After watching the 7 minute video of Janette Hartz-Karp describing a sustainability initiative in Geraldton, Australia, I was curious to see what techniques they used to enage the public in long term local planning. What I found is the 2029.civicevolution.org online system for sharing and rating of ideas and their specific talking points (note the Dotmocracy-like 5 point rating of acceptance per a talking point).
I also see they turned all their notes from various in person events and surveys in to a searchable database, which provides accessible transparency. It would be nice to see some attempt at prioritization in the responses within the database, such as using a Dotmocracy process on the responses by a sample of the public.
A list of all their events and various reports are availabe too on their Past Events page.
Overall seems like a great example of a multi-modal approach to engaging citizens in long term planning and it sounds like a success story, according to Janette. One important point she stressed is the importance of telling participants what will be done with their input and how it will impact decision-making, which is key for buy-in and commitment.
This Saturday, October 17th, I will be assisting renowned facilitator Daniel Rose from