Can you send us an idea?

We hope you’re looking forward to the Biennial as much as we are. And as some of you may know, we’ll be hosting two sessions on Developing New Community Ideas in Chicago.

We hope too that all you blog readers can participate in these events. Here’s how you can do it:

We’re looking for new community ideas – your ideas in particular. We’re pretty sure you have them; we want to encourage you to send them our way.

We’re doing this because we feel strongly motivated to respond to the powerful social and economic challenges of our time. How can that best happen? Developing and implementing new community ideas is one of many ways we can respond, because new ideas, new ways of working in our communities, can help maintain our community quality of life. If we can collect and share such ideas, the communities we serve can benefit.

So at these sessions – and before – we want to learn about and share your community ideas with each other; to discuss how they might be implemented; and to identify structures for implementing them, so that we can keep generating and sharing new community ideas well after the Biennial is over.

Here’s where you come in: Can you think of one good community idea, one that you especially like? We’re especially looking for small-scale, low-cost, non-technical, practical, and innovative ideas, an idea that interests or (even better) excites you. It could be something that you’ve actually tried, or that you’d like to try. You be the judge. If you like it, it’s a probably a good idea.

Whatever your favorite community idea is, that’s what we’re looking for. If you can tell us about it in 100 words or less – short and sweet – and send it to us before June 15 at Bill_Berkowitz [at] uml.edu, or post them on this blog in the comments section, that would be excellent, and we would be grateful.

About the sessions themselves: Our first session will be on Friday morning June 17, from 7:45 – 9:00 at Roosevelt University, room 244. Saturday morning’s session will run from 10:15 to 11:00 in the Harold Washington Library, Multipurpose Room B. If you can join us for these sessions, we welcome you warmly; please do send us an RSVP so that we can get an accurate breakfast count.

We hope also to arrange to post your and everyone’s ideas in some easily-accessible location, and will keep in touch with you on this front.

So before you head off for the Biennial, please send (at least) one good idea our way – both to advance our own knowledge and to increase our impact on the communities we serve.

Thanks, everyone. We’re looking forward to hearing from you and to seeing you in Chicago.


~~ Bill

Bill Berkowitz
Gina Cardazone
Victoria Chen
Dyana Valentine
and Tom Wolff

Co-leaders for the New Community Ideas sessions