Today’s weekly update from your executive director is a few days late because we were camping without any internet or cell access (which caused great consternation for ELGL cofounder Kent Wyatt). Please pardon the delay in this week in review roundup and rest assured we’ll be back on our normal Sunday schedule this week.
As always, please contact me if you have any questions or concerns you’d like ELGL to address; you can tweet at me to @kowyatt or email me directly. Thank you!
Connect:
- Welcome to ELGL! We added 16 new members to the ELGL family.
- This week’s Jobs, Jobs, Jobs featured “Zuck tape.”
- A new column series in partnership with Seneca Systems debuted; CEO Chris Maddox wrote about the similarities between tech start ups and local govs.
- We posted job openings from Hillsboro, Oregon, Rochester, Michigan, SGR’s job board, Peoria, Illinois, and Portland, Oregon.
- We announced the next round of Supper Club hosts.
- The July “Birthday and Books” reminder list was posted.
- PDX ELGL members celebrated the fiscal new year together at the Lucky Lab pub.
- We announced the theme for the annual ELGL mixer at the ICMA conference: BBQ challenge!
Communicate (ELGL.org Content):
- The prior week was dominated by the Trending Now! series:
- We released some fun facts about each of the finalists.
- We learned about Hamilton, OH.
- Kansas City, MO has a lot of hometown pride.
- Lots of enthusiasm in Las Vegas, NV about their nomination.
- Same in Lenexa, KS for their community.
- We also released part III in the “Data Download” series about the #13Percent women in leadership data set from ICMA, and asked our members to review the data and share their thoughts in a brief survey, which will inform ELGL’s efforts moving forward on this critically important issue.
- And, “Travels With Zoe” came to an end with her final post in her blog series about her travels with ICMA’s international committee.
Communicate (By the Numbers):
- ELGL.org had 18,370 page views (13,800 unique views) on 26 blog posts.
- The most popular post of the week? Final 4 for the Inaugural Trending Now! Award
- Our Tweets from the main ELGL account had 79,40o impressions.
- We added 20 new Facebook followers and our posts reached 3,800 people from the main ELGL Facebook page.
Educate:
- Here are the pecha kucha slides from the Governing Magazine Summit on Performance and Innovation.
- Save the Date: Local Governments & Local and Regional Food Economies
- Save the Date: Technology Efficiency Series on Snapchat
- We’re also gearing up and developing our presentations for our visits to the NCLGBA and CPBB conferences in July and August.
GovLove:
- This week on the GovLove Podcast: Stacy Schweikhart and I chatted about the “Data Download” series and repeated our call to action for our members to weigh in on the data set. It was a fun conversation because Stacy and I are passionate about this topic.
Final Thoughts:
- Here’s what I’m wondering about this week:
- How many local governments successfully get their citizens to download and use stand alone apps? We all know that there are so many opportunities and resources that are developed and shared with local governments for citizens to have an app where they can report service requests, submit pictures, and interact with their government. My own experience showed that it’s really, really hard to get citizens to free up precious space on their phones, download a city’s app, and then get them to use it consistently. I’d love to hear from you about your experiences – specifically, which app-based tool are you using, and what percentage of your adult population has downloaded it and is using it from an app platform?
- I’m also really inquisitive about what innovation offices do all day. And so, this week I’m talking to three of my favorite local government employees who work in innovation offices. I’m going to be getting nitty gritty with them about their days. Mostly, I’m super interested to learn if “innovation officer” or “innovation program manager” is just an updated title for “management analysts” responsibilities.
- Here’s my favorite GIF of the week:
Questions? Comments? Drop me a note and let me know how ELGL can best serve you!