - BLOGs. By adapting this simple communication format for Planning projects and incorporating notification, education, dialogue, discussion etc. in the blog design, the City has been able to involve over 2000 people in its recent Planning projects over the past eight months. That’s at least 1700 more than attended all the PUBLIC hearings and meetings in 2007.

By developing municipal blogs as project specific community engagement platforms, WE have successfully used web 2.0 tools to 1) enhance our Planning practice, 2) increase community involvement, 3) incorporate accountability measures, and 4) improve internal project tracking for staff, Council and Planning Commission. Monitoring our progress has shown substantial benefits over traditional public participation practices in these and other areas. As with any other successful venture, this comes with a price – TIME. However, the benefits far outweigh the costs on multiple levels.

Success stories of meaningful, substantial and effective PUBLIC input for municipal projects are few and far between. As Planners, WE seek techniques to engage the PUBLIC because WE believe they should be involved throughout the entire Planning process. WE should strive for high response and approval ratings from our constituents. However, standard Planning practices have fallen far short of this mark for decades, and are resulting in decreased citizen involvement; increased systemic elitism; unnecessary complexity and confusion; reduced accessibility; and inefficiency. Just ask yourself when was the last public process or meeting that you conducted, that didn’t have at least some similarities to a TV reality show, such as: misinformation; lack of transparency or cooperation; unnecessary misunderstandings; and a shortfall of community identity. Comparing our lofty goals for Planning processes with our less than stellar results, are WE not failing miserably?

WE have lived with this wonderful machine of the web for just over 5000 days, a major milestone. It has changed how WE view and understand the world, see each other (literally and figuratively), how WE define community; and for more and more of us, WE are unable to imagine our world without it. How WE communicate, access information, and expectations of information availability are all based on the increasingly pervasive framework of the web and the interaction web 2.0 tools provide. As Planners WE have to find ways to better embrace this technology to benefit the work WE do.

The Planning profession is inherently involved in developing communities. Not just the bricks and mortar of our buildings, streets, and neighborhoods, but the environments in which community is nurtured and citizens born. By not embracing the technology of today, are WE not turning our back to the way people relate and interact? How far are WE willing to fall behind by not using web 2.0 tools? It is unacceptable to continue asking “should WE use blogs or social networking tools for our projects?”, this equates to professional navel gazing. WE are losing ground as communities move beyond our standard approaches.

Everything in life has pros and cons and so do BLOGS. They are both panacea, and a can of worms that once opened will have repercussions that must be dealt with. Used wisely and carefully designed and integrated into our professional activities, Blogs, Knols, social networking, and other web 2.0 tools will have profound impacts on the plans, projects and processes that WE as Planners are assigned to steward. So go ahead and BLOG! WE dare you! Believe it or not, it works".

And then... - Project Specific Blog

2008-09-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

As John Dewey said "There is more than a verbal tie to common, community and communication". We all know the power of communication. It can make or break a relationship. The delicate balance between government and public relies heavily on communication. It used to be that if the government got the word out (notification), the bases are covered. It was also the case that the people who responded to these notification where primarily viewed with skepticism because they probably responded and commented on everything that was published. They are the ones that simply oppose anything and everything proposed because TRUST was lost. Somewhere between the two we know that there are a whole lot of people who have good comments and ideas but we couldn't hear from them.

Rob's idea of the blog as a tool for community engagement was an instant hit. We knew that it was worth attempting to reach out to those people that we would not normally hear from at a public meeting or hearing. It provided many things that could not be provided in a meeting or hearing. It provided a comfortable environment (home), a convenience of presence (anytime) and the necessary time to research and layout informed comments and questions. This was witnessed on a blog site created for the City of Oak Harbor's Comprehensive Plan Amendment. (http://www.cohcomplan08.blogspot.com/)

The communication on the amendments shows clear evidence that people are researching the City Code, asking informed questions and focusing on issues related to the decision that is pending.

The Begining - Project Specific Blog

2008-08-30T21:46:00.001-07:00

To get the PUBLIC involved in decision making and guiding the development of their communities, Planners use many different engagement and PUBLIC participation processes. Here PUBLIC refers to both the openness with which the activity is undertaken and the community of stakeholders involved.

Typical processes seek to make information accessible and understandable, and provide insights through dialog. Planners do this because we know that the end users and beneficiaries of our work, the PUBLIC, have a great deal at stake - the livability of their communities; the livability of OUR communities.

At the beginning of this year I decided to undertake a new approach to community engagement, having identified the problems with current methods as I stated in my previous post (The Public Realm and Participation). I was designing the process for a major update to the Subdivision Code for the City of Oak Harbor Washington as I had done for their Design Regulations a few years earlier.

The greatest difference was that this time I designed the process to address those many PUBLIC participation issues and developed the first municipal Planning blog of its kind - a project specific blog that acted as the community engagement platform for the entire project (http://www.cohsubdivisions.blogspot.com/).

This blog is more than just email on steroids or the typical editorial rantings. It incorporates visual communication and multi-media; integrates accountability; and is an integral part of a project with action research methods built right into the process. I will describe the blog's details, function, successes, and challenges in greater depth in future posts. A video, posted on the blog helps describe it in simple terms. Any thoughts?

The Public Realm and Participation

2008-08-14T09:20:00.003-07:00

Almost all we do as professional Planners, and the related urban design disciplines of Architecture; Engineering; and Landscape Architecture; influences the use and development of the PUBLIC realm.

The PUBLIC realm is defined by the streets, structures, and spaces that make up our communities. Through the sometimes wonderful work of these urban design professionals, we create place from space, and in turn great PUBLIC realms within which to live. Unfortunately this is more often, not the case. As the great urban designer, and "mentor" of the Project for Public Places, William H. Whyte pointed out:

"It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”

I believe much of this is the result of ineffective PUBLIC engagement from which we urban designers should be learning, and through which we should be teaching. Unfortunately the PUBLIC engagement methods used are not always appropriate or effective.

I have identified a number of issues relating to poor PUBLIC processes including problems with: information access; elitism; ineffective process design; physical location; timing; poor communication methods, and many others. These all reduce the potential success of the project at hand and the livability of the communities they influence. I have seen this first hand in both Canada and the US, in municipal governments both large and small; regional governments; State and Provincial organizations; private developers and non-profits.

CIVIC BLOGGER was developed by myself and my good friend and colleague Cac. We intend to use CIVIC BLOGGER to explore these issues, develop solutions, and spur on change.

Set the Bar.

2008-08-14T09:20:00.001-07:00

"PUBLIC information should be made PUBLIC.

PUBLIC information refers to everything that explains our citizenship. PUBLIC means everything that we agree should be available to the body politic.

Making information PUBLIC is somewhat less generic. This PUBLIC means presenting, designing & structuring this information so that it is accessible, available, understandable & free.

PUBLIC means that the simple basic question in the minds of the American people are easily; readily & clearly answerable. It is our right to question & get answers.

Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex mode of human connection. The goal of conversation is UNDERSTANDING between the participants.

Successful visual communication design can be defined as frozen conversation much as wonderful architecture is referred to as frozen music.

UNDERSTANDING information is power".Richard Saul Wurman

This is the text by Richard Saul Wurman that begins Understanding USA, an amazing book published in 1999 . These words, the words I heard Mr. Wurman speak at the 2001 IDCA conference, and the content of Understanding USA inspire, inform, and illustrate the kind of thinking and substance we hope to bring to the discussion of community engagement with Civic Blogger.

We have set the bar way high! Want to jump?