Closing the gap between online and offline public engagement

Traditional engagement has advantages that will never grow obsolete.  Even for tech-savvy citizens, real live public meetings, events, and workshops hold the value of the human touch.  Face-to-face interactions provide a deeper sense of community and inspire residents to “own” the places where they live.  Furthermore, offline engagement can be applied to groups of people that don’t have the ability or desire to interact online.

Online engagement is a concept that has grown ever more exciting with the advent of geospatial, mobile, and interactive technologies that make it easier to connect with stakeholders and citizens.  It is increasingly  tempting to just dive into the online technologies, but neglecting the more traditional forms of engagement will eliminate a significant slice of the population from participation opportunities.  

The question, then, is how best to integrate or meld the two avenues of public engagement.  Since both are equally important, planners and community leaders must examine ideas for incorporating online AND offline strategies in their involvement efforts.  Ideally, the two channels should complement one another, making the total collection of feedback more valuable than one method alone could provide.  Integrating your online/offline engagement efforts from the start of a project will result in more streamlined results.  So don’t play favorites -- give stakeholders and citizens the best of both worlds by melding your public outreach into an effective blend of tech and traditional.

Here’s a few suggestions for getting started.

• Allow the two methods to promote and reinforce one another -- like online calendars and
  registration to promote upcoming workshops and public meetings.
   
• Leverage social media as a familiar tool that allows for overlaps between online and offline -- like encouraging check-ins or tweets about a public meeting.
   
• Tackle the digital divide by providing some digital involvement opportunities for people with less access to online technologies -- like partnering with libraries or schools for computer usage.
   
• Encourage media involvement in both channels -- rather than just covering live meetings, they can be given observer status in your online discussion forums.
   
• Establish a well-defined “home base” for both online and offline engagement efforts -- it’s easier for folks to participate if they know where to go for information.
   

A few more ideas on this topic were presented in this post by Intellitics, Inc.

It’s essential for planners and community leaders to make a conscious plan for executing the two forms of public engagement in harmony with one another.  Without a clear strategy, online methods vs. offline methods are likely to become repetitive or even competitive, and not as likely to deliver results.  By outlining some steps that allow the two avenues to complement each other, planners can multiply the quality and quantity of feedback they receive.