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If ‘Different’ is What Rocks Your IPod the 2008 Congress was Your Forum of Choice |
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Congress Debriefing
By Ken Draper
 It’s not your father’s Congress of Neighborhoods anymore. The Congress producers have rolled out two in a row now that most players agree are ‘different.’
Last Spring the Congress went regional for the first time. Hosted in South LA. Concentrated on two issues. Drew two or three hundred people. Jury may still be out on whether there was any fruitful follow-up, although that was part of the announced vision.
On Saturday, the Congress was held at City Hall for the first time. The Congress was combined with the Mayor’s Budget Day … for the first time. Neighborhood councils were more deeply involved in the planning than ever before. And even though, as I wrote last issue, the subject matter was all that new … elections, marketing, coalitions, clout, cutting red tape were on the program of the first Congress six years ago … the presentation was somewhat different.
Effort was made to produce more interaction and dialogue. Some of it worked some didn’t. Sometimes the host was the fault.
The opening session was a bit more subdued than at past Congresses, but the doc-type video on NCs was excellent, honoring the Chatsworth and Porter Ranch Councils for their first responder work at the Chatsworth train wreck was timely and touching and even the Mayor’s budget forecast to the whole group seemed appropriate and well received … and timely … considering the world financial crisis that has been the focus of so much of our attention lately. And, in the early ‘exit polling’, Saturday’s event produced the most acceptance … if not outright positive response … than any congress in the last two or three years.
Somewhere between 350 and 450 council leaders, board members and stakeholders showed up. A third or more of that number came for the Mayor’s Budget Day. During the morning session, about 160 folks were sitting in on eight or nine different forums and workshops.
Numbers of course don’t always measure quality … or, satisfaction. Sometimes it’s a reflection on the marketing program. Or, some other condition or influence. The real test will come when we check back to see if anything that happened at City Hall on Saturday actually changed anything or improved anything … or, produced enough positive reaction to reverse the downward attendance spiral or to juice up passion for the neighborhood council cause. (Ken Draper is the editor of CityWatch and can be reached at
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CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 83
Pub: Oct 14, 2008
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