VISION 2015 was a community planning initiative that helped define the future of Northern Kentucky by producing a 10-year strategic blueprint that builds upon its parent, the QUEST VISION, launched in 1995. Five action teams addressed critical issues related to economic competitiveness, education excellence, effective governance, livable communities and urban renaissance.

The general public participated in the planning process at an all-day summit on April 7, 2005. The action teams were seeking advice and comment from neighborhood and community groups, local and state officials, leaders from the southern counties and Cincinnati, and other key groups. PlaceMatters offered a set of tools to create and support an agenda for the meeting which mixed input, several feedback loops and prioritization of the generated ideas.

At the summit, the audience brainstormed ideas in small group sessions in each of the action areas. PlaceMatters provided a mechanism for feedback loops on roundtable exercises.  Each table facilitator recorded finalized ideas on a laptop. The results of these table discussions were turned into questions that were prioritized using keypad polling. The next round of small group discussions then built on these prioritizations.

PlaceMatters provided a wiki system that was used as a networked virtual “whiteboard” that helped the audience to focus, coordinate, and understand each other. The network consisted of a collection of web-based tools, which were linked and framed as one application, which collected input from the small roundtable discussions. The features it included were: a flipchart to capture feedback of the roundtable discussions, a survey tool to prioritize larger lists of items, a brainstorming tool to submit ideas and comment on them, and a discussion forum for threaded discussions and polls.

Overall, participants were satisfied with the technology.  "I found it to be very interesting," Faye Massey, 59, said of the five-hour event of workshops and brainstorming. "Although I'm not a tech person, the technology really was helpful with being able to see the results instantaneously and know there're other people out there who felt the same way you did."

Location: Northern Kentucky
Project Website: www.vision2015.org
Keywords/Themes: Keypad polling; Visioning; Wiki;