Communications and Public Involvement Programs

I help clients develop and communicate innovative ideas. The two are very closely related, as Oscar Wilde said,

"it is not ideas that bring words to our lips, but words that bring ideas to our minds"

I approach communications projects from this perspective and frequently become deeply involved in the specific project as well.

Communications - on all levels - is an integral element of every project. The most important part of an effective communications program is understanding your audience and targeting your presentation to this audience. Note that I am using the term presentation in the broad sense - I don't only mean a power point presentation.

Clarity is crucial. A big part of my job is working with clients helping them understand very specifically what they want to say and then developing the precise words to communicate these thoughts. This can be done in all media: internet, television, audio, or writing.

In technical translations I work closely with my clients to write text in English that captures what they want to say - rather than providing word-for-word translations. This is especially important for marketing texts and project proposals.

Closely related to clarity is organization. Maybe because I was trained as an engineer I believe that presentations need to be well organized. A key reason for this is that most people are overworked and bombarded by information - a well organized presentation is easier to understand and therefore can reach these people. Finally, I believe that presentations provide an indication of how the project will go: a well organized proposal generally means that the project will be well organized.

A special type of communications is public involvement programs. As a citizen activist and then as a professional, I was on both sides of public involvement programs. I have seen the good, bad and ugly. One public involvement program I helped develop is outlined below.

The Importance of Public Involvement

I am convinced that a good public involvement program will lead to a better project, a more feasible project, and will increase the potential for obtaining project funding. But public involvement programs need to be well structured to be effective. It is not enough to simply have a meeting and ask people what they think.

After many years spent as a citizen activist in San Francisco, I was hired to manage the Caltrain Downtown Extension Project in 1995. As part of that project we developed a very effective public involvement program to help explain the project alternatives and increase the public's ability to influence project design.

A key element of the public involvement program was the Design Options Screening process. The DOS process broke the project down into a set of decisions and then provided the public with well organized information on each decision. This information was provided on three levels (technical, detailed and summary) and in graphic format. (The beautiful graphics and clear summary information presented in the Caltrain Downtown Extension Project Newsletter (March 1997) (Large: 4.2 MB pdf) that helped make this process work was developed by MIG, Inc.)

The public involvement program was successful in the sense that we were able to advance the project further than it had been in the previous studies and develop a consensus for a project alternative to take into detailed design. However, in 1997, when we reached this point, San Francisco's mayor vetoed the project and work stopped for several years.

The mayor's veto can also be considered positive because the public involvement program's success at developing a consensus forced the mayor to make a "go/no-go" decision. The Caltrain project had been studied to death over the previous 20+ years, but there had never been a real decision. Once the mayor vetoed the project, citizen activists placed the issue on the ballot and San Francisco citizens voted overwhelmingly to support the project. The mayor changed his mind and a redesigned project (Transbay Transit Center) is now underway.

The Design Options Screening process has also been used successfully for other transport planning projects. It is described in:

Nash, Andrew; Public Decision Making for the Caltrain Downtown San Francisco Extension Project; Transportation Research Record #1571, March 1997.

Please contact me for more information.