My old – but-not-so-old friend Bill Lutz wrote to me recently about his perceptions of how local governments should pursue community engagement, and as usual he brought a perspective and ...
Hi. My name is Della, and apparently I look like this: About every other week I discover that I have totally confused someone with my business. Yesterday it was a ...
It might have something to do with me still being young enough to relate to the vibrant lifestyle of 20-somethings, but it has occurred to me that the field of ...
In a true display of democracy, a town hall meeting held at the New Bedford High School auditorium Monday gave the crowd of approximately 550 residents the opportunity to publicly ...
I wrote the following as a response to an ongoing debate on incentives that has been occurring on one of the LinkedIn groups that I follow. There’s been a strong ...
This annotated presentation comes from a training I did for the Introduction to Economic Development course hosted by the Ohio Economic Development Association last week. I had the session on ...
I wanted to share with you a great essay from CEOs for Cities that gets at one of the issues that worries me the most: our tendency to oversimplify our ...
It’s no secret by now that Piqua, Ohio, is one of my favorite examples of a little city that consistently figures out How To Get It Done – thanks in ...
Good LinkedIn discussions are like sitting in on a dinner with bright and insightful people from all over the world (without trying to decide how to split the check). ...
One of the ongoing challenges for anyone involved in online public engagement is determining which comments on an online platform warrant a response, and which ones… well, don’t, for whatever ...
This week’s posts are going to primarily reflect what I heard at last week’s IEDC Leadership Summit, which I think has the potential to turn out to be a sea ...
OK. So we know that economic development incentives can have some benefit, but we also know that easily become too reliant on them. We have too often viewed economic development ...
We have this deep-seated desire to believe that experts can hand us answers. We spend huge sums on consultants (the ones who claim to have 937 years of combined experience) ...
As we stagger across the finish line for this year (“stagger” and “December” seem to go together unnervingly well in my life), we are glad to provide you with an ...
Just a quick note to let you know that if you want to see and hear the full presentation of Reaching the Ones Who Don’t Show up, it’s posted now ...
The podcast below is a selection from the presentation I did with Steve Miller of MindMixer about the disconnect between our usual methods of public engagement and how people actually ...
We’re delighted to announce that our partners at Northlich, LLC won a Public Relations Society of America Blacksmith Award last week for our community engagement effort around Plan Build Live, ...
Talk about fascinating… One of the most successful community development corporations in the country once has a balance sheet of zero. What do you do to help an organization like ...
Nothing. I’m a diehard Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn user. I know some people have ambivalent relationships with this stuff. Not me. A day without checking my Twitter feed anymore feels like a visit ...
A week or so ago I wrote about the tactics I used to manage a public question and answer session for an agency that was putting on this event as ...
I have the honor of being asked to become a regular contributor to PlannersWeb, the updated and interactive successor to the popular Planning Commissioners Journal. While the column I wrote for ...
Wow. As I am writing this, more than 1,500 people have read the article on strategies for managing public meetings – blowing the previous record for this site way out ...
We’re getting ready to launch a new addition to the Wise Economy Workshop — a podcast series that includes both readings from blogs and interviews with people who are doing ...
The other night I served as moderator for a panel discussion and audience Q&A that is part of a local organization’s efforts to update their comprehensive plan. Like many planning ...
Damn movie. There’s another one on the list. I learned a long time ago that I am way too good at buying into what theater people call the willing suspension ...
Don’t loan me a book. At least, don’t loan me a book unless you’re willing to get it back with pencil scribbles all over it. Just ask my husband. In ...
When you’re a woman who writes and speaks her opinions about issues, there’s a certain voice in the back of your head that pushes back any time you’re inclined to ...
Just when you think maybe you’ve been shouting into the void, it’s always great to find out that someone else gets it. J.M Goldson wrote a lovely post on her ...
One of my ongoing frustrations within the public engagement practice of the Wise Economy Workshop is the assumption in some corners that good public engagement means letting people recommend or ...
I have had the privilege for the past couple of years of writing a regular column for Planning Commissioner’s Journal, a publication geared toward citizen planners and the professionals who ...
In the “Good Ideas Directly Lifted from Someone Else” Department:” Just came across these principles from the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service. The agency makes very clear that this is ...
When I give a presentation, my slides anymore usually have more words than pictures. That’s what the presentation experts say you should do, but it means that when you download ...
I am getting ready to speak at the American Planning Conference in Los Angeles about two of my favorite topics: downtown and retail district revitalization, and online tools for public ...
For those of you who attended my session on public participation at the workshop, I promised to post the links to the various online public participation and planning tools that ...
For those of you that attended sessions with me at conferences in September or October, I am glad to say that I finally got the slides posted to Slideshare so ...
This article on innovation research captures a critical truth about public participation: if we don’t create a clear structure for people to think within, their thinking won’t be worth very much. Here’s ...
We all know that most of our local economies are in some form or another of mess. Draw the border around your town, your county, your region, your state, doesn’t ...
It’s that time of year when even the most laissez-faire of us get hit with the Set Goals bug. We all resolve (myself included) to lose more weight, eat better, ...
This article highlights two counties in Florida that have found a way to continue their traditional public input systems, using chat and video streaming, in a way that not only ...
This is an interesting idea from a nonprofit planning process in Maine. I think the call-in telephone number and the boards in public places are a great idea – excellent ...
Here’s the link to the presentation that I did for the National Trust for Historic Preservation last week on innovative and effective public participation methods (read: no grandstanding, minimum boredom, ...
