Sitting in the CN Library, enjoying a high speed connection

[catsittingstill]

As part of my research for the whole Planning Task Force thing, I'm sitting in the library. Not, alas, with a wireless connection: either the wireless in the library is still down, or my computer, which successfully connected to the IT department's wireless yesterday, can't connect to the library's wireless today. But I have (with permission) hijacked an ethernet connection from a library computer, and am using the fast connection to research stuff for the next Planning Task Force meeting. I have a lot to do and only 7 days to do it in, so the fast connection is a good thing.



At the first PTF meeting (last night) we were each issued a big three ring binder full of photocopied stuff having to do with the planning process, and the issues we voted in at the community meeting as being of general concern 390 pages of it). I have a hunch the facilitator is trying to baffle us with statistics while he drives the meeting in the direction he thinks is best (more industry jobs). He reckons without my studying/researching power! I am unfazed by the idea of reading 390 pages in three weeks. Heh. I grant you, it may take me two days to read all the stuff for next week's meeting... But part of that is because I have other things to do both days.

Next week's issues are "Education" and "Quality of Life." In addition to that I need to put in some time coming up with reasonable metrics for measuring environmental quality for the county--the plan calls for "benchmarks" and I'm pretty sure if Environment (slated for the last week) doesn't get a benchmark, it will get shuffled out the door in practice, no matter how much support it has in theory.

So I'm reading the comments from the community focus meetings about education and quality of life (a lot of environmental stuff shows up in quality of life) and reading the extra articles in the binder in the education section. The quality of life section will probably have to wait until tomorrow, but I'll get to it. It's handy having the fast connection, because when I need some statistic to appreciate an article (if offshoring is going to take 9.6 million US jobs, what percentage of jobs is that? Well, the US department of labor thinks there are about 155 million employed people in this country, so about 6%. Okay, now I have some idea of what that means) I can look it up fairly quickly (usually).

Broadband is nice. I wish I had it at home.

Comments

[djonn]

Metric tons of reports/agendas/notes/statistics are endemic to any and all government boards, committees, and task forces. Just ask my mother, who has spent most of the last thirty-odd years on local and regional school boards of one sort or another; she has the banker-boxes full of them to prove it. Let me put it this way: when they did a large-scale house remodel a few years ago, my parents ended up with nearly 400 banker-boxes of assorted Stuff that got packed up. A third to a half of those boxes were books; at least another third were papers and files relating in some way to her school board service.

Anyhow, whether or not your hunch is right, being able to work through and analyze that material efficiently should be an extremely valuable asset to the task force. You may not see chunks of reportage quite that big regularly -- first-time infodumps for that sort of thing tend to be larger than average, I think -- but be prepared for a steady influx of reading matter as the task force goes about its business.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I was just caught off-guard, that's all; this is my first time on such a project. I intend to read all that stuff, and I'm challenged rather than intimidated by it (that weenie thinks he can exceed my capacity to absorb information? Ha! I'll show him!), but it's kind of a surprise.

I wish there was some way to get material *I* find and think is important to the Planning Task Force members, but I expect they feel overwhelmed already for the most part.

[djonn]

It may not be as difficult as you think to circulate additional material.

I'm assuming that your facilitator is an agency staffer assigned to be the Task Force's liaison/support person; if that's the case, you might simply contact the facilitator (or his/her administrative assistant) and say "can we add [whatever-it-is] to the next information packet?" In my experience, this is in significant part what such facilitators are for -- moving information around in an organized fashion -- and they are very rarely fazed by requests to add more information to their catalogs.

Alternatively, depending on how the Task Force is constituted, it may be that you'll want or need to go through the chair/leader of the Task Force to get to the facilitator and/or have your additional material added to the TF's stack of reading matter. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as getting the chair on your side of a particular issue can have its uses....

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um. I'm pretty sure the facilitator is at least passively resistant to the idea of environmental protection. I don't know about the chair; I might try contacting him.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

[quick note--dealing with shtuff]

There may not be time, but you might swing by worldchanging.com & see if you can find ideas for benchmarks there.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

thanks, I'll have a look