Given today it the release date of the new iPhone, I want to talk about something else at Apple the really caught my attention -- their automated customer care. Last week I had to call Apple to find out how to get the sales tax removed from a purchase given our 501(c)3 status. It was a complicated set of questions I needed to ask -- and yet the conversation was as smooth as talking to a live person. It struck me I was getting a sneak preview of something that is going to radically transform how we use technology on a daily basis -- FINALLY.
PlaceMatters has partnered with the National Charrette Institute on a number of occasions, providing trainings and giving panel presentations at conferences. One of our common themes is "High Touch, High Tech Charrettes." During the sessions we talk about the advantages of low tech and when it makes sense to bring in high tech. Below I have embedded a video that is a montage of clips filmed during a downtown revitalization Charrette in Wichita Kansas.
AnyWare is a project I've been working on closely for a while at PlaceMatters. It is a web-based tool to brainstorm and evaluate ideas both in real time and over periods of time by large groups of people. It is a definite work in progress, but we are ready to begin letting a certain set of users play with the tools and help us build something better. We developed this tool to help scale up the level of participation that could happen during a planning process. However, it could be just as useful to a Fortune 500 company, a neighborhood association, or an advocacy group.
If you want to stay on the cutting edge of civic engagement tools and techniques, here are the top five trends to watch:
1) Mobile Technology Explosion
posted on Planetizen today....
Even when the circuitry is beyond us mere mortals, DIY comes to the rescue
I've been following the Sunlight Foundation for a little bit now and they are currently doing some great work around government and transparency. There has been a much larger, if not perfect, commitment to transparency under the Obama administration. For one example, go to http://www.recovery.gov to see where all the Recovery Act money is going.
Today, Keith Stuart at the Guardian, wrote an article on How the 3D engine is changing the world. He points out that gaming engines and technologies are starting to make their way into other fields and describes the complexity of building games. Planning is one of the fields that is beginning to benefit from the industry that brought us Doom and Quake.