May 26, 2005 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A Washington organization that uses technology to bring the traditional town-hall meeting into the 21st century is about to tackle its biggest project yet.
AmericaSpeaks is organizing two meetings of 1,000 people each — one in November and the other next year — as part of a broad philanthropic effort to promote economic development in Northeast Ohio. The participants will be selected to represent the demographics of the region.
At the all-day meetings, participants will discuss key topics, such as job training, in groups of about 10 to 12, led by a trained moderator. A panel of experts will be available to answer factual questions participants have — such as how many manufacturing jobs the region has lost in the last decade.
Each table will have a laptop computer that participants can use to record important points of their group’s conversation. In another area of the room, a group of local policy analysts will read the data from all the groups to identify common threads and interesting ideas that fall outside of those themes. After the analysts have pulled together a list of options raised by the discussions, participants will use a computer keypad to show how they rank the importance of each option, as well as to respond to polling questions posed throughout the day.
The technology, says Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, the organization’s founder and president, allows the organization to synthesize the thoughts of a large number of people in an organized way. It also allows the organization to produce the results of the discussion immediately.
“Most citizen-engagement processes take months afterwards, or at minimum weeks afterwards, for people to understand what the real outcomes were,” says Ms. Lukensmeyer.
The effort is being paid for with $3-million from the Fund for Our Economic Future, a coalition of 62 foundations and other organizations in Northeast Ohio. The town-hall meetings are part of an 18-month project AmericaSpeaks is developing to involve residents of the region in a discussion on economic development and identify priorities.
The project will also include in-depth interviews with people in Northeast Ohio, community forums, online discussions, and a series of meetings for local government, business, and nonprofit leaders.
For more information: Go to http://www.americaspeaks.org.
