[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear ELGL members,
It’s #ELGL17 week! It’s #ELGL17 week! I am so excited to explore Detroit with some of the best people working in local government. We’re attending to last minute details, working on things like name tags and signage and schedules, and finalizing menus and reservations. All of this work takes a lot of extra time and it’s always important to remember that our conference planning committee is doing this work on their own time. It’s an all volunteer team, busy with their local government day jobs, and without their selflessness, we wouldn’t have #ELGL17 to look forward to this year.
What I’m reading:
What I’m listening to:
- Descendants soundtrack – my kids are obsessed, and I have to admit the songs are pretty catchy.
What I’m watching:
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I had a great conversation this week with Joel Rogers from COWS and Satya Rhodes-Conway from MIPS. ELGL member Jason Vargo made the introduction for ELGL and we talked about ways that we can share their research and best practices on “high road” solutions to civic problems with the ELGL network. COWS and MIPS are based out of Madison, Wisconsin but do work all over the country. I hadn’t encountered them before meeting Jason through our friends at POLCO.
There are a lot of awesome groups working on local government solutions and information sharing. As we continue to work toward the long term sustainability of the ELGL organization, I’ve been thinking about all of these groups and our good fortune to be making connections and building partnerships with them.
My goal is for ELGL to further strengthen these relationships and share their research and information. I love the idea of ELGL.org being a huge clearinghouse of useful information from lots of different sources. I can’t help but think that this will make local government even stronger and more effective as we make it easier to find groups like COWS and MIPS, regardless of where you live.
This gets back to the “connect” portion of our mission to connect, communicate, and educate. Building out our network and sharing information freely is also part of our work with the Digital Working Group: as we continue to add more and more content to ELGL.org and on social media, how do we organize it so everyone can find what they need, when they need it.[/vc_column_text][vc_text_separator title=”#ELGL17″ color=”purple”][vc_column_text]
We finalized the #ELGL17 agenda this past week, and put the final touches on the app. I’m really pleased with how well rounded the agenda is – our session speakers range from a presentation by current MPA students, to the head of Bloomberg Cities. I love how that captures the spirit of ELGL – that anyone can be a leader in our organization. From our mission statement:
We believe that anyone with a passion for public service can become a member, and understand that there is no longer one path to leadership.
I’m also pretty pumped about the interactive “Technology Learning Lab” and “Resume Review” that we’ll offer during the morning and afternoon concurrent sessions. Everyone learns differently – not everyone likes sitting and listening to conference sessions, so this is a cool way to develop your career and learn new things, but in a more interactive way with some of the best people working to support local government professionals.
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I interviewed Matt Crozier, the CEO of Bang the Table this week for GovLove. Matt’s originally from England, lived for a long time in Australia, and is now based out of Boulder, Colorado. As part of our signature lightning round during the interview, I asked Matt, “What’s the most annoying thing people say to you when they find out you’re from Australia?”
Matt’s reply? People immediately adopt horrible Australian accents and yell things at him like, “throw another shrimp on the barbie” or “the dingo ate my baby!” So when you meet Matt this week in Detroit, try to refrain from doing this. He’s a really great guy, an international leader in citizen engagement and participation, and a future GovLove guest (the episode will air on June 2, 2017).[/vc_column_text][vc_text_separator title=”Cary, NC” color=”purple”][vc_column_text]
I’m SUPER excited to share with all of you this week a new partnership idea I’ve been working on with the creative, innovative, and forward thinking HR staff in Cary, North Carolina. They asked to partner with ELGL to better highlight, promote, and share their job postings, so we’ve worked together on a cool way to do this.
We’ll launch their job postings later this week. In the future, this upgraded way of sharing a posting jobs will be an enhancement to “All In” membership that you can take advantage of to better position your jobs and promote them to the ELGL network.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]