Live Blog Feed: ESLC Annual Planning Conference

Keynote Speaker: Ken Snyder, Place Matters

The Art and Science of Civic Engagement

Civic Engagement Tools and Techniques

-Information and Communication

-Visualization

-GIS Modeling and Impact Analysis

-Public Process and Civic Engagement

Principles of Successful Public Participation

Inclusive. . . . . . .. . ... .. . . .Ownership

Community . . . .. . . . . . . . .Driven legitimacy

Transparent. . . . . . . . . . .. .Trust

Carefully Designed.. . . . . . .Accessible, Safe, and Fun

Intuitive and Informed. . . . . Realistic Outcomes

Lead to Implementation. . .. Affecting Present and Future Decisions

Ken is now talking about using the right set of tools and techniques that help communities. A key word here is visualizing. Snyder talks about quantifying impact. When will you hit build out? What are our short-term and long-term infrastructure needs? Integration is another key tool when helping communities. How do issues like housing, economic development, the environment, and transportation needs overlap? Create is another key word for Ken. What do we uniquely create as a whole as a result of planning the future of our community? Lastly, Ken talks about having fun--simply stated: make the process fun!

Civic engagement in the 21st century must incorporate technology such as Twitter, Facebook, and a website. Connect with people also using SketchUp and GoogleEarth--both excellent tools for community planning. Use 3-D visualization to show what a community could look like. Present "futuristic world" type solutions.

Box City: What's that? Build replicas of what you want to keep in your community or map out a realistic model version of what your town/city actually looks like--no matter how depressing.

Use cameras on cell phones in community planning exercises. Send people out to take pictures in their community.

Anatomy of A Town Meeting: 1) Coordinator, 2) Lead Facilitator, 3) Table Captain, 4) Tech Support, 5) Free Lunch, 6) Networked Computers, and 7) Keypads

Keypad polling can be used as a means of collecting information during a meeting in an honest, anonymous way.

For Vision Utah, citizens engaged in dot exercises. The dot exercises literally meant people dotting out and identifying different areas of concern, answering questions like: where are the jobs in our community? where are the schools? where will future growth go? where are problem areas for our community? where are bright spots in our community? where will new people live in our community?

Touch table technologies (just think of an iPhone the size of a table). Ken says why not have several in a room where everyone has a city map, then they can zoom into their specific community area to think about local planning issues.

Touch table technology used in community land use planning:

Use Google Wave in community planning to discuss issues and follow lines of thought. Snyder says Google Wave must be improved in the future to be more community friendly, but nonetheless is a cool online tool for communication, discussion, and engagement.