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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

By the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people are expected to carry mobile devices with rich web-based environments.  These phones already enable a wide range of sophisticated community engagement techniques, including WalkShop tours, mobile reporting, and augmented reality tools.  Even dumb phones (which represent 83% of the U.S. handset market) are likely to see smartphone style functionality in the very near future.  And even the dumber of the dumb phones (the total number of mobile phone subscriptions is expected to hit five billion in 2010) increasingly provide photo and video capabilities, geolocation, and other features that enable very cool stuff.  Civic engagement that relies too heavily on mobile technology will leave out a lot of older folks, but neighborhood outreach approaches that ignore it will leave out most everyone else.

2) Social Media Tools

As social media platforms become even more ubiquitous, it seems inevitable that effective community engagement strategies will have to thoughtfully incorporate them.  To some extent, this will simply be about using new platforms for communication and outreach with constituencies in a community, but social media tools will also enable new and different ways of soliciting ideas and seeking input on options.  The more overtly geo-aware social applications like Foursquare (reportedly valued in a new financing round, with 600,000 subscribers, at $60-$70 million) will undoubtedly play a major role in creating engagement opportunities as well.

3) Visualization Tools Become More Accessible

Visualization tools that create three-dimensional, immersive environments representing different development or growth scenarios have come a long way in just a few short years, but they still often present substantial barriers to entry, sometimes requiring substantial capital outlays and often requiring a great deal of expertise and training to use effectively.  Look for these entry barriers to diminish.  PixelActive’s Cityscape is a good example of this evolution: an expensive application to purchase but extremely easy to use.  And look for visualization tools to start making appearances on mobile devices as well.

4) Web-based Applications and Cloud Computing

Whether cloud computing can overcome pervasive concerns about security and reliability remains to be seen, but the industry is clearly experiencing substantial growth.  What does this mean for civic engagement?  More web-based tools will be more readily available in more places.  More data, increasingly of the complicated kind required to drive scenario planning, ecosystem models, and data visualization tools, will be more readily available in more places as well.  As laptops and netbooks and even mobile devices proliferate further (and because even less expensive for civic engagement practitioners to provide), the ability to use collaborative applications in realtime will grow as well.  Of course all that cloud computing has to offer is always constrained by the availability of high-speed bandwidth, and while penetration continues to grow (and good alternatives to site-based wireless networks mature), access to high speed bandwidth is still inconsistent.  There really is a digital divide (that also includes access to mobile devices), and folks focused on creating strong civic engagement processes will have to be mindful of the differential access across constituencies.

5) Clever and Inexpensive Adaptations of Cutting Edge Technology

As the cutting edge blazes forward, we will see an increasing number of inexpensive but powerful adaptations for civic engagement follow in the wake.  As video conferencing tools like Skype and Ustream continue to mature, it will be increasingly easy and inexpensive to coordinate multiple simultaneous meetings in multiple locations as part of community engagement processes.  This might be valuable, say, if you are working to build relationships between rural communities.  Thanks to a clever hack by Carnegie Mellon research Johnny Lee, here at PlaceMatters we frequently make use of inexpensive technology (Wii remote controls and small projectors) to make powerful wall and tabletop smartboards.  So long as you have broadband access, it’s very easy to use Google maps to create collaborative, interactive maps.  As the leading edge pushes outward, clever practitioners will continue new ways to hack and adapt.