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>> Jennifer: One of the panels in today's session is the media viewer. 
Anne is captioning this event. 
You can customize that view selecting your preferred font size as well as font type and then you want to be sure to click on that show/hide header that is at the bottom right corner of the panel. 
And Anne is actually captioning already. 
Great to see those captions. 
Thank you, Anne.  
And that said, if you prefer to minimize or maximize any of those panels, you can customize your view here in WebEx. 
We do occasionally hear that chat becomes overwhelming. 
We do encourage lots of engagement in our chat, but if you prefer to minimize that, knowing that it will be a part of the archives, feel free to do so as well as any of the other panels that you don't need to have open. 
So, welcome to those of you that are just joining us. 
We will be getting started at the top of the hour. 
I will spend the last few minute ensuring that all have information about this environment we're using today. 
You should be able to hear my voice coming through your computer speakers or headphones. 
And audio is broadcast -- or the volume of the audio can be adjusted using the audio broadcast button that hovers over the top left corner of the slide. 
You can move that around. 
But don't exit out. 
It will close your audio connection. 
To reopen your audio or to reset your audio connection, if you are having issues with the audio, if it is cutting in and out or you are hearing an echo, please note these trouble-shooting tips at the bottom of the slide. 
You just need to click on the radio tower icon that is above the chat box or below our participant list or go to the communicate menu and select audio broadcast. 
And this will reset your audio connection. 
You will get a little message that it is connecting. 
It sometimes can take a bit. 
So hang tight. 
I will share with you an alternative to joining by phone here in a moment. 
We like to emphasize that we use the Q and A panel for questions specific to the WebEx environment. 
So, please note that if you do need assistance, we will look for your question there. 
And this keeps chat nice and open for conversation and questions related to the topic.
You will notice also as we move through the session that there are slides that will reference URLs. 
Note that those URLs are not live on the slide, but they are live on the slide -- on the archives page, and I will also be sharing some of those through chat. 
And this is also a reminder that we look to you all to bring your own resources that you use in engagement. 
If you have tools or strategies or case studies, this is your opportunity to help build together the resources we can use in our work. 
So I like to think of chat as an ongoing brainstorm related to the topic. 
And we like to use this hour we have together as efficiently as possible. 
So, feel free to share those ideas there. 
If you have questions at any time, please post those. 
We will be taking questions at a couple of different points but we look for your questions in chat. 
And if you are on Twitter, you can share your posts with the hashtag that we use for our events. 
And, again, you can minimize or maximize any of the panels at the right. 
And reopen them using the top menu. 
Today's session is closed captioned. 
To access that menu, the media viewer is available at the bottom corner. 
You will just want to select the font size you prefer and then click on show/hide header to maximize those caption views.  
And if for some reason your audio creates problems beyond our solutions that we can provide in the Q and A panel, you can also join by telephone.
It is very easy to get that information. 
Just click on the telephone icon below the list of participants and you will see a pop-up window with the toll free number as well as today's access code. 
So, assuming that you have a phone available, if you have audio issues, apologies to those of you who don't have access to a phone, hopefully your audio will be clear. 
So, we are at the top of the hour. 
Again, one more reminder that if you do need assistance, we look for your questions in the Q and A panel. 
Not in chat. 
And we will be able to assist you down below. 
If for any reason you do end up outside of this WebEx environment, please contact WebEx support. 
This information is also in the email that I sent you, and they will be able to assist you with that event number. 
My name is Jennifer Peterson. 
I'm here to help with your technical support questions today and I'm pleased that Betha is going to be hosting our session today. 
So I'm going to actually just remind folks that the archives will be shared with you later today and posted to Webjunction. 
The best way to stay on top of Webjunction events and resources is to subscribe to our monthly E-news letter. 
We just need your email and we will send it to you at the beginning of each month. 
It is a great way to stay in touch. 
We will be talking with AmericaSpeaks, so remember that AmericaSpeaks is a great resource for all that you are going to hear about today. 
And one more thank you to our Webjunction library -- state library partners. 
We're thrilled to partner with these states who provide the opportunity for all to attend this webinar for free. 
Welcome to all of you from those states. 
Thank you again to those state library partners.  
I'm going to pass it on over to Betha and have Betha give us a brief introduction to the session. 
>> Betha: Thank you, Jennifer. 
I am really excited to see everyone here who is interested in community engagement. 
Before we get to our featured guests on this topic, I wanted to take a couple of minutes and talk about the chain of events that led us at Webjunction to this topic and to this webinar.
It really started with the national broadbrand plan. 
I'm not going to have time to go into a lot of detail. 
There is more information on our site about all of this. 
The plan was followed by an FCC call to action, increase digital inclusion across the country to keep our country competitive on the global scene and to address that gap that the data has revealed that 36 million households in this country still lack broadband access at home, which is a fairly major gap in terms of having really everybody be involved in the global economy and the global environment. 
The institute of museum and library services, or IMLS, responded to that call to action by defining their vision for what is a digitally inclusive community. 
