Audio for NCDD Confab with Susanna Haas Lyons
We had close to 40 people join us on our June 29th Confab call with Susanna Haas Lyons. Andy had added a link to the audio to the original blog posts about the call, but I wanted to add a new post that shows up in RSS feeds, on Facebook, etc. in case this helps people who missed the call locate the audio and google doc.
I really enjoyed the call, and was fascinated by the project Susanna has been running on Facebook in partnership with the City of Vancouver’s Transportation Plan team. Susanna shared some of her learnings and observations from an interesting Facebook app-based public engagement project she ran last month.
- See the original NCDD blog post on the Confab at www.ncdd.org/5200 for more details
- Link to Susanna’s Facebook application for the City of Vancouver: http://apps.facebook.com/VanTransportFuture
- Google doc used to “chat” and share resources/questions during the call: http://tinyurl.com/ncdd-confab-6-29-11 (archive below)
- Listen to the audio from the call: www.ncdd.org/files/NCDD-Confab-Call-062911.mp3
Google Doc Transcript
For the first time on one of our Confab calls, we had participants live-editing a Google doc so they could share questions, resources, and their own contact details. I’m pasting the final Google doc below as an archive. There is some valuable information here, and also some good feedback which will help us keep improving the Confab calls.
NCDD Confab Call
Wednesday, June 29th from 2:00 to 3:00 Eastern / 11:00 to noon Pacific
Featuring Susanna Haas Lyons
NCDD Confabs are opportunities for members of the NCDD community to connect with each other, to hear about exciting projects in our field, and to explore our field’s most pressing challenges. We run the Confabs via conference call, and for this call we’re experimenting with using a collaborative Google doc to allow people to share questions, resources, links and more.
Susanna will be sharing some of her learnings and observations from an interesting Facebook app-based public engagement project held in June 2011. The Greenest City Conversations research project was led by Susanna in partnership with the City of Vancouver’s Transportation Plan team.
- See the NCDD blog post at https://ncdd.org/5200 for more basics.
- Check out the App itself at http://apps.facebook.com/VanTransportFuture
- Our Google doc is online at http://tinyurl.com/ncdd-confab-6-29-11
Who’s on the call? Feel free to introduce yourself here:
final call records show we had 38 calls total; 31 on the call simultaneously
– Sandy Heierbacher, NCDD Director, www.ncdd.org/contact
– Andy Fluke. NCDD Creative Director, www.ncdd.org/contact
– Arjun Singh, Kamloops BC Canada, Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation, www.arjunsingh.com
– Susanna Haas Lyons www.engaging.ly susanna.haas.lyons [at] gmail [dot] com
– Patrick Scully, West Hartford, Conn
– Janet Fiero
– Angie Natingor, Researcher, BC Hydro
– Courtney Breese, NCDD Board Member, MA Office of Public Collaboration
– David Rosenberg, Norfolk, MA
– Lynden Harris, Hidden Voices, www.hiddenvoices.org
– Kim Crowley
– Janet Thomson, Kearns & West, San Francisco (www.kearnswest.com)
– Brian Sullivan, CivicEvolution
– Dan Bevarly – Collins Center for Public Policy
– Lynn Adams
– James Schneider
– John Morgan, Chinook Institute OR
– Steve Artis, PMLINK360
– Jim Rough, Center for Wise Democracy, www.WiseDemocracy.org, and www.DynamicFacilitation.com
– Elise Selinger, Brooklyn NY, FORTHonFourth avenue
– Evan Paul
– Stephanie Jo Kent, Learning Lab for Resiliency
– David Messerschmidt, EPA Region 10, Seattle
– Iwanka Kultschyckyj, OpenAccessPhilly, Philadelphia, PA
– Larry Schooler, Community Engagement Consultant, City of Austin
– Stephen Buckley, Collaboration Systems Engineer, twitter: @transpartisan, @OpenGovMetrics
– Clay Leben, Pflugerville Council of Neighborhood Assoc. (near Austin) @clayleben
– Cindy Bertram, C Rankin & Associates, Victoria, BC
What questions do you have for Susanna? (include your name)
Q: With a Facebook app, how do you get a sense of the diversity/demographics of participants? (Sandy)
A: survey as well as Facebook insights (which show age, gender, geography for most participants)
Q: In Austin we’ve set a goal for Zero Waste by 2020. any experience / suggestions on engaging on this topic?
A: see Collaborative spreadsheet: how can digital media help communicate or mobilize action on environmental sustainability? http://bit.ly/d2eoDR
Q: Did you find the information/feedback gleaned from Facebook was successful/useful in informing the CoV? How was the info used? (Angie)
A: yes. Results of the Facebook event and other public transportation conversations this spring will be integrated into a draft Transportation Plan by the City of Vancouver, which will then go back to the public for feedback in early 2012
Q: How did you choose who would participate in Phase 1? (Angie)
A: see below
Q: Was there any consideration around people participating who would already be predisposed to sustainability? What efforts were taken to include individuals who may not necessarily be interested in environmental issues? (Angie)
A: targeted outreach strategies
Q: Susanna, you mentioned that there were a number very similar ideas and when people voted, the votes for that collection of ideas were distributed among the different ideas, so the strength of support seemed low, even though there was a great deal of support for that group of closely related ideas. I’d suggest a different method of voting, such as range voting (= score voting), or one of the ranked choice voting methods where ALL the ideas are ranked would have eliminated that problem. (David Rosenberg)
A: This comment was discussed on the call.
