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IAP2 October Newsletter

President’s Message – From David Hovde

David Hovde, PresidentGreetings from northeast Wisconsin – I hope this finds you enjoying the first days of autumn wherever you find yourself!

I feel a little bit like I’m still “recovering” from the IAP2 North American Conference – but in a good way. For the 360 or so of you who were in Portland for all or part of the conference, I think you know what I’m talking about. The program was fabulous, of course, and I left each session satisfied and (I think) just a little bit smarter than when I went in. And as usual, I managed to meet and talk with many, many wonderful people.

In addition to all of the exciting conference-related activities, there were a number of other events that took place in Portland, including meetings of the IAP2 USA board, the IAP2 Canada board, and the IAP2 Federation board (including representatives from Australasia, Canada, Indonesia, Southern Africa, and the United States). While the board meetings all took place separately, there were many opportunities for “networking” and cooperation.

Speaking of the IAP2 USA board, the election for directors is coming up soon. Please be on the lookout for more information about nominations, the election process and, subsequently, the results. If you’re considering running for a seat on the board, please contact Leah Jaramillo, Amelia Shaw, me, or any other board member for more information. I do hope you’ll consider helping support IAP2 USA through service on the board.

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Run for the IAP2 USA Board of Directors!

Yes, it is that time of year. The time to start thinking about what you can contribute to your Association. What would you like to see happen, how do you think you can add value? Nominations for the 2016-2018 IAP2 USA Board will open October 14th and close Friday, November 6th.

Are you interested and want to learn more? Take a look at the Board Information Package and the Application Form by clicking here.

2016 Skills Symposium coming to San Diego – Save the Date

We are thrilled to announce that the next IAP2 USA training Skills Symposium is coming to San Diego, California from Sunday, February 21 to Thursday, February 25th. The Symposium will take place at the Bahia Hotel where we will have a block of rooms available starting at $139 per night. Training courses will range from $250 to $350 per day for members. New this year will be an early bird rate so stay tuned for more details coming in late October.

We are currently seeking submissions for the training. Click here for the Call for Submissions. Once we have received and reviewed them, we will be back out to you with the list of available courses, the registration process, hotel booking information, and more. We are SO EXCITED and look forward to welcoming you to the sunny south in February!

ANNOUNCING A NEW Government Membership Level

Today, governments across the country are adopting public participation ordinances and creating guidelines to better engage their residents in making decisions. To continue to encourage this trend, IAP2 USA has createda new government membership. For one flat rate, all employees within the organization can receive IAP2 USA member benefits.

Learn more

“Getting Engaged – Staying Engaged” – The IAP2 October Webinar

When there's no major public decision in the offing, how do you stay in touch with citizens and keep them engaged? Two researchers at the University of North Carolina are using a blog and exploring the importance of Citizen Academies to keep issues and the people in contact with each other. Join us on Tuesday, October 13 at 2:00 pm Eastern time, as John Stephens and Rick Morse share their insights. Click here to register.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2015 IAP2 USA CORE VALUES AWARDS WINNERS!

2015 Core Values Award Winners

Two projects which broke new ground in public participation carried off the honors at the 2015 IAP2 USA Core Values Awards in September. These projects are prime examples of what P2 can do – and, we hope, can inspire you to look not just for solutions to your own P2 challenges, but to strive for award-winning solutions in the process.

metro-4Oregon Metro – the only directly-elected regional government in the USA – won Project of the Year for the Powell – Division Transit and Development Project. This partnership with the cities of Portland and Gresham, Oregon’s largest and fourth-largest cities, respectively, needed a wide range of consultation methods in order to reach out to a widely diverse community. This 15-mile corridor covers a number of neighborhoods with a high proportion of immigrants.

Dr. Don Haddad, Superintendent of St. Vrain Valley Public School District, received the award from USA judge Joel MillsThe St. Vrain Valley Public School District, based in Longmont, Colorado, received the award for Organization of the Year for Embracing Public Participation. In this, parents and others not generally considered to be “experts” or “professionals” in education are included in the School District’s planning and development process. This had to overcome internal and external resistance: from “legacy” staff, who were averse to including these non-professionals in the process, and from citizens who, as in the Portland area, were skeptical and distrustful of the authority itself.