And they say it is a community in which all people, businesses, and institutions will have access to digital content and technologies that enable them to create and support healthy, prosperous and cohesive 21st century communities. 
They also developed what they call the building digital communities resource guide or policy document, which defines the many facets of this comprehensive effort, and also defines some strategies and goals for sectors across community to come together and align their priorities to achieve this really fairly energetic goal. 
IMLS also awarded a grant to the partnership of Webjunction, Texas global, ICMA, international city county national association, to look at how communities can work cross sectors to advance digital inclusion. 
This is a big bucket term. 
Our project team came up with this hopefully succinct definition of what is exactly digital inclusion. 
Because it does have so many facets. 
But really the essence of what it boils down to is providing equal opportunity for everyone to participate fully in the future. 
And the future has a lot to do with technology. 
So, it is really important to make sure that we can bring everybody up to speed. 
You may be wondering at this point what is the connection with civic engagement. 
When we look at the stakeholders in a community that need to be involved to really move the needle on digital inclusion and all of the various facets of it, one of the key stakeholder groups is the community residents. 
And it is really important that that gets raised high on the radar. 
Especially with digital inclusion. 
But this applies to many, many other aspects of civic life and the America speaks guests are going to address sort of the broad spectrum of those efforts. 
In terms of digital inclusion, it is important to avoid that one size fits all solution or the we will just build it and they will come approach. 
And really understand what the community needs are. 
How they vary from one sector to another and raise the residents awareness about the importance of digital inclusion and the importance of participating in this digital society. 
So, it is really about moving from I to we. 
And getting the community to think of it as our challenge, and not just as their problem. 
So, I just want to mention that this -- our project and this webinar are made possible by the grant from IMLS. 
And without further ado, I'm happy to welcome our presenters from AmericaSpeaks. 
We have David Stern, director of online engagement. 
As I read his bio, he is a -- 
he manages web-based citizen participation -- he has worked with a number of partners in government and civil society. 
Led the development of the American square, experiment to PRIJ the online political gap and provide a safe space for civil and -- before joining AmericaSpeaks, he cofounded something called mix, Inc. 
Really exciting stuff. 
He holds a masters degree from the London school of economics and political science. 
We also have the pleasure to welcome Theo Brown. 
He has more than 30 years of experience as an organizer, administrator, facilitator and trainer for nonprofit organizations and has worked with some of the major ones. 
Amnesty international USA, national days of dialogue on race relations. 
He has worked to mobilize people on behalf of social justice, racial reconciliation, human rights, and international peace. 
He has been working with AmericaSpeaks since 1998. 
And as a senior associate there, he has worked on outreach and recruitment for many AmericaSpeaks projects, most recently director of outreach for the unify New Orleans plan community Congresses. 
He holds a masters degree from the Duke university divinity school. 
Excited to this these guests. 
I believe Theo will start us off. 
Welcome Theo. 
>> Theo: Thank you. 
I think David is going to say a word or two but then I will jump in. 
Thank you for that kind introduction, Jennifer, and thanks Betha. 
So, we're going to be talking about is what AmericaSpeaks does. 
Civic engagement. 
Specifically how we work to involve people through both face to face and online processes to influence policy. 
And we try to make connections between our work and what libraries can do. 
So, and I will hand off to Theo in just a second. 
To give you a brief overview of what we are going to be talking about, Theo is going to give some background about AmericaSpeaks and where we're coming from and the kind of projects that we do. 
He will give is he specific project examples that will go into a little more detail on to explain ins and outs of particular engagement initiatives. 
And he will talk about the outreach strategies and principles that guide our work.
And then he will hand back it me and I will make the connection to as we have made a transition somewhat from a purely face to face engagement model to an online and mobile environment, how we apply the values that -- that we were founded on. 
I will talk about some examples of our online engagement projects. 
And then close with some examples of -- or ideas for how libraries can connect to civic engagement in their own communities and in particularly to one project that we are working on right now. 
So, Theo, why don't you take it away. 
>> Theo: Yeah, thanks, David. 
It is a pleasure to be here and talk with all of you. 
Among my other interests in this and always having interest in working with people in community engagement, I must say right -- my mother was a librarian. 
I have a soft spot in my heart for the people who work in libraries and the important work related to libraries. 
I want to say a bit about the general work we have done around the country. 
And then get quickly into some principles we follow and ideas.
We will be talking mostly, I will be in particular about a face to face engagement we have done. 
As David said, we are moving into working online and putting the two together face to face and online together in different ways. 
Many of the principles relevant for the work that we have done for online and have to be tailored in that way. 
AmericaSpeaks, and you can see there a quick summary of our mission, of our purpose. 
It is very straightforward. 
AmericaSpeaks was created to engage citizens, and I might add for effectively engage citizens in the most important public decisions that impact their lives. 
You know, in this day in age, people so often feel very disconnected from government decisions, from policy makers, and our whole work has been geared at trying to create avenues for people getting involved in effective ways on decisions that really matter to them. 
Terms of the basics of what we have been doing. 
