Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:14 — 15.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS

Integrating real world facilitation with online engagement

Rebecca Sutherns, CEO of Sage Solutions, co-hosts this week’s podcast. 

Rebecca shares her insights into the value of facilitated conversations with stakeholder groups and the challenge of facilitation in an era in which people are more focused on the screens of their mobile devices than to the people who may be sitting only feet away. She talks about integrating the richness and value of in-person experiences with online experiences that will reach larger numbers of people. This presents not only the challenge of asking questions to obtain useful responses across media, but also the challenge of interpreting data sets that will vary in both number and richness of data.

Let’s Talk IAP2

Last September at the IAP2 North American conference in Denver, IAP2kicked off an examination of its organization and business model. This has been underway at an elite level, driven by a “Change Committee” drawn from North America, Australasia, Indonesia, Southern Africa and Latin America.

This week, IAP2 sent an email to members like us inviting us to provide our input on a set of strategic directions that were established by the Change Committee. The intent is to gather member input via the Let’s Talk IAP2 website for the next few weeks and then for a consensus decision from national and regional affiliate boards at IAP2 in Victoria.

Both Rebecca and I are looking forward to providing our input. However, for me, the fact that IAP2 is consulting members so late in the process, and only consulting members, as opposed to the groups that it is “involving”, such as trainers, or empowering (both of those terms are defined in the IAP2 spectrum) elevates my puzzlement at the top-focused nature of IAP2. It is the only membership-based organization that I have participated in that treats members as peripheral to decision-making. That’s ironic, when you think about the mission and mandate embodied in the organization’s name – the International Association for Public Participation.

IAP2 is important to me — I hope they get it right.

Let’s Talk IAP2 launched August 8 and runs to August 27. Find out more information at Let’s Talk IAP2.

Sidewalk goes off the rails?

Sidewalk Labs is planning to build a model smart community in Toronto. But their approach to community relations and public participation has undermined trust and raised opposition in the community.

About Joe Thornley

Joseph Thornley, co-host of Inside PR, is CEO of Thornley Fallis and founder of 76engage. He is a past Chair of the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms. Full bio