How to keep plans moving after the consultants leave.

Make no little plans. They have not the magic to stir mens blood.

-Daniel Burnham

I’m pretty sure this is on the syllabus, day one of planning school; if its not already taped to the classroom door, typed into the Powerpoint presentation and posted on the course’s website.  Another thing Burnham could have added though, is to have a contingency plan in place for when the initial plan’s consultant stops getting paid to promote the project and the community / council / or committee takes over. At a public meeting, the speaker was asked exactly this question. What was in store for his plan after he stopped taking it on a speaking tour? I thought his answer was genius.

The speaker noted that part of the initial planning process was to create an open enrollment for the advisory committee. This is a change from the norm. Advisory committees are typically 20 person boards full of figure heads and individuals of stature within the political and economic hierarchy of the community. These individuals are typically asked to participate by either the consultants or other advisory committee members based on connections. As a refreshing counter to this, the consultants created a website that hosted an open enrollment policy, allowing passionate members of the community to sign up, advise the process, and then (the genius part) continue stumping for the proposal within their communities and local government structure long after the consultant and figure heads had left the project.

While I’m sure this created headaches of its own, the hassle of consensus making among the 150+ individuals who signed up comes to mind, its benefits are clear. Having 150, hard core, very knowledgeable community supporters (aka, the foundations of a mob) who are willing to devote their scarce time and energy into promoting a project never hurt.

 

How to be a better meeting participant.

This morning, I attended my first public meeting in months. Its been a while for two reasons:

• One, I was out of town for four months for two summer internships in various cities.
• And two, the fall semester I returned to near about squelched my desire to do any type of extra curricular activity, much less my own degree requirements.

I was taking four hours over the institute allowed 21 semester hours in order to finish my degree on time; working extra hours at my architecture co-op in response to the state wide increases in tuition; and struggling to wrap up thesis research at the same time that I was in a typical, required architectural studio – a College of Architecture scheduling failure if you ask me

So, it was quite entertaining to get out of my own little world and plop my big toe back into the going-ons of the city. I attended a monthly meeting held by the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development on the topic of Healthy Places.  January’s speaker was John Moore from Gladding Jackson, introducing the Connect Atlanta Plan, the city’s new comprehensive transportation planning document.

Ask a question!

The presentation was highly informative, if only because I’m probably the only person left in my degree program who has yet to attend a presentation somewhere: at work, through a class, an evening lecture, etc. on the information contained in the document. I’ll be blogging on other tangential notes I took during presentation, but I’ll start with the question I asked during the comments section at the end. Not the actual question, but just the idea of asking one. And yes, I have to consciously force myself to do this. I’m not very good at putting myself out there, but its beneficial for several reasons:

• It forces you to pay more attention to the presentation when you know you’ll be required to ask a somewhat put together and comprehensible question at the end.

• It gives you something to start with if you approach the speaker afterwards. Better to introduce yourself and say, “I asked the (very insightful) question about blah, blah, blah, earlier and I really enjoyed what you had to say on such and such“ rather than “Hi, I sat in the back, uninterested / unmotivated enough to pay attention”.

• Speaking about what you’ve learned, rather than purely listening to it, helps cement the information in your mind for future reference.

• Asking questions also raises your interaction with the other attendees, both during the comments time and afterwards. It gives you a chance to respond to the speaker, and the audience a chance to respond to you, or to the speakers’ response, to further the conversation.

Now, for obvious reasons, this isn’t always possible and it is largely correlated to the size of the audience. There isn’t the time for everyone to ask a question. However, most people usually don’t, so that leaves plenty of room if you’re interested enough in the topic.