Both St. Vrain Valley Schools and Oregon Metro will now compete against award winners from other IAP2 Affiliates. Those awards will be announced at the IAP2 Australasian Conference, happening this month in Perth, Western Australia.

We encourage you to study the entries and also the criteria for Research Project of the Year, so you can model your upcoming P2 processes with the 2016 Core Values Awards in mind. You could find yourself on the stage, hearing the applause and receiving the hardware, at next year’s Conference in Montréal!


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THE 2015 IAP2 NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE

The annual North American Conferences keep getting better and better! The 2015 edition, Sept. 9 – 11 in Portland, Oregon, set a record for attendance, selling-out at 350! Attendees came from the US, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and Singapore.

And what a conference! In the sessions and out, conference-goers were treated to a variety of studies in P2 in action.

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales (with Cascade Chapter's Patty Unfred) welcomed everyone to the "Birthplace of P2".

Other sessions looked at communicating scientific concepts in an age when there is so much cynicism and outright rejection of the positions of scientists; dealing with angry farmers in central California as they face a fifth straight year of drought; even how P2 in the case of legalizing marijuana helped people in Oregon reach a joint solution (sorry).

One pre-conference workshop examined how maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion is now mandated in Portland (“not just a good idea – it’s the law”), and considering how the state of Oregon was once regarded as the most racist state north of Dixie (the subject of another extra-curricular event), that’s quite a turnaround.

If you weren’t able to make it to Portland, you can still learn from the session presenters as these presentations are now available online.

A new concept this year: "Poster Sessions" allowed practitioners to share briefly some of their projects in a less-formal, more interactive setting.






The silent auction raised over $1,900.00 for the IAP2 USA Student Scholarship Fund.

IAP2 colleagues came literally halfway around the world to take part, like Leanne Hartill (l) of IAP2 Australasia and Aldi Answar from IAP2 Indonesia.

The "Fair Housing Council" took attendees on a tour of some of the relics of Portland's and Oregon's history of discrimination - and the story of the state's turnaround.


KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS NOW ONLINE

Stimulating, enlightening and each one totally different: the Conference plenaries featured four brilliant keynote speakers. Their presentations are now online (click on their names to see them).

Anne Udall provided some basic truths about P2, especially when it comes to shaping education policy: people will only take part in things they care about; they need to know that their input will make a difference; they need to be told up-front why a P2 process is going ahead.

Denis Hayes shared some inconvenient truths, gleaned from a 45-year career in activism, which included organizing the first Earth Day and sit-ins at various university facilities. He added a warning about the current state of privacy in America, with the high-tech capabilities of domestic spying, and urged attendees to stand up for privacy rights because, as he puts it, true democracy can’t exist without P2 and P2 can’t exist if people are afraid to participate.

Nanci Luna Jiménez shared some uncomfortable truths about racism and guilt, and spelled out what she calls the Four Stages of Cognitive and Ethical Development. Stage One is “Dualism” – a fear-based, one-way-or-the-other, worldview; Stage Four is “Committed Relativism” -- being able to see and be moved by others’ points of view; which then cycles back to a new form of Dualism. She also engaged the audience in a communications exercise, where the emphasis was not on listening, but on talking. As she puts it, the talker becomes vulnerable and the listener winds up holding all the cards.

Award-winning journalist Andrew DeVigal – now inaugural chair of online journalism and civic engagement at the University of Oregon – brought some timely truths about the new demands of journalism in the era of social media and noted the similarity of the goals of journalism and P2: mainly, to provide the public with the information they need to make choices on matters that affect them.

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THE 2015 NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE ACCORDING TO STORIFY

Karen ZypchynBy Karen Zypchyn

We encouraged participants to use Twitter (#2015NAConf) to spread the word, and Karen Zypchyn of the Wild Rose Chapter curated the tweets on Storify (hands up: who would have used that expression five years ago?) to paint a series of pictures in 140 characters or fewer.

Karen is a former journalism university instructor with 10 years’ experience teaching social media and online communication courses, and citizen participation in the news. Karen has joined the growing field of public participation. She offers in-depth training in communication and is interested in experimenting with online P2 tools.

You may be asking yourself, what is “Storifying”? It is a reference to a social media curation tool called Storify that enables you to make sense out of people’s social media posts.

