For The Record

In this extended-play episode and companion to the Converge cover story on The Evolving Institution, Kecia talks with Michael Horn, Chief Strategy Officer with the education technology studio Entangled Ventures. Read the cover story and see the brand new Converge site at www.centerdigitaled.com  

CDE sat down with Chief Executive Officer of CoSN, Keith Krueger to discuss reflections and advocacy efforts from the annual CoSN conference. Catch up with Keith and Kecia on this episode of #whereskecia. Krueger is CEO of CoSN (the Consortium for School Networking), a nonprofit organization that serves as the voice of K-12 school system technology leaders in North America. CoSN’s mission to empower educational leaders to leverage technology to realize engaging learning environments. 

In the first of an occasional series of podcasts from e.Republic Market Insights that breakdown each of the 10 Laws of Government Sales and Marketing.   On this episode, e.Republic's Vice President of Research Joe Morris is joined by Teri Takai, Executive Director of e.Republic's Center for Digital Government (CDG and Richard McKinney, a CDG Senior Fellow with extensive executive experience in both public and private sector. Download the 10 Laws ebook from e.Republic Market Insights at http://bit.ly/2HOykZY   

The winds of public sentiment seem to have shifted to cast skepticism on public school officials who leave their districts to attend workshops, round tables and seminars throughout the country. Here, on the debut of the Where's Kecia? podcast, Kecia discusses the intrinsic value of these opportunities to gather with colleagues from points all over America to compare notes and to benefit from their collective experiences leading their districts.

This is Chapter 18, an additional installment to the Peak Performance book, that takes the form of interview between Peak author Brian Elms and Jordan Dullea, a talent acquisition project manager in HR with the City and County of Denver. Dullea introduces us to the HR mascot: Stampy, an illustrated elephant on brown construction paper with a multicolor patchwork of felt. In 2016, recruiters in the HR department had taken a training at the Denver Peak Academy, a city program that teaches graduates how to save time and money without sacrificing quality. They learn a variety of tools -- often using construction paper, sticky notes and permanent markers -- for mapping out a dysfunctional process and eliminating wasteful steps.    

Cybersecurity, economies of scale and recruiting/retention are among the challenges facing California’s county governments, three CIOs agreed Thursday during a Techwire virtual briefing.

The four term mayor describes his city as "a faith-based community that works hard and dreams big"

Governing editors and political writers offer analysis of the state and local election results from the 2016 general election - with particular attention to Republican gains in governors' offices and state legislatures, plus a breakdown of key ballot initiatives. They also look forward to prospects and priorities for the 2018 midterms and even the 2020 general election. Zach Patton, Governing 's Executive Editor, moderates a discussion among: Alan Greenblatt, Staff Writer, Governing Lou Jacobson, Senior Correspondent, PolitiFact and regular Governing contributor Caroline Cournoyer, Senior Editor, Governing

The third in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator. 

The second in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator. 

The first in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator. 

Host Dustin Haisler speaks with Kristi Wyatt, Director of Communications and Intergovernmental Relations for the City of San Marcos,

Host Dustin Haisler speaks with Kristi Wyatt, Director of Communications and Intergovernmental Relations for the City of San Marcos, about audience development as part of an overall engagement strategy.

In this special episode of For The Record, Maia Jachimowicz, Vice President of Evidence-Based Policy at Results for America, speaks with Brian Elms and J.B.Wogan about their new book, Peak Performance: How Denver's Peak Academy is saving millions of dollars, boosting morale and just maybe changing the world. (And how you can too!) Elms is the Director of the Peak Academy and Analytics for the City and County of Denver. Wogan is a staff writer for Governing magazine. The book tells the story of a four-year old municipal program that equips frontline government workers with problem-solving skills that they take back to a wide range of agencies, from Animal Protection to Human Services. The result? About 5,000 employees have received Peak Academy training and used their new skills to save Denver more than $15 million.  In the conversation, Jachimowicz, Elms and Wogan discuss:  the origin story of the Peak Academy why innovation isn't government's default setting the need to measure impacts beyond cost savings the importance of empathy in innovation   how Peak might outlast its founders and perpetuate innovation, and why Peak only brings process improvement to offices where it's wanted The book is available on Governing.com and through Amazon.

Glenn Harris, Center for Social Inclusion and GARE, says the City of Seattle learned a lot from changing light bulbs.

Yiaway Yeh, Nashville Metro's co-chief innovation officer, on the city's key learnings through the City Accelerator, including the intersection of data and the hard work of doing the public's business - all served with a side of whimsy.

Nashville's serendipity practice creates space for listening well, harvesting new (even seemingly random) ideas, nurture and incubate them, and then provides a structure to reflect and improve.

Through the City Accelerator, Louisville is bringing a new level rigor and discipline to urban innovation. The city is focused on beginning to institutionalize a new urban practice and weaving a rhythm of accountability into the fabric of city government  

The success of an experiment with big brown envelopes came from the Philadelphia’s work as part of the first cohort in the City Accelerator, which gave it the capacity to find new ways to reach and connect with its low income residents. The City took a Marshall McLuhan-inspired approach to getting above the noise of poverty – experimenting with both the message and the medium. The city shaped the messages around social norming and loss avoidance – and tried multiple media, including FedEx-style envelopes with hand-written addresses.  Episode features Maia Jachimowicz, Director of Policy for the City of Philadelphia.  

