Influx

After a few drinks at the AAAA’s Planning Conference, I thought it might be interesting if instead of just encouraging planners to blog, I encouraged them to do good.

So I “pitched” the idea to Mark Earls, Piers Fawkes, Jason Oke and Gareth Kay and got a drunken sigh of approval.

The basic idea is to use social networks to reach out to planners. Every month a new brief would be sent out to solve a specific communication problem for a non-profit. Planners could then work individually or in teams to attack the problem.

A collection of this thinking would then be presented back to the non-profit and planners who want to get more involved in helping implement the ideas would be given the opportunity to do so.

In the last few days, others have pitched in and lended their support to the idea- Brian Lanahan, Jennfier Leonard, Alexa Knight, Nicole Belmont, Micheal Karanjanaprakorn and others on the Plannersphere pages at Ning and Facebook.

I’ve also been looking outside the planning world to create a diverse “advisory board” and will have some interesting news on that soon.

So, if you are keen to help in any way or have ideas, please leave your comments here or on the Plannersphere pages at Ning and Facebook.

As we get more ideas, supporters and suggestions, the more the concept will grow.

Posted by Ed Cotton