{"id":1047,"date":"2010-04-09T13:33:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T13:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:02:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T19:02:20","slug":"rethink-blogger-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/2010\/04\/rethink-blogger-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethink Blogger Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Straight Line Blog Post<\/strong><\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

The Planning Department\u2019s Rethink effort started last night with a blogger panel featuring David Alpert of Greater, Greater Washington<\/a>; Dan Reed of Just Up the Pike<\/a>; Barnaby Zall of Friends of White Flint<\/a>; Cynthia Cotte Griffiths of RockvilleCentral.com; and Eric Robbins of ThayerAvenue.com.<\/p>\n

Two ideas in the discussion struck me. The first was Dan Reed\u2019s passion for his community and the sense of justice that prompted him to start blogging. His reporting<\/em> recounted Maryam Balbed’s some<\/span> success in connecting the Silver Spring skater kids to the planning process through his blog<\/span>. This is the kind of outreach planners know that must do to create a valid plan, but don\u2019t always achieve.<\/p>\n

Connecting to a larger community through blogs may be one way to get beyond the \u201cwhite, middle-class, retired\u201d people who Reed sees as making decisions for communities they may not be part of.<\/p>\n

But even if you can engage a community, you need to be able to talk to them. One of the bloggers pointed out that \u201cthree quarters of planning lingo is unintelligible.\u201d Barnaby Zall admitted he didn\u2019t know what FAR meant when he started blogging about White Flint. And David Alpert explained that blogs allow the time to educate and build a constituency over time. He urged planners to share the \u201cmicro-decisions\u201d that go into a plan or project, rather than just delivering a final document.<\/p>\n

Planners will protest that they send notices, set up committees, and have community meetings, but if you can\u2019t transcend the bureaucracy, says Reed, you won\u2019t be able to transcend the anger it can generate.<\/p>\n

The panel provided good insight into techniques, communication, and community that I hope we can incorporate into our work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Straight Line Blog Post<\/p>\n

The Planning Department\u2019s Rethink effort started last night with a blogger panel featuring David Alpert of Greater, Greater Washington; Dan Reed of Just Up the Pike; Barnaby Zall of Friends of White Flint; Cynthia Cotte Griffiths of RockvilleCentral.com; and Eric Robbins of ThayerAvenue.com.<\/p>\n

Two ideas in the discussion struck me. The first was Dan Reed\u2019s passion for his community and the sense of justice that prompted him to start blogging. His reporting<\/em> recounted Maryam Balbed’s some success in connecting the Silver Spring skater kids to the planning process through his blog. This is the kind of outreach planners know that must do to create a valid plan, but don\u2019t always achieve.<\/p>\n

Connecting to a larger … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[86,486,87],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning","tag-blogging","tag-planning","tag-rethink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10977,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/10977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}