We have been around since the mid-1990s, doing mainly charge scale citizen engagement. 
Although we now do things at much smaller size also. 
Tens of thousands of participants -- that number is probably closer to 200,000 who come in some direct way to our meetings and many other thousands who have heard about them involved in other ways. 
We have worked all over the country. 
We even work in other countries under the name of global voices and have worked and done very creative projects in other parts of the world. 
Our purpose and goal is to if you will link public will, find out what the public really wants, and bring a segment of it together. 
We will talk about how we do that and link it up with people who have power and political will to work together for change. 
We do a lot of work, particularly with mayors, county officials, regional planning authorities, governors in some cases and yes, in some projects members of Congress. 
We link up with people who are in positions of DE -- decision and of power and get people involved that way. 
Our specialty, and what we are most known for among people who follow this area, we have many other programs that we do face to face and online. 
What we call the 21st century town meeting. 
If you think about that name, it really tells you what it is.
It is based upon the traditional old New England and other parts of the country, but particularly New England town meeting where people just came together to talk about the business of the town and the area and everybody had a chance to have their say and talk through until they could work out problems at a very personal way with people very involved. 
Of course, in a country of 300 million people and large cities and increasingly complex society, the old town meeting really isn't possible in most parts of the country. 
But we have created what we call a 21st century town meeting. 
We use many of the highlights of the old town meeting, discussion, opportunity for everybody to speak. 
Hearing from all parts of the community. 
And we have tied it to some more modern kinds of things and technology. 
So that in our town meetings, and you can see a picture of all of the large town meeting. 
People come together and sit in small tables. 
There are facilitators there. 
Everybody, even if you have a thousand people, or 2,000, we have had meetings as large as 3,000 or more. 
Everybody is at a table of eight or 10 people and they get to talk about the issues presented and every table, there is technology. 
And reminds that we're in the 21st century. 
And we have computers at the table. 
So, ideas that come in from the tables can be interred  -- 
entered into computers.
The computers are networked and you can look at what people are saying at 50 tables, 100 tables, and develop main themes and get a sense of what people think and what they want from being able to have that technology. 
And also we use the handheld keypad keypads. 
Everyone who comes has a keypad and throughout the meeting choices are presented to people and they are able to vote different choices of ideas that they like or support or priorities that they want to set. 
Through that combination of the old style conversation and small groups and the computers and the keypads, we're able to get a tremendous amount of information and input from citizens, even in very large groups. 
So, let me just say a little bit about some of our projects.
We have done dozens and dozens of these town meetings and other kinds of things around the country. 
Let me just mention a couple. 
Betha mentioned the New Orleans program, that we did actually a couple of years ago. 
More than that now, I guess, after the devastation of New Orleans in 2005 and '06. 
There was a great need for the city to come up with a plan for rebuilding the city. 
And so we were asked to come in and hold not only a citywide town meeting, which we did with a couple of thousand of people coming together in the New Orleans convention center, but we also had remote locations all around the country. 
As you recall, the New Orleans population -- we had large meetings in Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge, Atlanta where large numbers of people had gone. 
And then many other small locations around the country, including some libraries where people were from New Orleans but found themselves in far flung locations and came together at libraries and other community facilities and joined in this town meeting, joining in on the web. 
And WAE were -- we were able to have participation from all over the country. 
Out of that came this New Orleans plan. 
And it was terribly important as far as moving the city forward and beginning to move on the road to recovery. 
One thing to note is that -- 
and we will talk about this a little bit -- with each effort, there is sometimes different challenges. 
In our work, it is crucial, particularly if you are meeting with a governor or a mayor or regional planning body and you want to say to them, look, this is what the people think. 
These are their ideas. 
It is very important that you have a demographically representative sample of people there. 
Different meetings have different challenges. 
Big challenge there of course, was getting low income African-Americans to participate, and making sure that they were well represented in the demographics of the meeting, and we were very successful in doing that. 
The demographics of those who participated in that really nationwide town meeting for New Orleans were very similar to that of the entire city. 
The -- another -- we have a lot of large town meetings like that. 
In addition, we also do smaller projects. 
I want to mention a couple quickly and then we will jump into some of the principles that we follow that may be helpful to you as you think about outreach. 
We now view a number of smaller models, where we take the same combination of discussion and technology. 
You see some listed here. 
Owensboro, Kentucky, a couple of town meetings that were tremendously important in terms of planning and redevelopment of parts of that old Kentucky community right on the Ohio river. 
We worked rescently in the Washington, D.C., forums on the future of transportation here. 
Similar forums in California on health care reform implementation and it worked in neighborhoods doing summits and bringing people together to plan what they want in the neighborhood. 
There are dozens of more examples of this. 
But you can see most of these were on the smaller side. 
The principles of the town meeting and the smaller version of it worked very well in small settings as well as large. 
In terms of some outreach strategies, there is so much that could be said here. 
I work in outreach all of the time. 
Sometimes I get excited talking about the process of getting people involved. 
I will try to touch on these fairly briefly. 
