Please join The Open Planning Project and the Regional Plan Association for an afternoon workshop to brainstorm innovative applications of technology for participatory city planning.

Why:

Everyday social computing, mobile technology, and the adoption of web 2.0 approaches by governments have laid the groundwork for far wider citizen involvement in civic life.  Citizens can now be involved earlier on, more frequently, and in more meaningful ways than was ever possible before.  How can these opportunities be leveraged for use in the city planning space?  What are the technologies that will make this possible?  What are the bureaucratic, logistical, or social issues that need to be addressed in considering these ideas?  What tools could we build -- today -- that would be the most impactful?   

The Open Planning Project is interested in developing free, open source tools to support citizen engagement in planning.  To that end, we are reaching out to the planning, government, nonprofit, citizen and tech communities to help us explore opportunities and share ideas.  This event should be the first of many, and will be a hands-on workshop aiming to bring together many diverse perspectives.

How:

The workshop will follow the "unconference," or "BarCamp," format, where sessions and talks are proposed and led by the participants of the workshop.  Please visit the workshop wiki at http://etherpad.com/GfjsHfnoGi to see the agenda, an overview of the format, and a list of proposed talks & sessions.  Please feel free to add your ideas directly to the wiki -- we'll also be reaching out to attendees in advance to prepare some talks & sessions.

Thanks; we look forward to seeing you.

UPDATE:  Follow-up from this event will be taking place on the "planningtech" google group: 
http://groups.google.com/group/planningtech/