It has been an interesting year here at BalancedCommunity and we are looking forward to an exciting 2012. Here are a few of the things that kept us busy in 2011.
I started off the year taking on one of many new challenges - teaching a class a CU Boulder. The class was titled "Geodesign and the Web" and had a mix of undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Architecture and Planning. Here is a short description of the class: "We are living in the information age. Everything we do generates an information shadow. Data is being collected, presented and acted upon in real time. The scale of online participation has increased by orders of magnitude. In this world of exponential growth on the web, the skills required to collect, process and share information have become integral to success in a broad range of careers. This class will cover techniques and enabling technologies for collecting, processing and sharing information. At the end of this class you will have the skills to efficiently find the information you need, analyze it, tell a story with it and share it on the web in a user friendly format." Overall, while challenging, it was rewarding to work with the students and to help them develop technical skills to support their careers. I also provided a series of guest lectures in the Master's of Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Colorado at Denver.
There are several resources that I have found useful in the last year, particularly in relation to helping my students understand various concepts and tools. This is an eclectic mix of sources provided by a variety of industries. The widespread use of internet technologies today means that many industries are using the same tools and learning from each other. In particular, the below sources represent journalism, politics, technology, non-profits and research.
Season's greetings and best wishes for a Happy New Year from the BalancedCommunity founder. We are looking forward to another great year and want to share with you some of our accomplishments in 2010. First and foremost, I officially formed BalancedCommunity on February 18th, 2010. My goal was to take a new approach to Urban Planning through the use of innovative tools and applied technologies. To this extent, we have developed three new tools, as well as implemented numerous others in planning projects.
I made it back from Black Rock City in one piece, despite the 20+ hr drive home! Since I was last there in 2003, a few things have changed but the overall atmosphere of community still exists. The sense of community at Burning Man comes from an element of acceptance and of survival. You are not judged for material things, you simply get to be who you are. Feeling welcome and comfortable breeds a sense of community. You also get a feeling that everyone is in it together. You are all exposed to the 100+ degree days, the 40 degree nights and the whiteouts.
I have been to 
There are a lot of GREAT Free tools out there mostly thanks to open source software development. Thank you to all those contributors! I thought I would share a few tools that make my life easier. These are in no specific order, and are by no means the only ones available.
I have followed the use of key pad polling for years and can appreciate what it has done for public meetings. Participants are allowed to answer questions anonymously and the audience can see the results immediately on the screen. However, I find the hardware is expensive and participation is limited to those attending the meeting. In keeping with the mission of BalancedCommunity, I decided to provide a public participation tool that is more accessible and usable than key pad polling.
As some of you may have noticed, I now have the mapping tool on 