On
Thursday I attended the Region of Waterloo’s “Strat Chat” chat hosted at
Conestoga College. The speaker at this
event was Mike Murray, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Region of
Waterloo, who was at the college to talk about some of the issues that will
make up a large part of the 2015-2018 Region of Waterloo Strategic Plan. The presentation itself was thematically
similar to the “Big Shift” presentation that we went over in-class; dealing
with topics such as demographics, population growth, and urban
intensification. Feedback was given
throughout the presentation through the use of some “i clicker” like devices,
along with a Q&A session at the end of the talk. One such question asked how people would
prefer to receive news from the Region, and, to no one’s surprise, social media
was identified as the number one way in which we, the youth, would like to
receive our news.
As an engagement piece, it was about as successful
as you could expect. The audience seemed
engaged throughout, and there were numerous questions at the end of the
presentation. I also learned about the
Region of Waterloo’s on-line “Strat Chat” discussion website, where citizens
are invited to give input throughout the lengthy strategic plan development
process; so it was successful in its goal raising awareness regarding the
website. It was also good to see the
Region directly engaging with students, who, while largely seasonal residents
of the region, make up a large part of the population, and use a large amount
of Region services, most notably the Grand River Transit system. It will be interesting to check out the “Strat
Chat” website periodically throughout the development of the strategic plan to
gauge how many people take to offering feedback, and whether city staff and politicians
not only have a visible presence on the website, but also use it to directly
interact with citizens.
You can find the website here: http://stratchat.regionofwaterloo.ca/
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