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If it doesn’t work, we can try something else I was in Walla Walla, Washington, population 34,000, on the rainiest day. Kathryn Witherington was showing me around downtown. What stood out was the difference between the perfectly planned park and the messy plaza experiment. The plaza started as an experiment. It was during COVID. Restaurants couldn’t…
A ‘cock and bull’ story At the League of Oregon Cities conference, I led an interactive workshop for city council members. One council member asked for help with a fight going on in their town about a bull, and I knew you’d want to hear about it. Their town has two major roundabouts. At the…
What’s oobleck? I had to ask too. It’s made of cornstarch and water, but it’s weird. At rest, it behaves like a liquid. Apply pressure, and it behaves like a solid. So if you hit it, it’s hard and your hand bounces off. Rest your hand on top, and you can sink in slowly. Obviously…
What makes you come alive? It’s not the committee list Everyone knows everyone in small towns, right? Well… I live in a place with about 30 people, and I don’t even know everyone. Next time you’re at an event in your town, look around. How many people could you name? A lot, I’m sure, but…
After my talk at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference, a couple came up to show me what they’d done with the Idea Friendly Method. On the postcards I hand out, they’d written their idea: “If our town had a small restaurant or cafe.” They live in a place with just a few hundred people, so…
A person from Alva, Oklahoma, (population 4,000) posted on the Alva Rants and Raves Facebook group, “I think Alva needs a dog park!” Right away the negativity piled on. I am not kidding, it was things like, “I took my dog to a dog park, and he got sick!” and “I’m an expert on dogs,…
Bob Hughes in Hamilton, Missouri, sends me regular updates of the Hamilton Community Alliance. I had been thinking of it as just a nice idea, and then we exchanged a few emails that changed my thinking. They hold quarterly meetings where people from different organizations and groups share what they’re up to, and they create…
You don’t have to become a different person to be Idea Friendly I handed out notecards at the Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Steaks and Stems event. They are just a postcard-sized handout I use at almost every talk. It has the three steps of the Idea Friendly Method printed at the top: Gather Your Crowd, Build Connections,…
The hour was up. My session on Finding More Volunteers was officially over, but people were still sharing. The conversations were so good, and people weren’t done yet. There was nothing scheduled in the room after us, so I offered to stay and keep the conversation going. They kept it going for another 15 minutes….
A couple of weeks ago, I shared how we came up with a lot of the formal organization methods that we use today: organizational charts, committees and procedural rules. Let’s call that the Old Way. It’s formal, with structure, committees, meetings, notes, reports, and accountability. A few people do most of the organizing with appointments,…
In 2016, my SaveYour.Town cofounder Deb Brown and I were on a working retreat when the Idea Friendly Method was still fairly new. As we worked through the method, she asked, “Why is this happening now?” Which is a great question. I gave her a long answer at the time, but I’ve only shared part…
Why do small towns struggle to get things done? Why is that water line still not fixed? What’s holding up the downtown streetscape project? Why didn’t that planned thing ever happen? Questions like these often get lumped under the label of “rural capacity” or lack of capacity. Plenty of outside organizations have been talking a…
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