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April 20, 2012
Community Forum Network

Community Forums Network: Let's Move Forward! from Community Forums Network on Vimeo.

April 19, 2012
Crowdsourcing Better Neighborhoods

Driving around Boston one day, a city employee spotted something unusual, according to a post over on Fast Company’s blog:

April 5, 2012
The Triangle Region: Joins 180 Independent Groups Taking Advantage of LocalWiki’s Free Open-Source Software

Whether you’re new to a city or a long time resident, you almost certainly have knowledge and perspectives you can share with and learn from your neighbors. If cities had one spot where they could collect and capture the spirit of a thriving area, they might just increase collaboration and knowledge dissemination across an entire region.

Whether you’re new to a city or a long time resident, you almost certainly have knowledge and perspectives you can share with and learn from your neighbors. If cities had one spot where they could collect and capture the spirit of a thriving area, they might just increase collaboration and knowledge dissemination across an entire region.

March 5, 2012
Transparency Camp 2012

TransparencyCamp is an “unconference” for opengov: an event where, each year, journalists, developers, technologists, policy-makers, government officials, students, academics, wonks, and everyone in between gather to share their knowledge about how to use new technologies and policies to make our government really work for the people -- and to help our people work smarter with our government.

Washington, DC - TransparencyCamp is an “unconference” for opengov: an event where, each year, journalists, developers, technologists, policy-makers, government officials, students, academics, wonks, and everyone in between gather to share their knowledge about how to use new technologies and policies to make our government really work for the people -- and to help our people work smarter with our government.

February 23, 2012
Communicating Planning Project Initiatives & Achievements

The question of how to effectively and appropriately communicate with the public regarding department or organizational planning initiatives and achievements frequently comes up for us with clients. Although some planners may have fine tuned their project communication strategy, it became apparent to us recently, while browsing discussions on Cyburbia.com, that many are still struggling to find some fresh ideas on how to spread the word about what they are actually working on.

February 15, 2012
25th Bled Conference - eDemocracy: from eRevolution to eParticipation

Don't miss this Special Interest Track at the 25th Bled Conference - eDemocracy: from eRevolution to eParticipation. The purpose of this Special Interest Track is to shed light on recent developments in this highly topical areas and to discuss exciting new projects, experiences and future (research) directions -especially from a infor-mation systems perspective.

January 16, 2012
Civic Commons Marketplace Offers New Perspective on Which Engagement Software Really Works

New apps are coming out every day, but how does a local government find out about the latest technology?  How do they gain access to the newest, most innovative ways to improve the lives of their citizens? Civic Commons has recently launched the Civic Commons Marketplace. The marketplace is a database of civic software brought together to help government personnel find the online engagement tech tools to best fit their city’s needs. 

New apps are coming out every day, but how does a local government find out about the latest technology?  How do they gain access to the newest, most innovative ways to improve the lives of their citizens? Civic Commons has recently launched the Civic Commons Marketplace. The marketplace is a database of civic software brought together to help government personnel find the online engagement tech tools to best fit their city’s needs.  

December 29, 2011
Top 5 Most Popular EngagingCities Posts of 2011

We hope all of you have had a joyous holiday season, and from all of us here at EngagingCities, we wish you a prosperous and happy New Year! In conclusion to a great 2011, here’s a quick look back at our most popular posts, according to our web analytics data, from this past year. Cheers - more to come in 2012! 

We hope all of you have had a joyous holiday season, and from all of us here at EngagingCities, we wish you a prosperous and happy New Year! In conclusion to a great 2011, here’s a quick look back at our most popular posts, according to our web analytics data, from this past year.

Cheers - more to come in 2012!  

December 16, 2011
Using Social Media for Good Causes

December 7, 2011
Should My Department Have a Facebook Page?

An entry level planner approaches his manager and asks if the department should be considering creating a Facebook page to get the word out about current projects. Says he knows a planner in the Bay Area that has recently done this for his community. The manager is skeptical. His only experience with Facebook in this context is work-related questions that would come in directly to him from residents, which foiled his attempts to have a personal life in the small town he managed. So, is this a good idea? Or a bad one - to have a Facebook page dedicated to your community and managed by your city department? What about controversial projects you are working on?

This article is part of our Cyburbia series, featuring interesting conversations and perspectives from planners in the trenches on public engagement challenges they face in their daily work. The
Cyburbia Forums is the oldest and most active urban planning message board on the Internet.

December 1, 2011
Social Cities: How to Engage Citizens With Digital Media

The increasing growth and complexity of cities raises the question how we can use digital media technologies and principles from online culture to design livable and lively cities. How can digital media aid citizens to engage with their environment, with fellow urbanites, and with issues at stake in their cities? Most mobile and location-based apps are about personalized consumption and sharing preferences with an in-group of like-minded people. Can we use digital technologies to help solve collective problems in the city too?

The increasing growth and complexity of cities raises the question how we can use digital media technologies and principles from online culture to design livable and lively cities. How can digital media aid citizens to engage with their environment, with fellow urbanites, and with issues at stake in their cities? Most mobile and location-based apps are about personalized consumption and sharing preferences with an in-group of like-minded people. Can we use digital technologies to help solve collective problems in the city too?

