Category Archives: Uncategorized

America Speaks blogs about a citizen engagement process in Ohio’s Owensboro-Daviess County and their evolving use of social media in civic participation processes. Mashable writes about Foursquare’s entry into the civic engagement universe with an “I Voted” badge. The Dirt reports on Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s article arguing about the importance of great urban parks for [...]

Blogger and social networking pro Beth Kanter writes about different ways of using twitter to break the ice at meetings and events.  She described having folks take photos of each other and posting them on twitter as a icebreaker at a BlogWorld panel last week in Las Vegas.  While it might be simpler if everyone [...]

Next American City interviews Portland Mayor Sam Adams about the city’s new EcoDistricts Initiative (with partner the Portland Sustainability Initiative).  Mayor Adams talks briefly about the approach, the civic engagement, and the technology.  His “help them see the benefits” language doesn’t necessarily jive with the sort of civic participation process we tend to prefer, but [...]

Next American City explores the rise of gaming and game paradigms in civic engagement, noting the role of incentive structures in creating enticing and enjoyable experiences that can be directed at improved civic participation. Next American City also reflects on the dysfunctions of having multiple, disparate transit agencies across the Bay area, noting the way [...]

PlaceMatters has been engaged in a very intense public process with the Denver Public Schools, helping to facilitate a public process around what to do with struggling schools in the Far North East.  Over the past couple of months, this has been a process that I think has resulted in genuine learning on the part [...]

With the deadline for presentation proposals to the Annual American Planning Association conference looming, Windows 7 provided the needed inspiration — in the middle of a strategic planning meeting where we were using Skype Video to include Jocelyn in the conversation, without warning, Windows 7 decided to shut down all programs, install updates, and restart [...]

Next American City offers a few thoughts about the growth of real-time data feeds and opportunities to improve the efficiency of city services and quality of life (e.g., negotiating traffic). Urban STL laments the lack of participation in the “Framing a Modern Masterpiece” competition to redesign the grounds of the St. Louis Arch. Digital Urban [...]

With the newly unveiled “Places” feature, Facebook looks to catch up with pioneer services like Foursquare  and Gowalla which take advantage of location aware devices, namely smart phones and iPads, to allow people to learn about the whereabouts of their friends and more easily connect in real spaces as well as virtual spaces. With a [...]