Public Works in the Metaverse - Public Works Group Blog

September 6, 2011

Set Up Your Own Blog With Our Blog Route Plans!

Over the last year, there's been a significant increase in the use of social media by those of us working in public works. Some of us are using it for work to enhance communications with citizens or other professionals. Others have started using it only to interact with personal friends and relatives. But even though everyone seems to be getting more comfortable tweeting, sharing posts on Facebook, and watching YouTube videos, few have moved on to creating blogs. Yet just about every one of us has significant information and experiences that could be best shared with others through a blogging format. So we wondered what could the Public Works Group do to encourage and support more sharing of public works information online? And that's when we decided to launch the Blog Route Plans!

The Blog Route Plans are monthly subscription plans that can help you easily get a blog, and even a few social media sites, up and running. For a monthly fee, we can set up and host a blog for you, offer tutorials, keep your site upgraded, and provide resources and ideas for you to use to create content on your blog. And because some people feel more comfortable having others check over their posts before publishing, we can help out by providing that service too.

Based on our research, this is somewhat of a different approach to offering social media services. Most people who want a website or blog usually contract with someone or a company to provide the site. And once delivery takes place, the fee is paid, and the customer is handed a newly created site to proudly display online. But because setting up a social media site like a blog is just the beginning, we believe it's more important to provide support to you on a regular basis. After all, it's the content on your site and your engagement online that will provide the most value to your reader. And it's not always easy to come up with ideas or topics for posts or keep up with all the new tools to incorporate into your site.

Sure there are some social media consultants out there who will run your site for you and create and generate content. But the cost can be hefty, they probably don't have the public works background you do, and really social media is more about personal interaction – not just hiring someone to do it for you. So instead we want to offer services that support and help you create the best content possible. We already have the Public Works Group Website where we post information related to our industry. But through our plans, we can better keep you informed about any new social media tools out there and whether or not they can help increase the value of your site. And of course, we will send ideas and suggestions for posts.

Some people might ask why pay for a monthly subscription when anyone can set up a blog for free on sites like WordPress.com or Blogger? For those who are interested in setting up blogs on their own, this is definitely a solution. However, we do realize that eventually some people, particularly those setting up blogs for their companies, will need or want more control over their blog than a free hosting plan provides. And our plans are set up for people who don't want to have to worry about researching how to set up blogs, worry about maintaining a site, or worry about what tools they really should be using. The Blog Route Plans also allow the Public Works Group to act as a type of personal blogging assistant providing content ideas, checking posts, or just being there to answer questions about social media or blogging. So if you've been thinking of blogging or just have some questions, check out our plans or e-mail us with any thoughts or questions at pwg@publicworksgroup.com

August 20, 2011August 20, 2011

Glogging My Virtual Experiences

If you've been reading this blog since its early days, you know I'm a big supporter of the use of virtual worlds and 3D immersive spaces. Although I realize these technologies are not yet mainstream or even well accepted or understood, my experience with them has been tremendously positive. They have quite simply changed my life and career forever. Through using virtual worlds, I've learned skills with computer programs and found information about places and ideas I would have never picked up anywhere else. I've also developed better presentation and delivery skills through interactions in these environments. And most importantly, I've met people I never would have met without entering these spaces. It's been an incredible journey that isn't over yet.

Because of my involvement in all this, I became aware of and decided to participate in 3D Game Lab – a summer class focusing on learning how to use gaming techniques and frameworks to supplement or enhance learning. And this experience has led me to even more information and skills and techniques to help me further develop my career. The class finishes up this weekend. But as with virtual worlds, this experience is not over yet either. All of us who participated can choose to continue on creating our own classes using their software. And after September 1st, we can invite up to 60 people or students to participate in our class. My plan is to start with building a class that will teach drainage, and it will be offered online for free. After the beta period, they are opening up the software for anyone to use to build classes – right now it appears that if classes will be offered for free, the use of the software will be free. I'm hoping to be able to continue creating classes for citizens and for other professionals. When I get closer to launching, I will blog more about the experience.

In the meantime, I'm embedding below a visual summary of my virtual experiences – creating this was one of the assignments in our 3D Game Lab class. And it helped me find out about and learn how to use the Glogster site where anyone can create an educational poster. I can see a lot of uses for people in public works who need to create posters for their department.