And if people have particular ones that you want to go back to, you can ask questions and we will try to have some time at the end. 
I want to mention some things that we do that help us to be effective in getting the right people in the room. 
Obviously if you are talking about engagement, you have to have the right people in the room or the right people online or the right people participating, or your whole effort can be undermined. 
One of the first thing we talk about is setting very clear goals for participation. 
This really drives the outreach plan. 
We are always asking the question. 
All right, for this meeting that we're doing or this endeavor or this online project, who needs to be involved in it and in what numbers?
We try to get very specific about who that is. 
Overall numbers for participation. 
Say we're doing a town meeting in northern Virginia next month. 
We hope to have 250 or 300 people there. 
In addition to that, we want the demographics to look like the demographics of the state of Virginia. 
We will be looking at race and ethnicity and gender and income and a lot of things like that. 
Different engagement efforts require different participation. 
But whatever your goal is, you need to be very clear and think in a very specific way about who you want to participate. 
And that will drive all of the other efforts. 
And then you need to particularly think about who the hard to reach are. 
By that we simply mean those people who are -- you are going to have to make extra effort to get or those folks who likely will not be participating. 
We talk about the usual suspects. 
So many engagement efforts have the same people over and over again. 
Who are the hard to reach that you want involved?
You need to think about that and I will come back and make comments on that again in a few moments. 
But one of the -- the next thing that is particularly important is to -- the whole issue of preregistration. 
For us, particularly since demographics are important and our goals are very specific, we need to know who is registering. 
And we have ask people in advance to not only register online, but we track their DEM gr  -- demographics and ask them a few questions.
You can see an example of one of our registration pages and the kind of things that we ask.
That will vary depending on what our target is. 
Based on what we learn from this, we adjust our outreach strategy as needed in order to do that. 
Strongly recommend some sort of online preregistration, whether you are gathering data about who is registering, something about them, and adjust your outreach to include those not registering in the early time there. 
Next, a fairly obvious step, setting up an outreach committee. 
Don't need to say a lot about this. 
But it is very important to have a core group of people. 
It might just be two or three. 
It doesn't have to be a large group. 
But people to take responsibility for outreach and getting people involved. 
If possible, you want to include the diversity in that group, representative of the diversity of you want people involved. 
This group, committee, task force, helps to think through the message, develop an outreach plan and make sure that somebody is taking specific actions to get the word out. 
Citizen engagement in an important way, either online or in person. 
It doesn't just happen. 
You don't just send out a few emails or put up a notice or ad in the paper or even on the media and people show up. 
It takes targeted, careful invitations and you need a core group of people thinking through how to do that. 
Next there are just a few principles. 
Some of these fairly obvious, but worth restating and they are things that I have been doing community outreach as Betha said for 30 years. 
And these are the things I found that are terribly important. 
I want to emphasize a couple of things. 
No substitute for getting people to help you promote and promote with their circles of touch. 
We do a lot of outreach through existing organizations, community leaders, groups, associations that are well respected and trusted. 
People receive an invitation from them, they are much more likely to do it than if they get one anonymously from me or someone they don't know or even from AmericaSpeaks. 
Look for circles of trust or influence where people can help you with your recruitment. 
You want the invitations as personal as possible. 
Mass emails, mass mailings, they have their place. 
But the more personal invitations can be the better. 
And I like to say that good outreach and citizen engagement is like real estate. 
There are only three things that really matter. 
Follow-up of course, follow-up, and follow-up. 
I can't overemphasize that. 
If you have a particular segment of people that you want to participate, invite them. 
Invite them again. 
Find a way to invite them in a different way. 
Once they say they're interested, follow-up again. 
It is terribly important that people hear from us not just once, but in multiple ways. 
Of course, most important probably of all, you need to make a case in your invitations about why it is important for people to participate. 
What's in it for me is what people are always asking, as we know. 
Why is this important to my organization?
And the invitations need to make it clear why it matters and why having someone involved will be good for them and/or their organization. 
The next slide has a little more about recruiting through organization networks. 
I would like to talk about an expanded list of organizations and groups to contact and inviting them in different ways, in person in some cases, online in some cases. 
There may be advertisement in the media about what you are doing. 
People see invitations that re-enforce what the other invitation, that can help a lot. 
And then I think it is very important, and we always do this in our face to face involvement, set specific targets. 
If a group says, yeah, I'll help. 
Talk to them about, you know, how many people can they really get involved. 
What is really possible?
And I like to set targets for groups. 
But I also like to be realistic. 
I like to really think about, okay. 
What can this group do?
20 people, but five is probably more realistic. 
But they can get the word out in this way. 
Get a sense of what the groups that are helping you promote really do. 
And, again, we work with groups for demographic balance and try to get groups to bring their constituents or members to participate in a meeting or in an online activity. 
In addition, working through groups, we recruit from the general public. 
And there are a lot of ways you can do this. 
Again, it's crucial you know who you are going after. 
Different tactics will work for different groups. 
I have listed thing that we do.
We are looking for say a Latino population. 
We will go to areas of the community where there are stores. 
