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APA Arizona Planner's Challenge Unconference 2009

Purpose

Unconferences were first developed by the technology community to tap into the shared knowledge and creativity of meeting participants. To learn more about unconferences, please visit:

Wikipedia Unconference

The Arizona APA is leveraging this year's planning conference to tap into your collective experience and insights. It is intended to challenge you to become part of the solution for attaining a sustainable 21st Century Infrastructure that can compete both nationally and globally.

The unconference will be set up as a closed fishbowl that will allow infrastructure experts to discuss the infrastructure needs that will allow Arizona to compete in the 21st Century. Planners will be divided into several focus groups. Each focus group will assign a team representative and discuss what the planner's role is in affecting the change necessary to attain these infrastructure requriements. The focus group representatives will enter "the fishbowl" and ask a number of questions to the expert panelists for clarification Now here's where things get fun. The expert panelists will then turn to the planners' in the fishbowl and challenge them as to how to meet the goals of the 21st Century Infrastructure; this is a friendly debate to empower the planning community to think of themselves as part of the solution. The focus group representatibes will then be on the hot seat to respond to the experts' challenges. (Could add an open fishbowl at this point so that the planner's can draw from expertise in the audience.)

Agenda

10:00 - 11:00 Expert Panel Discussion

11:00 - 12:00 Focus Group Discussion - Planner's Role in Attaining 21st Century Infrastructure

12:00 - 12:30 Focus Group Question Period - Planners Question the Experts (Clarification)

12:30 - 1:30 Planner's Challenge - Experts Question the Planners

1:30 - 2:00 Focus Group Recap

Focus Groups

There will be x focus groups comprised of several experts for the given topic, supplanted by team members with cross-disciplinary expertise. Each focus group will select a team representative who will represent the group in the fishbowl face-off. A scribe will be assigned to each focus group such that questions and lessons learned can be captured in the wiki.

Focus Groups: