A Year with BC

Submitted by sgmcclain on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 9:29am

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.

We worked on a number of projects out of State. In partner with GreenPlay we completed a Parks and Recreation Needs Analysis for Leesburg, VA. The goal of the analysis was to evaluate current service levels and future needs for parks and recreation programs, facilities and amenities provided by Leesburg. The process involved face-to-face public input opportunities, a community wide web-based survey, a targeted SMS survey and a youth SMS survey. BalancedCommunity developed the project website and headed up the survey efforts. The website was designed as a one-page site to make it easier to view on mobile devices.

BC was also on a team to complete a Recreation Needs Assessment for the Iowa West Foundation. We were in charge of the Youth Outreach effort and implemented a number of tools to enhance participation, including an SMS and web based survey, Facebook and working with local businesses and youth groups. We were careful to fully integrate the tools so youth could choose what medium they were most comfortable with. Youth tend to be a hard group to reach and we used Facebook ads to help direct them to the survey. In addition, we printed small informational cards that were handed out at local businesses and through youth groups.

Working a little more locally, we were hired by the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) to complete an interactive web-based map. The map presents education and workforce data at the national, state, and congressional district level. The bar on the left includes interactive charts and location specific data. To develop the map, NCWIT provided State and District level data which we imported into Google Fusion. We used the Google Maps API and Google Chart Tools to display the Fusion map on the NCWIT site.

Most recently, we completed a Boulder Permits site. The site provides information on recent projects submitted for Development Review and Board Action per Title 9 of the Boulder Revised Code. The process of Development Review requires Public Notice of the application and provides for a public comment period. The site encourages people to be part of the planning process and sign up to receive notice when a new project is submitted for development review.

We are currently working on developing a mobile version of the site to be viewed on tablets and phones.