Where folks who are Latinos are shopping or if they're recent immigrants from any culture, there are places where you can find people. 
We do canvassing. 
Some of our programs where we go door to door and hand out information. 
Stand on street corners. 
You can promote on radio stations, but not all stations are created equal. 
You need to find programs and stations that target the groups you are trying to reach in the community. 
Churches, other houses of worship are great, if you can find some who will help with invitations. 
There are so many different kinds and so many different places of worship and faith group that represent different socio ecoeconomic groups or other groups. 
Some web sites are very good for targeting groups of people because you know that they visit that neighborhood web site or that community one or that type of special interest web site. 
Lots of things to do with the general public, but even then you need to be targeted. 
And then finally, in terms of principles, I want to come back to the idea of the hard to reach that I mentioned earlier and say a couple of things here before turning it back to David to talk about digital engagement and specific ways that we do that. 
I just want to close with this in terms of comment and emphasis how important it is. 
I start with a very short story. 
When I first started to work for AmericaSpeaks now 15 years ago, we were working on a very large, nationwide project on Social Security reform and issues and trying to get all kinds of people involved. 
And I was invited to come to a briefing by some consultants, rather high-priced consultants, actually, as I recall, who were doing an outreach and a study of how successful we were. 
And they came to give their report. 
They got to the part where they talked about certain hard to reach groups. 
I think it was some low-income folks and youth, I think in that case, and a couple of racial or ethnic minorityes that we were having trouble to get involved in the nationwide meetings. 
Their comment was what they had learned was that the hard to reach are hard to reach. 
And I remember at the time thinking, wow, you know, that is a pretty dumb comment. 
Pretty obvious. 
How much are they paying these people?
And yet it is a comment that has stayed with me through the years, and that I think about a lot because actually that is a very profound thing to say. 
We have to take it seriously that some people are really hard to reach. 
And if we don't start with that, and we just say it glibly, we are not going to do enough to get them involved. 
So, we need to be aware that some are going to take special strategies. 
If the hard to reach are young people, how are you going to do that?
If the hard to reach are low income folks, which is often the case, how do you do that?
Where are the groups and contacts?
If possible, you want to find recruiters within the hard to reach group. 
If you have students who will help you recruit students or low income folks will help you recruit there, or people from whatever your hard to reach group may be. 
Again, it will depend on the people you are trying to get and what's involved. 
And then also, of course, in support, invitation to be very personal and you remove various participation. 
You see on that slide, a flier that we did in Spanish for a meeting that we held in Washington for the mayor and one city summit. 
And you can see it there in Spanish. 
And that is an example of the kind of special effort we will make and there are many other things that we do to try to reach out to hard to reach groups in order to remove barriers to participation. 
If you are trying to get low income people to come or low income women to come, we often make child care available at our place. 
So, anyway, that is an example of it. 
And we do need to really focus in on targeting very specific strategies. 
Some of the examples here for those folks who are seen as hard to reach. 
We are going to talk about digital engagement. 
I think maybe we have time for a question or two now before we go into that, if there is one that we want to address. 
>> Betha: Yes, Theo, thank you.
That was great information. 
You addressed some of the questions about how to reach the disenfranchised. 
I know that working with digital inclusion in communities, hard to reach isn't necessary just hard to contact, but the people who need convincing as to why they should participate. 
What is a compelling reason for them to be participants?
You gave us some good ideas. 
Somebody in chat mentioned working with trusted organizations like nonprofits, community-based organizations. 
Libraries are very trusted by their community. 
And also that gatekeeper concept that Jennifer just posted. 
So, there was one question that I wanted to get clarity around.
And it has to do with are you engaging the whole community or a mathematically demographically representative cross-section. 
I know when people do surveys, you come up with some statistically balanced sampling of a community that represents the whole, but I wonder if you have an answer to that question.  
>> Well, generally, of course, we are focusing on trying to get a representative sample. 
Unlike a lot of organizations, we try to make that sample as large as possible. 
As I said at the beginning, some of our meeting may be 1,000 people or 2,000 or more or certainly several hundred. 
We do a lot of large meetings. 
But even then, in a big city, you will end up with a sample of folks. 
The point is as much as possible to have a representative group. 
I showed the flier for the meeting that we did for the mayor here in Washington. 
We had about 1,700 people there. 
And it was really even more impressive. 
They spent an entire day with the mayor talking and giving suggestions and giving him advice and feedback on certain initiatives. 
More impressive than the number was those 1,700 people were very representative, almost exactly in many categories of the total population of about 600,000 of Washington, D.C. 
People from all eight wards. 
We had a breakdown of people with different incomes. 
We had a lot of people of different ages.
We had a close approximation of the racial and ethnic population of Washington. 
So, it was a large sample and everybody was invited, but we did our recruitment in a way to make it as representative as possible. 
Occasionally we will do a small meeting and we don't try to get a big crowd. 
For instance, we did meetings on transportation and we may be doing some on roads and issues around traffic, and in there, of course, we were looking for people who attend who were representative of the people who drive in this region. 
