Online Civic Engagement: Case Studies, Pitfalls and Best Practices
Hosted by Salt Lake City Government
Salt Lake City Main Library
Conference Room, Level 4
Wednesday January 23, 2013 
9:00am to 12:00pm
Free Workshop - Includes Light Refreshments 

Citizens have been increasingly going online to engage with family, friends, colleagues, businesses and organizations. Accordingly, local governments are increasingly interested in how to go online for civic engagement with their constituents.  However, online forums, blogs, and crowd-sourcing tools are frequently dominated by bullies as well as full of vitriol and misinformation.  

Hosted by the Salt Lake City Government, join the Alliance for Innovation and its corporate partner, Peak Democracy Inc, in a discussion of how local governments are using online public comment forums to dialogue with their constituents in ways that are civil, legal and insightful as well as easy-to-deploy and inexpensive. 

 The seminar helped me to understand how the program could be used very effectively to help bolster community participation. Excellent!
Lake Oswego, OR Attendee

Workshop Outline:
Why governments should use online public comment forums;

Challenges and pitfalls governments face with online forums;

How governments are using online public comment forums in ways that maintain order and decorum and therefore are civil and legal;

How governments are using online forum analysis tools to gain insight into their communities -- not possible with conventional communication channels.

Nole Walkingshaw, Planning Programs Supervisor, Salt Lake City Government Case Study 

What You’ll Learn: 

How  online forums can be civil, fair and legal -- in contrast to the misinformation, vitriol and bullying that is endemic to online forums, blogs and crowd-sourcing tools;

How online forums provide insightful perspective and enable decision makers to synthesize voluminous online feedback

How online forums can delight your constituents as well as government decision makers and staff.

To Register: contact Pamela Muse, Alliance Western Regional Director at 888-468-6450 or pmuse@PROTECTED. 

Click here for directions. 

Facilitator: 

Robert Vogel co-founded Peak Democracy Inc and is the company’s CEO. Prior to founding Peak Democracy, Robert was the executive director of a non-profit organization that was awarded a grant from Berkeley CA to facilitate online civic engagement. After more than 5,000 residents attended those Berkeley online forums, Robert co-founded Peak Democracy to expand those services nationwide. Since 2008, Robert has been collaborating with the Alliance for Innovation to trail-blaze the development of government online forums that are civil, legal and insightful. Having worked with over 50 government agencies to power over 800 online forums that have attracted over 88,000 online attendees, Robert is now an expert in best practices for online civic engagement. Robert has two graduate degrees - one in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and another in physics from UC Berkeley.   

Peak Democracy has been collaborating closely with the Alliance for Innovation in spearheading the development of online public comment forums since 2008, and is committed to providing software that serves local governments in their effort to meet today’s challenges.

Case Study Presenter:

Nole Walkingshaw, Planning Programs Supervisor, Salt Lake City Planning Division. Nole has been with Salt Lake City for about 14 years and has a B.S in Planning from the University of Utah. Nole processes complex land use and policy amendments. He is the System Administrator for Salt Lake City’s ePlan review system “Project Dox”. He is a team leader for Salt Lake City’s Accela program, this program manages permit and petition information for 13 work groups, and is currently managing and developing online public participation services. Nole is the administrator for Salt Lake City’s Open City Hall.