I used Storify to create a four-part series on what our P2 colleagues shared on Twitter about what they were learning IAP2 North American Conference 2015. It was simple to use and an obvious choice for the task of telling the social media story of the #2015NAConf on Twitter. Here’s how Storify works and why you should care about it.

Numerous social media postings are shared quickly and randomly through various platforms, and they are visually presented in a timeline. Then, they can seemingly disappear amidst all the sharing like on Twitter, for example. While social media communication permits lots of voices to be shared, the experience can feel fragmented. The story narrative can be missing. The capacity to create meaning can be short-lived.


Many conference-goers used social media to share what they
were getting out of the sessions with those who weren't there.

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THANK YOU for your generosity — the IAP2 USA Scholarship Fund

By Francesca Patricolo

Francesca PatricoloThe North American Conference featured a silent auction to benefit the brand new IAP2 USA Student Scholarship fund. Thanks to generous donations from organizations and individuals, we had twelve items up for bid including gift baskets with contents from many individual donors. The result? Together we raised $1,910!!! The love, care, generosity, and creativity that went into the donations brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. Thank you tremendously everyone who participated by donating and bidding. Your support encourages student membership, relationships with universities, research in the field, and the ongoing vitality and sustainability of our organization.

The next step is to figure out how to award our new scholarship! Want to help? The IAP2 USA Scholarship Task Force will meet about three times, by conference call, between October and December to prepare recommendations to the IAP2 USA Board of Directors on implementing a new IAP2 Student Scholarship Award program. We are especially looking for current students interested in creating a legacy as well as individuals with experience starting, evaluating, or issuing student scholarship awards. To join us (please do!), contact Francesca Patricolo at francesca.patricolo@portlandoregon.gov.

Thank you!We'd like to give a Shout Out! to our Silent Auction Contributors!

Intermountain Chapter  •  IAP2 USA/IAP2 Canada Staff  •  Lance Robertson, Cascade Chapter  •  Brooks & Associates  •  Group Pattern Language Project  •  The Participation Company  •  Francesca Patricolo, Cascade Chapter  •  Port of Vancouver Washington  •  Burns & McDonnell  •  IAP2 Puget Sound  •  The Participation Company  •  Sheri Wantland, Cascade Chapter  •  Anne Carol, Midwest Chapter

Member Spotlight: Jeanna and Tim Hall

Jeanna and Tim HallMeet the drive behind the 2015 North American Conference!

Jeanna and Tim Hall, Portland residents and retired IAP2 practitioners co-chaired the 2015 North American Conference committee of over 20 volunteers who made the conference the great success that is was.

Fast facts:
25+ volunteers, 350+ attendees, and 115+ presenters and panelists, from 8 countries (Australia, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States) participating in 55+ sessions in
2 ½ jam packed days

Jeanna joined IAP2 in the mid-1990s when she was a Public Involvement Planner for Metro. “It was a perfect fit for what I was doing. In 2002, I changed jobs, working for Clean Water Services, a regional water resources management utility” she said. “I became involved in the Cascade chapter, and I became a chapter officer and served on the national board of directors – all professional development opportunities that I wouldn’t have grown from had I not become active in the organization.”

Tim met Jeanna and was introduced to IAP2 at a Cascade chapter-hosted reception at an EPA PI conference in Portland in 2002. Since then, he too has been active in the chapter, serving on its executive committee and helping to plan the chapter PI Network events. Tim signed up his staff as IAP2 members and over the years encouraged City of Portland PI staff to join. He and Jeanna were married in 2008.

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INTERESTING LINKS

Interesting LinksWe would like to thank our members for submitting these links. If you have something you want to share please send it to info@iap2usa.org.

Upcoming Events

Tues., Oct. 13 2:00 - 3:15 PM (EDT)
IAP2 October Webinar – Getting Engaged / Staying Engaged
October 14 – 16 2015 IAP2 Australasian Conference, Perth, WA
November 3-5 IAP2 Planning for Public Participation (3-Days) Fort Collins, Colorado
Tues., Nov. 10
IAP2 November Webinar – TBD
Feb. 21-25, 2016
IAP2 USA Skills Symposium - San Diego, CA
info@iap2usa.org    


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