We had a particular segment we were looking for and we had a different questionnaire and asked people about how long they commuted and where they lived and their commuting pattern and things like that. 
We went after like 50 people and tried to get 50 people in the room who were representative of this segment that the council of governments had designated. 
There is a little bit depending on the topic and group. 
We try to get a sample so that the comments and feedback and results you get will have more weight with elected officials and other public officials. 
>> Betha: Great. 
We have some really good questions coming up from the audience, but I don't think we have a lot of time for them. 
I'm going to throw out one more very practical question. 
I know you said you try to make these events as inclusive as possible, but are you very -- 
what do you do in terms of accessibility and making sure that the event itself is accessible for people with disabilities?
>> Theo: Good point. 
That is a very important one for our meetings. 
We always make sure that the buildings meet all of the ADA standards and they're accessible. 
We try to have our meetings near public transportation. 
And we also will sometimes have sign interpretation. 
We will have translation at some of our tables for people who do not speak English as a first language. 
But with people with a physical disability, we definitely, particularly at the larger meetings, it is really important to do that where you have more people and a likelihood that some people will need that kind of assistance. 
Another thing we do sometimes, and we did it I know in the big meeting with the mayor, we have large print for the printed materials. 
If people sometimes on the sign-up form, when people go to register, we ask them questions. 
Do you need large print?
Do you need interpretation?
Do you need wheelchair access?
We ask them those questions as they sign up so that we are made of the accommodations that we need to make to have them totally included. 
>> Betha: We will go on and talk with David about the digital aspects of engagement. 
>> David: Yes, thank you. 
Thank you Theo. 
I will talk about how we take this process and principles which were developed primarily in a face to face context, albeit very much technologically enhanced and apply it to a purely or a combined web/mobile and face-to-face environment. 
So, you know, philosophical level, the reason that we want to use these new tools is that they're more efficient in a lot of ways. 
New technology can help us to achieve greater scale at lower cost. 
Reach more people without spending as much money. 
And sometimes in a really, really significant way. 
You know, new media enable people to share, opportunities to participate with each other if they find them compelling and it greases the wheels and lets -- introduces the possibility that a citizen engagement opportunity will become viral. 
So, online makes outreach in a lot of ways a lot easier but it also introduces some complexity. 
A lot of times what we do is combining an online engagement process with a face to face engagement process. 
Online deliberation and online conversation tends to be a little bit less compelling, less, you know, it is harder to keep folks civil because they are not looking each other in the face. 
They might not be willing to listen to another point of view if it is expressed in text as opposed to somebody who is flesh and blood and sitting right here next to me. 
A lot of time we try to view online to drive participation and face to face engagement. 
The broader point is that the process here is fundamentally the same in terms of outreach and getting people involved. 
And that is, you know, we set very clear targets. 
We measure who is participating. 
Who is signing up. 
And we adjust our outreach strategy accordingly and go through partners and use a variety of distribution channels to reach different groups. 
So, perhaps even more important in the face-to-face context, the technology that you choose has a huge impact on the kind of experience that you create online. 
So, you know, it is really important that you offer multiple options so that people are more comfortable using one technology or another. 
They can choose whatever is easiest for them. 
Maybe they have a mobile phone and no computer or a computer and no mobile phone, and then they're able to use whichever they're more comfortable in. 
When you make this decision about which technology it is you are going to use to engage people, you have to think about how quickly will they be able to pick it up, some new process or tool that they have never used before. 
How accessible is it?
How easily will they be able to have the opportunity to use the tool?
Are their built-in networks or communities attached to it?
Theo mentioned an example of a local forum or an email list serve. 
You know, you want to go where people are locally in your community. 
So, if people are all hanging out on one particular Facebook group then that is where you want to be when you distribute invitations to participate. 
If they are on a particular forum, then that is where you want to be. 
Sometimes it is not about, you know, choosing a new tool, but introducing and grafting on to something that people are already using. 
And, of course, you always want to take into account the cost and ease of implementation. 
How are you going to be able to deliver this kind of experience and what is that going to look like?
A key -- one example would be when you -- talked about how we use voting and give people the opportunity to choose between a range of options. 
In the room, people use keypads. 
And that makes sense. 
Because it is really easy to use a keypad. 
You pick it up and press buttons. 
But what that requires is that people be in the room, in one room, or maybe a couple of different rooms that are linked.
But then you also have to have the key bad -- keypads and provide those. 
Text messaging, you can vote by text messaging using several off of the shelf tools. 
That only works when you have people who know how to text message. 
Younger demographic, higher income, people who have cell phones. 
Maybe you can provide cell phones for those who don't have them. 
A mobile web app. 
People could go to a web site on their browser on their phone, but that would require them to have a smartphone. 
So, if you are talking about a higher income group of participants, that might be an option. 
But otherwise you might not want to consider that. 
Let me give you a couple of examples of online engagement initiatives that we have helped to create. 
First of these is the American Square, which was mentioned briefly in my induction -- 
introduction. 