Q: Would you be willing to share who the web development company was? (Angie)
A: http://fissionstrategy.com/ roz@fissionstrategy.com
Q: Is there a document containing lessons learned or tips for next time? (Kim C.)
A: I’ll definitely write these up over the next few months (the event ended this morning!)
K: Cool thanks. Hope NCDD posts us a link when that comes out.
Q: Was / will there be a “post-app” survey so that participants can provide their thoughts about the quality of engagement that they experienced? (Stephen Buckley)
A: yes, for both phases
Q: Any issues with Facebook’s proprietary status? (Steph Kent)
A: FB is a private place that feels like a public place. It’s a murky spot for government led engagement and FOI and privacy need to be carefully considered. Operationally, it was easy to use FB’s developer tools.
Q: Did the city fund the development of the platform? Is it adaptable to other users/cities?
A: The transportation department provided in-kind contributions, the sustainability department gave me a small grant
Q: Will this audio be made available to us? (Steph Kent)- thank you 🙂
A: Yes, at https://ncdd.org/5536
Q: Could the facebook app and discussions be bilingual? Spanish/English? (Elise) May I add, could a translation tool be integrated so many languages would be possible? And I’m curious about video, specifically for American Sign Language. (Steph Kent)
A: that would be challenging. Low tech would be to host parallel events. High tech would be to have everything translated in almost real time and you could read either language.
Q: Did the participants “feel” satisfied with their voices being heard? implemented? (iwanka)
A: I asked to what extent do they feel the city should act on what’s heard, and to what extent they felt the hosts of the discussion were listening. Also general feedback on what worked and didn’t etc. I’ll share these results in the fall of 2011???
N.B. I would be very interested in the results in order to share with our Phila team. Thanks.
A: will do, as soon as they are available
Q: Arjun’s inclusion of a Tweet (below) leads me to wonder if Tweeters on this call will share? I am @stephjoke
Responses:
We need a #hashtag……. #haaslyonsrocks ? 🙂 LOL! 🙂
many people use #demopart for dialogue and deliberation stuff
others: #citizen20 #publicengmt #gov20
And please be sure to add #ncdd if you’re tweeting during an NCDD activity!
Q: Susanna, please say more about recruitment. How exactly did you get those ~500 people to sign up? Did you use news media? Printed flyers? Unless you are facebook friends with someone, you cannot know his/her demographics. I want to do this in Brooklyn with the Park Slope civic council (http://www.parkslopeciviccouncil.org/futureof4thavenue) and would appreciate your guidance in how to get targeted participants in a neighborhood of ~75,000. (Elise)
SHL: on outreach, I did:
- identify who needs to participate for the outcomes to be legitimate
- identify leaders and organizations that represent those (demographic, interest, geographical, etc.) groups
- make initial contact, ask for support and participation in recruitment efforts
- provide easy to use outreach materials, ask supporters to write a personal ask, why this project is important to them and why it might be important to their community
- follow up to see how their efforts are going
- track registration to monitor how well the registered participants match our recruitment goals
- alter outreach strategy as appropriate, continue the steps
Responses:
Ok great, we have a strong coalition of local political officials, civic groups and non-profits, now the next step will be to create a draft of the facilitation guide and then create printed outreach materials based on the guide. Thank you! (Elise)
Hi Elise, it’s also useful to engage your coalition in developing content and outreach materials so they feel an ownership over the project
Definitely.
awesome. Good luck, and be in touch if I can help futher!
What other projects/tools would you like call participants to know about? (include name)
- Matt Leighninger’s new guidebook, Using Online Tools to Engage – and be Engaged by – the Public, http://www.businessofgovernment.org/report/using-online-tools-engage-public (note: you can order FREE hard copies) (Sandy)
- The “Collaborative Technology” category in NCDD’s Resource Center, https://ncdd.org/rc/item/category/collaborative-technology (Sandy)
- Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice http://odbook.stanford.edu/
- Promising Practices In Online Engagement. By Scott Bittle, Chris Haller and Alison Kadlec http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/promising-practices-in-online-engagement
- Collaborative spreadsheet: how can digital media help communicate or mobilize action on environmental sustainability? http://bit.ly/d2eoDR
- www.participedia.net We are in the process of updating our platform, but our original somewhat clunky platform is still working.
- +1 for participedia!
- (Arjun) Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this tweet today:
- PeggyHolman 9:09am via HootSuite Klein: We are taking theory of argument mapping to scale. MIT Deliberatorium. http://cci.mit.edu/klein/deliberatorium.html #ICCS11 #ICCS2011