Eric Gordon, an associate professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Technology at Harvard University, was selected to lead the next phase of the City Accelerator, a multi-year, multi-community undertaking in civic improvement. Gordon will provide support to participating cities, along with technical assistance and targeted implementation resources.

  TechWire Editor Bill Maile met West Sacramento Christopher Cabaldon at the Hacker Lab to talk about reclaiming the city's technology roots and innovating into the future.

In a wide ranging conversation with TechWire Editor Bill Maile, author Bill Eggers discusses the prospects and preconditions for government transformation, including future-leaning vision, strategy, leadership, workforce, and community engagement.

For generations accustomed to fuel shortages and expansive foreign oil, today is almost unrecognizable.  What's more, the right of passage called getting a driver's license is likely never to be the same again - partiucularly if you had trouble with parallel parking.

Sacramento is the first city in the country to successfully implement a holistic approach to diverting organic waste from the landfill. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson dubbed the process “farm-to-fork-to-fuel,” touting his city as a national leader in food energy security. It is also a microcosm of FutureStructure in creating a system from formerly discrete parts.  Editor Chad VanderVeen discssed closing the loop on this episode of FTR.

When almost anything is possible, everything becomes your beat.  In this episode, we meet Chad VanderVeen, the new editor of FutureStructure.  Just as people who buy a new car suddenly notice how many of that make and model are on the streets, Chad is seeing elements of FutureStructure everywhere he looks.  Even a minor software upgrade on your smartphone unlocks a world of possibilities at the supermarket, and that only hints at the potential of a world where everything is connected.

  Electric consumers expect power to be availabile reliably and priced inexpensively. Rooftop solar fits that bill, particularly when the installations are connected to the grid. For electric utlities, rooftop solar supplies power to the grid when it isn't needed and draws power out when it is. The costs to system operators can be economic and political. Jim Waring, Executive Chairman of CleanTech San Diego, explains in this episode of For the Record.

The bankruptcy of ECOtality, a maker of commercial and residential electric vehicle charging infrastructure, stranded about 13,000 commercial and residential stations. The assets of the company, which had won a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy four years ago are being sold at auction.  An initial offer of $3 million from a little known company called Tellus Power Inc. is now the bid to beat in order to win control of the company. The auction of the stranded assets is only part of cleaning up what was both a policy and market failure. As CleanTech San Diego Chairman Jim Waring discusses in this episode of For The Record, it is a cautionary tale for policy makers and regulators in other communities as they roll out EV charging stations in a still nascent and volatile market.

The San Dieogo Zoo provided a high profile location for five new electric vehicle charging stations.  It also raised an unexpected public policy question - what are the obligations for making charging stations compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?

It is an ostentatious first world problem. Thousands of backyard pools in attractive neighborhoods in San Diego. Pool pumps have emerged as the single biggest drain on energy systems. A pilot program is doing 250 million kilowatt hours of good in mitigating the problem.

What would happen if "reallocate" was added to the familiar "reduce, reuse, recyle" meme of sustainability. A non profit collaborative is working with building owners in San Diego to use big data smartly in order to use energy more effectively. Its good for the city, good for the environment and it is even good for baseball fans.

If it takes a village to raise a child, imagine the amount of work and collaboration to raise a village ... or a city.  Veteran public servant Jim Waring says the founders of the non profit collaborative called CleanTech San Diego took a big tent approach to building a movement toward a sustainable future.  Economic development was front and center, politics were off the table.

Roads, bridges, ports.  Concrete and steal.  It is the hard stuff of infrastructure, all of which is necessary but not sufficient as we think about the future.   Often overlooked in public policy discussions is the centrality of soft infrastructure to getting decisions right.  It all comes down to executing well against good ideas.  Dennis McKenna, the meme maker behind FutureStructure and the CEO of e.Republic, explains where soft infrastructure plays in this evolving framework for building the future.

If you have a problem, government often responds with a program - a new program for every discrete problem, resulting in a tangled web of uncoordinated activity.  In this episode of For the Record, FutureStructure creator Dennis McKenna argues that systemic problems require a multi disciplinary systematic response.

In the second episode of a new podcast, For the Record, we continue to set the context for FutureStructure as the framework for building great places. Recorded at the inaugural FutureStructure Summit in Chicago, Dennis McKenna, CEO of e.Republic, the parent organization of FutureStructure, calls for a new generation of multi disciplinary cartographers.

In the debut episode of a new Podcast, For the Record, we begin to unpack the origins of, and aspirations for, FutureStructure as the framework for building great places.   Dennis McKenna is CEO of e.Republic, the parent organization of FutureStructure. He makes the case that we need "engineers of place" like the Greeks, Romans or even Walt Disney.