August 4, 2011

The Gamification of Public Works

Most people my age have been schooled with the "sit and listen" method. But today's teachers are breaking out of that mold by tailoring lesson plans for different learning styles using gaming ideas and platforms. So to better understand this shift in education, I am taking a summer class offered through Boise State that focuses on this new teaching approach. The course is built on 3D GameLab, "an online, quest-based platform" that can be used to develop training courses. My purpose in taking the class is to develop education-based skills and to understand how best to leverage a game-based approach to learning. And my goal is to use these skills and this knowledge to develop training resources for professionals in public works and for citizens.

So why are educators embracing gaming as a teaching method, and why do I believe this can be leveraged for professional training? Game developers have figured out some critical elements of human nature. They are leveraging the fact that we can be motivated with the right environment and incentives to complete a set of assigned tasks. And this motivation can be so great that for some it borders on addiction. Imagine how many employers would be interested in learning this secret, particularly because the exchange of money is in the reverse – players are not expecting money to play and instead give up their money to game.

I've embedded a video at the end of this post that explores the effect games have had on our lives. Some of the insights shared in this talk discuss the ability of games to drive or elicit emotion in a player. This is accomplished through the game environment, the framework of the game, the story within the game, and the tasks assigned. Done well, all these elements combine to grab the player, pull him into the game, and drive his emotion. And because the purpose is to keep the player coming back, those emotions are not designed to be negative. Instead they are set up to create the most epic, incredible emotions that can be felt.

To successfully gamify training in our field, we need to capture these components along with elements from our industry and apply them to our courses. The environment and tasks that make up our workplace are probably the easiest to translate into this method. However finding our story and weaving it throughout the training session and into each task is more challenging. The same approach and challenges exist for developing civic courses for citizens. And in each, a successful course will be dependent on the ability to bring the player into the game, encourage them to accept and become a part of the story, and develop the confidence, skills, and engagement necessary to achieve epic wins in the game and in "real life." And have them return for more.

(The symbol at the beginning of the post is one of many that can be generated at the BrainHex website. Anyone can visit the site and take a quick test to see what gameplay behaviour they exhibit.)

June 26, 2011July 16, 2011

MOSES – Ramping up Government Use of Virtual Worlds

We've been fortunate to have a group of federal employees from the US who are dedicated and passionate about government use of virtual worlds. The work accomplished by Eric Hackathorn (NOAA), William May and Lovisa Williams (State Dept), Charles White and Jeanne Holm (NASA), Paulette Robinson (NDU), and Douglas Maxwell and Tami Griffith (US Army) has been groundbreaking and inspirational. (And there are many more who I apologize for not listing.) Recently Maxwell launched a new project named MOSES. And based on what I've seen, this project has the potential to not only build upon these past accomplishments but also ramp up government use of virtual worlds and move us in new directions we have yet to discover.

At first, I thought MOSES was going to be a grid set up only for use by the military but with public access. Then last week, a post on the project site led me to believe MOSES was offering space on their grid to outside agencies/companies. The post talked about a map showing other groups establishing builds on the MOSES grid. While looking at the "Join MOSES" link on the project site, I found that yes, indeed, MOSES seemed to be offering space to other groups!

"MOSES is an Open Simulator based project designed for use by the military and our industry/academic collaborators. MOSES is currently an exploratory project designed to test multiple deployment methods of Open Simulator, archival methods for content, and experimental application case studies. Region owners retain full simulator rights, to include terraforming, OAR/IAR upload and download, and region restart access."

To me, this seemed too good to be true! Our MuniGov group had started a grid – GovGrid – in February 2010 to start taking advantage of the benefits of OpenSim and provide space for others in government to explore the technology. But encouraging others to move onto the grid has been a challenge – the technology is still very new to most in government, and unfortunately because we host through a private provider, we have to charge for land. Also, although our group is managed by people working in government, it is not "owned" by a government agency. All of these factors can make it much more difficult to encourage participation by a local government. MOSES addresses most of these issues.

So I took a chance and asked Maxwell if our group could establish a presence on MOSES. He graciously offered a whole sim for MuniGov to set up a local government presence. We are temporarily located on the STTC_7_4 sim of MOSES and will now work on developing the site. MOSES is still considered an experimental effort, but because the grid allows users to back up their work, everything we do can be saved for use on any OpenSim grid. For now, we will retain GovGrid to allow for development of OAR files and other resources that can be shared in the OpenSim community.