The American square was intended to be a place where people from all sides of the political spectrum come together to engage in a facted base conversation about policy and politics. 
Debt and deficit issues. 
From the start, we viewed this as an experiment in online deliberation. 
Could left, right, center, up and down, you name it, congregate in one place online and have a meaningful,  process -- relatively few examples of a healthy multi-
multi-partisan discourse online, at least not large scale, so we knew we were swimming upstream. 
One of the keys we felt was to try to maintain a delicate balance between people on the site being liberal, conservative, moderate, Libertarian, whatever, and just make sure that they didn't get out of skew relative to their concentration in the general population. 
Supposed to look like the American people. 
So, we asked for the partisan identity during the registration process. 
How do they self-identify?
We didn't make it mandatory, because we didn't want to scare anybody off. 
That allowed us to keep tabs on who was actually participating.
How we tied this process with our outreach, which happened over the course of a couple of months when we launched, was that we started out with average through our own networks, our email list. 
We worked at the coffee party, which was a sort of non-partisan group that was trying to create conversation around policy. 
Probably launched maybe a couple of years ago. 
Maybe you have heard about them. 
And so through our networks and through the coffee parties, we recruited our first, the sort -- the first thousand or 2,000 people. 
We noticed in the conversation, and in through this registration process that we sort of acquired a kind of letward skew -- left ward skew in the conversation and community. 
We made efforts to target tea party members. 
We had networks through a previous project that with some tea party activists, and we worked with them to try to recruit tea party members to the thing. 
This was partially successful. 
This is a challenge, especially online. 
But on difficult issues, you know, the -- this experience really drove home that we have to provide a very clear facilitated conversation, make it a safe space for different people, different points of view to come together, and so that no group was able to dominate the conversation. 
And we had to provide a lot of fact. 
We had experts from across the aisle, from both sides of the aisle, from heritage foundation on the right, from brookings on the left, and from elsewhere to -- who would ground the conversation in fact. 
And it was a very interesting experience all around. 
Another project that we are working on right now, really about to launch, haven't quite made it public yet, but that is very relevant to folks on this call, is this Delaware Dream Forum, where we're working with the Delaware state library system to invite their stakeholders to contribute their dreams. 
They are asking, we want to hear about your dreams. 
Both your individual hopes, as well as your collective vision and framing it as the Delaware version of the American dream. 
Can we figure out what this looks like?
Is this about safety?
Is this about housing, new home?
Medical advances?
Is it something about politics?
Is it something about their neighborhood?
And the way it works is it is set up as an online brain storming process. 
People can submit their own version of the Delaware dream or they can vote on other people's versions of the dream to identify the most popular dream. 
Through this process, they generate a rank list of the most popular ideas bubbling up to the top. 
And the library's goal here is to create a conversation around a shared vision for the state. 
And to help libraries understand their patrons goals and once they understand that, to be able to -- to plug in and support that through the resources that they have available in whatever ways they can.  
So, you know, to give you a sense of the outreach channels that, you know, has some of the elements that Theo mentioned earlier, but this is a purely online project, or at least this piece of the project is purely online. 
So, you know, they're asking a lot -- inviting a lot of member libraries to the home page on public computers in the library to be this page.
They are going to be distributing their email list. 
Each of the libraries will be able to distribute the link to the email list. 
The library system home page, a number of partner organizations, businesses, nonprofits, hospitals, and schools who will send out the link inviting their stakeholders, supporters, employees to participate. 
And then there is sort of a traditional press outreach strategy around trying to get coverage for this project. 
So, you know, this this particular case, we're not asking people for their demographics because we don't need an exact match to get at the goals of the diamond library group. 
In contrast to the American square and in contrast to most of our projects, and we thought it might be a little bit of a disincentive. 
So, a couple of last points before I wrap up and open up to more questions. 
O One, I would like to emphasize here that libraries often, you know, we in our work at America speaks often have need for libraries as an outreach channel. 
So, I would -- and I know we're not the only ones in the civic engagement world who feel that way. 
We, you know, like Theo said in the New Orleans project, we worked with libraries in the one city summit in Washington D.C., we worked with libraries and to let people participate in web casting through the computers.
I think I really, you know, something that libraries need to be aware of is just sort of keeping aware of local efforts.
What is happening in your community?
What are the civic organizations who are trying to promote civic engagement locally?
How can you plug into that?
How can you promote their engagement opportunities through the resources that you have available?
Email, web sites, bulletin boards, physical bulletin boards or online ones. 
How can your -- these partners who are trying to engage the hard to reach use your space, your computers, other resources that you have available to achieve their goals. 
And, of course, a huge caveat here is that you have to avoid partisan, political partners, avoid controversial content. 
Avoid missions that might make you appear partisan in any way, or unbalanced. 
But, you know, a lot of it -- 
you have to choose what is appropriate for your community.
One national level effort that we are currently involved in and we see potentially a very strong possibility for collaboration with libraries is the face the facts initiative. 
This is a national effort to promote civil fact-based political discourse. 
Releasing 100 facts about public policies for 100 days before the election. 
