News about "City of Toronto" project?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Robert Brockway <rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org>

| On Jan 12th a group of us met at a local restaurant.  We are formulating a
| short document to present to the upcoming budget sessions the council
| announced recently.

Sorry that I'm not able to be active in this.  Sounds like a neat
project!

I have a little (bad) experience with this kind of thing.  It suggests
that waiting for a public meeting is way too late.  Real decision
making is too messy to be done in public.  Most decisions are made
before the public meetings.  At the very least, groundwork for the
decisions is laid before the meeting; that groundwork determines
the outcome of the meeting.  This is why lobbying is necessary.

Note:  I'm not saying that lobbying is evil.  I think that the system
actually make sense.  The decisions are way too complex to be laid out
and solved within a meeting.

I strongly suggest that folks find out who the players are in this
decision and meet with them to explore what is possible.

Lobbying should be a two way street: you need to listen as well as
talk.  They have an idea (I hope) of what functionality they need.
You might be able to help them refine or adjust this.  Then there is
the question of mechanisms to meet those needs.

I suspect that the worst problem is that they have an idea of what
solutions they want rather than what problems they wish to solve.

You need to talk to politicians AND staff.  I suspect it is going to
take some digging to find out to whom it is worth talking.

Hugh Redelmeier
hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org  voice: +1 416 482-8253

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