It's exciting that Maxwell has allowed our group to be part of this effort. Because of it, local government now has the opportunity to be part of the networking and collaboration provided by the US Army's decision to allow non-military use of the grid. And we have the chance to be part of an incubator-type project destined to advance government use of virtual worlds. I would encourage anyone interested in government use of 3D immersive technology to sign up for an account on the MOSES site and become part of the MOSES experiment!

(You can read about more examples of government use of virtual worlds, including information about MiLands, at our sister site, Grid Works)

June 6, 2011

Fifty Best Engineering Blogs

A hearty thanks to the civilengineeringschools.org site for listing our blog as one of the top 50 civil engineering blogs and granting us a Blog Frog award. We proudly display our award below and encourage everyone to check out the other Blog Frog award winners at:

http://www.civilengineeringschools.org/best-civil-engineering-blogs

CivilEngineeringSchools.org

June 2, 2011June 2, 2011

Geneva’s Great Land Adventure

Several months ago, I read some blog posts about frustration with Gov 2.0 not doing enough and a few other posts with offers from people interested in working for free for experience. The two seemingly unrelated topics got me wondering: How could our city use Gov 2.0 to offer job opportunities to people just looking for experience and also offer opportunities to citizens interested in participating in government? My thoughts drifted to the projects I’m working on at my job. And I wondered if our city could reach out to these people with the use of Gov 2.0 tools to help us complete some of our projects. One particular project rose above the others as a perfect candidate – the creation of a database documenting all properties in which the city holds some interest. It seemed possible because all the research could be done online by anyone with a connection to the Internet.

Fortunately, my supervisor and city administrator were fully supportive of implementing this idea. And even better, an intern working for us who is a public administration graduate student was able to partner with us to set it all up. While we were planning the project, I noticed a post on GovLoop written by Dave Briggs: The need for micro-participation. It seemed to discuss exactly what we were hoping to do. His post and support of the idea of micro-volunteering inspired me to finish setting up the project. After it was complete, we took some time evaluating it. After getting some great input from everyone, the project became an adventure of discovery with a Viking theme complete with a Viking figure donated by our wastewater division staff. Now anyone can join us on a discovery of property. And people can even earn titles and rewards as they successfully complete documentation of areas. You can check out the site here: The Geneva Land Adventure.

While we realize this approach has been used before to crowdsource genealogy databases, we’re not sure if other local governments have offered similar opportunities for micro-participation. We would be interested in hearing from others who might be aware of similar examples of participation or information about property management systems already in place. And we would love to hear comments or suggestions for improving the project and would love it even more if you signed up and participated in our adventure! (And because property management in local government is not a widely discussed or known topic, I offer a little background below.)

A INTRODUCTION TO PROPERTY MANAGEMENT FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT

People are usually surprised to discover that local governments have a significant number of interests in real estate or property. These property rights can be held in the form of deeds, dedications, easements, rights of way, or licenses. And, depending on a government agency’s size, the number of documents conveying these rights can range from hundreds to thousands.

What also surprises people is that agencies most likely do not have a property database in place to document and manage the property rights associated with these documents. When I started working at the city of LaSalle in 1993, I figured they didn’t have this in place because they were somewhat of a small community with a population of about 9700. So I got to work building the database and putting a management system in place. By the time I left in 2009, I had discovered about 300+ properties in which the city had some ownership right. What I’ve since realized from talking to others in government is that many cities lack a property database.

Based on my experience in LaSalle, I have developed a process of building the database and putting in place a management system. One of the first steps is to discover all the documents in which an agency has property rights. But this task can take significant time. Since starting a new job with the city of Geneva two years ago, I’ve been working on setting up the system here. Fortunately we already have most of the property held by deeds in a database created by the county tax assessor. But this information needs to be verified and all the other documents covering easements, licenses, dedications, etc. need to be discovered.

Some might wonder if it’s so much work, why bother. Well, in government, ownership and property rights come up frequently throughout the day. Most activities that go on in local government, particularly in public works or property maintenance, involve the need to know what can be done where. If a database does not exist, research must be done each time a question about rights or ownership comes up. With a completed database and GIS, the answers are much more readily available. There are other benefits, but to keep it brief, the bottom line is having the database saves time and money which is always a good thing to achieve in government.