Do's and Don'ts for Planning in a Web 2.0 Environment

Many of the cities hoping to leverage Web 2.0 tools to better engage their constituents are, ironically, making themselves less effective in the process, argues Scott Doyon, who tries to lend a hand in his latest blog post. Doyon says:

"Project-specific websites and customizable tools for collecting resident ideas can be tremendously empowering and yet, in certain key ways, such efforts to simplify your life have also made things more complicated. In short, their impressive wizbangery can be deceptive, fooling the uninitiated into thinking it's the tool that really matters, rather than the goal-focused story the tool allows you to tell."

"Not to worry, though. If you're already doing a good job of telling your story - regular intervals of what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how people can participate - you'll have far better opportunities to ask questions in context, making respondents contend with the same realities you do. Not only will this produce better data, you'll be amazed at how quickly folks rise to the challenge, even to the point of self-policing within the group."

Thanks to Hazel Borys