November 17, 2011
Creating More Efficient Social Media Processes

There are many ways to leverage your project’s web and mobile presence in our ever innovative world of outreach and communications technologies. In our day to day dealings with clients, we teach businesses, including real estate companies, non-profits, local authorities, and government institutions how to reap the most benefit from today’s most popular social media services, including blogs, online communities, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

September 16, 2011
The Hidden Influence of Social Networks

September 12, 2011
Our Picks From Next American City's Top Apps & Tools for Civic Engagement

As mutual advocates of issues central to the future of cities, Next American City is just one of the resources that EngagingCities staff refers to from time to time in search of the top trends and tools related to socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities. Recently, Next American City Magazine published a comprehensive list of best apps, websites and software for enhancing and improving urban life. The list included tools affiliated with everything from city governance,  mapping and transportation, to “living well”.  Our favorites are...

August 10, 2011
Keeping up with Communication Technology: Online Workshop on the Practical Use of Social Media

Free online workshop on the practical use of social media and web-based tools hosted by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (TRB) will feature panel discussions lead by experts and interactive breakout sessions.

Free online workshop on the practical use of social media and web-based tools hosted by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (TRB) will feature panel discussions lead by experts, interactive process and policy breakout sessions, case studies and tutorials.

Panel Discussions: 

  • Planning and Strategizing a Social Media Portfolio
  • Engaging your Audience

 

Topics include:

August 4, 2011
How Social Networks Predict Epidemic

August 3, 2011
Measuring Social Media Effectiveness

Now that many planning projects have launched their social media campaigns and are moving in the direction of actively managing a web presence to maintain open online dialogue platforms for public engagement, its time to evaluate what can be done to effectively measure their success rates. It is difficult to benchmark respective activity in the social media realm, as performance is measured differently. This is especially true due to the fact that social media is so versatile, diverse, complex and multi-faceted, spanning many disparate objectives and many different platforms.

Now that many planning projects have launched their social media campaigns and are moving in the direction of actively managing a web presence to maintain open online dialogue platforms for public engagement, its time to evaluate what can be done to effectively measure their success rates. It is difficult to benchmark respective activity in the social media realm, as performance is measured differently. This is especially true due to the fact that social media is so versatile, diverse, complex and multi-faceted, spanning many disparate objectives and many different platforms.

July 27, 2011
Scoville: Location-based tool for community asset mapping?

Some of you might be familiar with Foursquare, a mobile service that lets you “check-in” to locations and see who is nearby. Recently, Foursquare founder  Dennis Crowley  opened its API to anyone who wanted to build layers on top of Foursquare. This invitation inspired a new location based app called Scoville, currently available in beta mode to Foursquare members and Facebook users.

July 14, 2011
Using Online Tools - and Building Civic Infrastructure

In some ways, I was an unlikely choice to write a report on Using Online Tools to Engage –and be Engaged by – the Public. My work has centered mainly on face-to-face forms of public engagement. I had only just begun to use a Facebook page to distribute updates and resources to practitioners and researchers. I had to do most of the research on online tools from scratch. I was vaguely suspicious of Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, and (above all) Twitter.

June 29, 2011
Using Facebook Fan Pages to Better Engage Your Participants

These days RFPs for planning projects often include the requirement to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites as a means to communicate with the public. Unfortunately, it typically doesn’t go beyond that and many projects that we have seen simply use these venues under the assumption we-build-it-and-they-will-come. Therefore the level of activity and fans or followers is often low.

June 24, 2011
Institutions vs. Collaboration
June 13, 2011
Participation Metrics in Online Communities Often Neglected

In our opinion, evaluation of participation metrics should be paid more attention to. More often than not, online communities don’t serve their purpose of engaging visitors, simply because they are not being monitored appropriately for optimal participation. Here are just a few things that can be done to raise the bar to measure and increase public engagement in online communities.

In our opinion, evaluation of participation metrics should be paid more attention to. More often than not, online communities don’t serve their purpose of engaging visitors, simply because they are not being monitored appropriately for optimal participation. 

Below, you will find a few ideas for what can be done to raise the bar to measure and increase public engagement in online communities:

May 17, 2011
Craigslist Foundation Recently Launched Likeminded.org

Inspired by local community success stories that had yet to be shared beyond the community itself, the Craigslist Foundation, well known as a catalyst for individual and collective action for the public good across America, set out a little over a year ago to develop an online platform which would help spread these powerful stories to a broader audience. The concept behind this public engagement tool was to create a new type of forum especially for people who wanted to change something in their community but were unsure of where to start.

April 2, 2011
ImproveSF.org - Collecting ideas from city employees

When you think about government, you think about a lot of things. Taxes, parking tickets, police. Government touches each of our lives in ways we may not even notice.  But if there’s one thing government isn’t known for it is openness, engagement, and efficiency. A one way dialogue has kept the public voice muted and progressive technologies that can deliver much needed change at bay.

March 5, 2011
Renew Newcastle

Affectionately referred to as the Detroit of Australia, Newcastle inauspiciously jump-started their own downtown revitalization with the simple creation of a Facebook page.