27 Oct 08 Demand: Present ‘On Demand’
Demand: Community presentations and materials can be viewed on the project web site.
The most likely time period stakeholders and residents are going to review and explore your expert opinion is within 24 hours of your presentation. If you don’t provide these materials within this short window, you loose what might be your last opportunity for your point to stick. Learn how to convert your presentation into a web friendly format, how to add audio to your visuals and get it online without technical skill. Everyone in your organization should be able to record their presentation and submit it to the web site.
Tags: presentation materials
23 Oct 08 Demand: Provide mapping advice
Demand: Clients ask you to guide them to the most affordable GIS solution
There are more than a few ways to create an interactive geographic information system. Learn what your options are and how to present them to your clients. Learn how to increase your value as a planning consultant to utilize these tools and integrate them into the planning process.
Tags: GIS, online mapping
21 Oct 08 Demand: Feedback Loop
Demand: Clients request a community feedback loop to comment on the plan; How do you manage this without allowing all the comments to be viewed live?
You can add value to the community participation component of the plan by allowing residents to make comments online. Just because you provide this feature, doesn’t mean you have to use a discussion forum where everyone’s comments are live on the web. Learn ways to manage community feedback without allowing others to view previous comments. This keeps people from being persuaded by other opinions while providing a platform for feedback. Learn how to use software to create a continuous feedback loop to automatically respond to residents from your plan web site.
Tags: collaboration, Web Site Development
18 Oct 08 Demand: Post it ASAP
Demand: Clients request documents to be online.
When your clients want their documents online, they don’t mean a list of PDFs. Don’t underestimate the value of live text. HTML is easier to read on the screen and saves trees. If you don’t know how to post live text to the web, then you need a tool to help you. In a matter of seconds your documents can exist on the web, be scanned by Google, and returned as a link from a search query. PDFs take much longer to be noticed by search engines and load on the screen.
Tags: community focused web site, web site applications
15 Oct 08 Demand: Collaboration
Demand: Co-create the plan with others without wasting time on the process of collaboration.
Document management, project collaboration, co-authoring live text are things you can use to work faster. The demand to do more instantly and stay organized in the process is a daily strain on workflow. Learn how to use web-based applications that actually curb the development time of documents and keep your team organized.
Tags: collaborate, collaborative software
13 Oct 08 Demand: 3D Realism
Demand: Higher levels of expectations from the public driven by the movie and gaming industries lead most people to expect a certain degree of realism from your 3D presentations.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Budgeting is no longer a prohibiting factor to construct 3D models of cities rapidly but do you take it too far? Learn when to go 3D and when 2D will suffice to be effective. Learn when photorealism is necessary and when it is not.
Tags: 2d, 3d, SketchUp, visualization
08 Oct 08 Differientiate your planning services
There are real barriers then there are perceived barriers. Broadband availability to your home is a real barrier but not being able to access the internet from home is a perceived barrier. Just because your computer can’t get a decent connection to the internet doesn’t mean your cell phone can’t.
You might view technology as an obstacle to growing your business. You might think you need to hire techie staff to work strictly on project web sites and server administration. You might believe this one person can keep up with the demands of your office.
To borrow from communism theory, the collective is much more powerful than the individual. What if you shifted your perspective? What if I said you could save one hundred thousand dollars a year (probably much more) easily if you didn’t hire a techie but raised the technical capabilities of everyone in your firm? One hour a week of training over six weeks can expand your ability to work more efficiently and deliver a superior product to your clients.
A shift in perspective is all that is required. Sometimes we have a tendency to get in our own way. Keeping all of your staff from access to a new way of thinking greatly reduces the opportunity for innovation. One hour a week can empower everyone in your organization to reframe the problem and see the solution more clearly. It can demystify technology and teach them how to solve internal obstacles such as putting content online, creating plan graphics and web sites, collaborating on a proposal, and providing useful advice to your clients. Expand your knowledge to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.
What makes you different? What makes your organization different? Is it the location? Prestige? Leadership? Personality? There is an ever increasing demand on differentiation. For a business, the combination of the expertise of the people who work there, the quality of the service and deliverable, and how the deliverable is packaged are 3 differentiating factors you can quickly change. Our job as planners is to help change and manage the same factors for a city. Similar differentiating factors of a place might be the people that live there, the quality of their life, and the texture of the urban fabric.
Tags: planning services, planning skills
06 Oct 08 Personal “mini” marketing for planning professionals 3/3
Web Site
Create a web site. It doesn’t have to be more than one page. Purchase a decent domain name, one that ends in a .net or .com (not .org!) or start a web site on a third party site such as NetVibes (www.netvibes.com). Put your web site link on your Face Book and Linked In accounts. Add Google Analytics to the page so you can track how many hits you got. Here is the minimum information to put on it:
1. About You – a short professional biography but keep it interesting, even funny
2. Your resume- always keep an up-to-date resume handy
3. Your grand professional vision- how you see your role in planning make a difference
4. Links to your profiles on LinkedIn, etc.
5. A Mini portfolio- at least 4 or 5 projects you worked on, the problem you were addressing, and the outcomes.
6. A professional picture of you
7. Books you have read both fiction and non-fiction
8. Some famous quotes, your favorite period in history, etc. Something that suits your personality
9. Travel and document the places you went and how what you saw there is relevant to your field in planning. Document thoughts, ideas, feelings from our experiences in cities.
Tags: personal database, professional image
03 Oct 08 Personal “mini” marketing for planning professionals 2/3
Blog
Create a blog to write about your experiences in planning. Share your unique perspective by giving voice to past experiences. If you are going to start a blog, you should write in it at least twice a week. Never stop. This is a continuous, ongoing activity that builds expertise through consistency. The blog in its entirety is more important than several well written, long entries.
If blogging is too much of a time commitment or if you aren’t sure what to say, then respond to posts on Planetizen (www.Planetizen.com). Create a profile and make meaningful comments. Visit the site once a week to make at least two comments.
Tags: blog experience of travel
02 Oct 08 Personal “mini” marketing for planning professionals 1/3
Planners who want to showcase the results of their work and build professional credibility on an individual basis can create their own “mini marketing plan.” Here are some of the tools and activities individuals should be encouraged to do.
Social media
Join Face Book and Linked In. Fill out the entire profile including a professional photograph. Add vacation photographs. Invite other planners you work with, went to school with, and know to join your network. Join focused groups such as “Technology for Urban Planning.” In Face Book, add a module such as virtual library or map your friends to your profile. These are not only entertaining but engaging tools. Get familiar with how they function. Keep your profile updated by visiting it at least once a month.
