Table Talk Podcast

Stéphanie Beaureguard, Practice Lead at Bang the Table, and Nicole Melanson, Manager, Communications and Bilingual Services at the City of Moncton, sit down to discuss how a digital engagement platform has made public participation across a multilingual community a seamless endeavor.

Let’s Chat Moncton set out to launch new public participation initiatives in 2019 with a number of strategic objectives;

-Facilitation of public conversations across a multilingual community.
-Build awareness around municipal issues.
-Enhance civic engagement in a more focused way in a safe and respected space.
-Access and analyze data for more in-depth information for City decision-makers.
-Supplement open house events
-Offer alternate options for public attendance and input on their own time
-Package projects and information in a more visually interesting way.

“EngagementHQ made gathering data much easier for us but also much more cohesive.. these are things that we definitely were not able to do before.” – Nicole Melanson, Manager, Communications and Bilingual Services at the City of Moncton.

Find out how Let’s Chat Moncton is internally streamlining project information gathering while communicating clearly to a multilingual public.

Stéphanie Beaureguard, Practice Lead at Bang the Table, and Geoff Wilson, Director of Community Engagement and Health Board Support at Nova Scotia Health Authority, come together to discuss how patient and public engagement in the health sector can be transformed by offering a dedicated portal for digital engagement.

This episode examines the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s engagement site Engage4Health, which launched in 2015, and discusses their evolving strategy and experience with patient engagement over the years. In Engage4Health’s first year, they engaged with roughly 1,000 people in 42 face-to-face meetings and received over 9,000 contacts of informed and engaged visitors in their online portal.

“It was really crucial that the engagement team had the ability to create, shape and respond to online interactions without needing to be dependent on our IT department for support. I think the ease of use of EngagementHQ, [and ability to] get the project up and running really quickly, was a key factor in our decision to use this particular platform.” – Geoff Wilson, Director of Community Engagement and Health Board Support at Nova Scotia Health Authority.

Tune in to learn more about developing an online engagement strategy in the health sector.

Getting your community engaged in your online platform can seem daunting, but with a few simple process guidelines, the participation process begins to flow seamlessly. Amanda Nagl, US Practice Lead at Bang the Table, and Sandrine Thibault, Director at Town Planning and Urban Design Collaborative, apply these commandments directly to planning practice for better-designed projects and a more informed community who provides usable feedback.

1. Don’t use jargon.
2. Provide options for visual feedback—images and videos.
3. Capture the past lest it halt your project and the project after that.
4. Use a variety of tools; chosen for solid, defensible reasons.
5. Use mapping tools for spatial sake and spatial sake alone.
6. Phase the project in a meaningful way; honor the phases before it.
7. Work in bite-size, digestible chunks.
8. Collect demographic data along with project feedback.
9. Use social media wisely.
10. Always close the feedback loop.

The Golden Rule of Engagement… Listen to the podcast to find out!

Dan Popping, Engagement Manager with Bang the Table, explores the importance of having an overarching Engagement Framework for your organisation alongside Jane Pole-Bell from the City of Mandurah in Western Australia.

But what is an Engagement Framework and how can it help gain momentum and support my organisation’s public participation efforts?

In this podcast, we dive into the five key components of an Engagement Framework:

1. Governance
2. Capability and Support
3. Process
4. A Central Portal
5. Continuous Improvement

“Our framework and strategy follow the IAP2 process, so we have leveraged the framework that already exists and the best practice already out there,” Jane Pole-Bell, Corporate Communications Manager, City of Mandurah.

With the start of their downtown planning project, the City of Kamloops decided it was time to invest in more strategic communications and engagement. By offering residents the opportunity to learn and participate in online discussions, surveys, and forums, Kamloops was able to educate the community and allow equal participation for residents who could not attend a face-to-face council meeting.

Tune into this Podcast to hear how the City of Kamloops promotes and manages Let’s Talk Kamloops, how they determine what projects they put online, and how they gained internal participation and excitement in the program.

Working in a partnership of councils, Debbie Goodland, Community Engagement Manager at Greater Cambridgeshire Partnership, discusses the importance of giving each council the ability to track their consultation. EngagementHQ provides this function, as well as “making the process an interactive and enjoyable experience for the public,” Debbie notes.

With a primary focus on Transport Infrastructure, Tune into this podcast to hear how Cambridgeshire Partnership begins their Digital Engagement program with the use of the Places Tool for mapping and quickly realizes the opportunity and benefits of expanding their digital toolbox.

The City of Kingston’s new public engagement hub has elevated awareness in the community and seen 6,000 registered participants engaging in discussions around local projects and priorities.

Tune into this podcast and hear Debbi Miller, Manager of Communications and Public Engagement, revealing how a centralized engagement hub and consistency across internal and external strategies have helped City and community engage better.

The City of Fayetteville, AR recently launched their online community engagement site, Speak up Fayetteville. And they’ve found great success driving participation right out of the gate, seeing over 2,700 visitors to the site in the first 30 days.

So how did they do it?