One each day. 
AmericaSpeaks is developing free discussion guides on a range of issue areas, environment, infrastructure and a bunch of others.
You can download these easily, set up a conversation locally for 5, 10, 15, 20 people in your library, and I did see there was a question earlier about can a library serve as facilitators?
And I think very enthusiastically yes. 
Particularly in this case, I think this would be a great way for this to happen. 
Librarians can convene your supporters, members, patrons and facilitate discussions on these national policy issues in a balanced way and get people really talking about issues. 
If you are interested in getting involved in this and perhaps hosting a conversation, we're not -- we're almost ready to go, but not quite ready to go. 
You can send an email to admin@facethefacts, the email is on the slide. 
Or you can contact Theo or I at the end of this presentation. 
If you take home anything, it is these three messages here. 
Part of any civic engagement in this effort, digital or face-to-face, you want to invest heavily in outreach. 
Think carefully about how people will find out about the participation project and how they are going to be join. 
And what technology are they going to use and how easy is it -- how easy will it be for them to use them?
And look for broader initiatives that might be outside of the traditional library scope somewhat to engage people on their needs and interest, on existing civic engagement efforts that you can sort of piggy back on and support rather than creating something new from scratch. 
With that, I will wrap up and open again to questions for either Theo or me on anything that we talked about. 
>> Betha: Great, thank you so much David. 
This has been an interesting conversation. 
I think it is opening up a lot of possibilities for libraries.
Interesting question about why not engage librarians as facilitators?
I recommend an article in the PLA publication public libraries, the July/August issue. 
Making a difference, civic engagement at the public library. 
It talks about a particular case study at the riverside county library system about engaging the library staff as FA sillll -- facilitates and the training that they got. 
I think it is an excellent avenue for library staff to branch out into. 
I guess I will just start with a really practical question. 
Because those seem like easier to answer. 
Somebody wanted to know more about the handheld polling devices. 
Are there very affordable options and is there anything in particular that you can recommend?
We can put a list of potential models and vendors on the web site if that makes more sense but do you have a quick answer to that?
>> Yeah, there are sort of five, 10 different polling keypads that we have come across. 
We tend to use one called turning points technologies. 
And we bought a whole bunch of them. 
We lend them out to folks, rent them out, but in some cases we might make an exception. 
You can talk to us about that, if you are interested. 
You can contact turning point. 
But, you know, they're relatively inexpensive. 
Maybe might be able to find them for $5, $10, $15, a keypad to rent. 
To purchase, they might be $50 to $100 each. 
I don't remember exactly.
>> Like a lot of technology, they are getting less expensive. 
Keypads are going to be more accessible. 
They are great to use in certain kinds of meetings.
I encourage you to look into it if you are interested in having a face-to-face meeting on a community issue. 
>> Betha: Going back to that library as facilitators engagement, when I did research for an article that was sort of laying the groundwork for this webinar, engaged embedded library article on our site, I was having a hard time finding examples of libraries that had actually taken that full engagement step, the kinds of things that AmericaSpeaks does in terms of facilitating conversations on really very powerful, political, public issues. 
I recommend reading that article. 
And if anybody has -- anybody in the audience has examples that you want to add, I would be glad to. 
I think what I noticed is that a lot of libraries offer facilities for groups to come together. 
Which is a really different thing that actually leading the engagement. 
I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that, the difference between participation and engagement and the sort of levels between what libraries customarily do in terms of offering meeting rooms, moving up to what AmericaSpeaks does in terms of deliberately bringing a cross-sector of a community together on a difficult issue?
>> I think you're right. 
The most common way is making their space available. 
And that is a very, very valuable service, just that in itself. 
There are some libraries who occasionally who will post notices in the library saying are you interested in this issue?
If so, there is going to be a discussion at a certain time. 
And either then someone from the library staff prepares and leads it or another approach is for the librarian or someone to find a community organization of some sort that is seen as, you know, a neutral broker, or some group that might come in and lead it. 
A whole range of things can happen from making the facility available to actually recruiting the crowd and a program. 
All of those are valuable. 
Those interested in doing a little more, I think there is an opportunity to partner with different community groups and sponsor programs on current events. 
>> Betha: Thank you, we are at the top of the hour. 
I will turn it briefly over to Jennifer. 
Thank you very much. 
>> Jennifer: Fantastic. 
Yes. 
Thank you to both of you. 
Thank you to all of our attendees today. 
We will follow up later with an email once the archive is posted. 
It will include the chat and the captions. 
Thank you again to Anne for her captions today. 
If you are not subscribed to our free monthly E-news letter, you can do so on the home page.
It is a great way to stay in touch and on top of programming and resources at Webjunction as well as those we partner with and on that, thank you so much to AmericaSpeaks for bringing their great work to libraries and we look forward to even more engagement across our sectors and in our communities.
Thank you all. 
And have a great day. 
Oh, and be sure to take the survey that you will be sent to as you leave. 
It is great feedback to our presenters and to us as we develop ongoing programming. 
Thank you.  
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