Tune into this podcast as Linda Deberry, Communications Program Manager at the City of Fayetteville, reveals how a centralized engagement tool, a strategic overlapping of projects timed to cross-pollinate participation, and an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ internal approach contributed to its successful launch.

In this episode we talk with Community Engagement Advisor, Hayley Boyd from the Town of Victoria Park in Western Australia about how joining forces with their councillors has helped to doubled their online registrations, participation and engagement rates.

By signing a unique partnership agreement with their elected officials, Town of Victoria Park have been able to transform their councillors into engagement ambassadors and crucial information sharers. This unique approach has been designed to help clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of councillors and engagement managers and seeks to drive a culture of engagement throughout their organisation.

As a result, Victoria Park has been proactive in enhancing their online and face-to-face engagement activities which has seen better engagement outcomes and more council endorsed projects.

Furthermore, they have taken a unique approach of allowing councillors a protected space on EngagementHQ, to better organise engagement activities, store, share and report back on council meetings and partake in discussions and forums prior to important meetings and events.

People everywhere are busy, and it’s no different in Parker, Colorado. As part of an initiative to increase the level of community engagement and participation in local issues, Parker officials sought to provide new and innovative ways for their residents to get involved and provide feedback. The town knew that to increase engagement they needed to think outside the box and offer tools that work for Parker’s growing community.

In Parker’s 2017 citizen survey, the town heard overwhelming resident support for the development of an online community engagement tool. Ninety percent of survey respondents said they were likely to engage in local issues if they could do so online, at a time that was convenient for their schedule.

This support, combined with Parker’s drive to increase engagement, led Town officials to create their new engagement portal, Let’s Talk Parker, using the EngagementHQ platform. With the goal of gaining ideas, feedback and community support, Parker launched some very creative projects, including Fact or Fiction, My Mainstreet, and even a mapping tool for the community to report traffic issues to the Police Department.

Tune in to this podcast to hear about Parker’s journey into online engagement, how Let’s Talk Parker is helping cultivate a more informed and engaged community, and the positive impact it’s having on town decisions and direction.

6-month progress update
After launching Let’s Talk Parker just 6 months ago, Town officials are excited to share results with their residents. To keep momentum and excitement growing, they’ve created a short promotional video.

Amanda Nagl

Engagement Manager,
Bang the Table

Dannette Robberson

Assistant to the Town Administrator

Find out how Brisbane South Primary Health Network utilised online engagement to developed a health needs assessment.

Learn about patient-centred care, how to engage with hard to reach stakeholder groups, and ways of using industry data sets and engagement input to develop a cohesive health plan.

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Figuring out the best way to get residents involved and participating in local government has been a hot topic in cities across the country.

Matthew Crozier from Bang the Table has been doing engagement work around the world and came on GovLove to discuss best practices, how cities can do better and more.

Originally featured on Govlove – itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/124-c…00385253417&mt=2

Over the 8 years City of Casey has been a client of Bang the Table, they have expanded and evolved their online engagement strategy and use of tools.

The City of Casey went from using their EngagementHQ site Casey Conversations as a little more than a survey tool to using it as a hub for all of the city’s online engagement activities.

Hear about their journey to becoming an organisation committed to genuine community and stakeholder engagement and how they got everyone onboard.

Barwon Water, based in Geelong, one hour South West of Melbourne, is Victoria’s largest regional urban water corporation, and provides water and sewerage services across 8,100 square kilometres to more than 298,000 customers.

Hear about their approach to engaging communities on water pricing and sustainable water delivery.

Resilience has many definitions but all include some reference to an ability to bounce back—be it from something predictable or not, natural or man-made, for better or for worse. Regardless of the subject or application, resilience is about the capacity for, and adjustment to, change. Urban resilience is about a city’s ability to bounce back from change whether the change is anticipated or when city officials and residents are surprised by it.

Hear how City of Boulder used community engagement to build a resilient city strategy.

The U.S. Census Bureau determined that Austin was the second-fastest growing U.S. city from 2010-2015 and judging from the construction cranes dotting the city skyline, change is the new norm in the city’s downtown core.

The Downtown Austin Alliance is made up of downtown property owners, individuals and businesses devoted to preserving and enhancing the value and vitality of the area.

Hear how Austin Alliance worked with EngagementHQ to engage with their community.

In 2016, British Colombia’s Richmond School District 38 concluded a 2 year online community engagement project focusing on school closures.

Neighbourhood decline had led to underutilized schools and the Richmond School District 38 had to look at the possibility of school closures and engage their community on this difficult issue.

Hear how Richmond School District used EngagementHQ to engage their communities, keeping them informed and up to date on the changes in the district.

City of Lakewood has recognized for some time that the traditional model of public meetings fell far short of their responsibility to connect with a representative public. So, when Bang the Table came along with EngagementHQ in late 2016, Lakewood jumped at the chance to join a worldwide community of online engagement.

Hear how Lakewood used EngagementHQ for an extensive nine-month outreach and engagement effort culminating in the delivery of their Lakewood Masterplan.