Today, I sat down to write a thank you note to a recent customer. But all of my rough drafts thank you notes kept reading as like marketing brochures. I wrote things like: “I really appreciate your purchase of a Cubit Planning report.” Uggggh!
Frustrated with my inability to speak like a human, I went online to look for inspirational thank you note language. What I found was even worse: “Thank you for choosing to use my service.”
In desperation that this simple task was taking way too long, I pretended that a friend of mine who I used to work with had made a purchase. I pictured my friend in my head, and this is what I wrote to her.
Terri,
Thank you for buying a Socio-Ec Report for Project Name. I hope that this project is a successful one for you and the rest of your team.
Cheers!
Kristen
Now that is exactly what I meant to say 30 minutes ago.
Recently, the Social Media and the Administrative Record discussion on Re:NEPA suggested that if a planner sets up a social media site/service for a project, then the comments from the social media site must be included in the Administrative Record (AR). Including comments from social media sites in the AR could be a time-consuming, thankless task—adding yet one more step to the already massive process of compiling an AR. But as Ryan Link states in the Social Media and the Administrative Record discussion on Re:NEPA, “As the use and availability of social media increases it no longer becomes an option but a requirement for effective public involvement in planning and transportation.”
Thankfully, there are a number of free, simple social media services available for planners, like Facebook, Ning or WordPress. Each of these services varies in the amount of time it takes to learn and set up. If you have decided to take the plunge and use a social media outlet as part of your public involvement plan, you can save a massive amount of time and headache by selecting the right social media service to do the job. Consider dipping your toe in the social media water with Twitter.
Twitterbama
Twitter is a mini-blog service. It’s easy to get started, simple by design and quite popular. All Twitter posts, called tweets, are limited to 140 characters. Tweets are read by subscribers, called followers. According to this Compete blog post in February 2009, Twitter was the 3rd most popular social networking site after Facebook and MySpace based on number of monthly visits. Even President Obama is on Twitter here!
Here are a few tips and tricks for planners who want to use Twitter as part of their public outreach as well as an easy way to quickly incorporate tweets into the AR.
So what is Twitter?
If you’ve never tweeted before, Twitter might seem a little like Beanie Babies—cute but without substance. But people in your community are having real conversations on Twitter today. In fact, yesterday @david_smet tweeted that “With Facebook, your goal is to find your “friends.” With Twitter, you find new people to “follow”.” As a planner, Twitter offers a short, simple way to communication with people who are actively seeking interesting conversations. Talk about win-win. If the concept of Twitter is still fuzzy, check out the sub-3 minute video Twitter in Plain English.
How do you actually use Twitter?
The folks at Howcast have put together an excellent sub-4 minute video on How To Use Twitter. Following their step-by-step instructions, you can sign up for a free Twitter account and start tweeting about your project right now.
Easily include tweets in the AR by “Favoriting” them
Not all of your tweets or your follower’s tweets should appear in the AR. For example, you might tweet about “Traffic Congestion Costing U.S. $87.2 Billion a Year”—interesting to your tweeps and perhaps an important factor in your project’s purpose and need but not appropriate for the AR. So when you send tweets that are appropriate for the AR or when people mention your project or reply to your tweets, favorite those tweets. Here’s how to favorite tweets.
Connect with humans
So after you’ve created your account, sent your first tweet about your project and marked it as a favorite for inclusion into the AR, start following people in your area. Following other people let’s them know that you’re interested. Know that it’s good Twitter etiquette to follow people who are following you.
So where to start? To find government agencies on Twitter, check out GovTwit. Localtweeps offers zip code searching, so you can search for residents tweeting within the same zip code as your project. And consider searching for local politicians and elected officials in your area on Twitter on sites such as TweetCongress. If you want to search for people already talking about your project, you can search for your project by name using Twitter Search.
Back up your tweets
Currently, Twitter only lets you see your most recent 3,200 tweets. Consider using a free service such as www.backupmytweets.com to back up your tweets.
Ready to include your tweets into the AR?
Go to your Twitter account, and click on Favorites. You will have a list of tweets and replies ready to be included into the AR. Highlight these tweets, and right click to Copy. You can paste these Favorite tweets into Excel or Word for quick formatting. There are applications that can make this task easier, but that is a discussion for a different day.
Why Planners Should Use Twitter
So if you decide to use social media as part of your public outreach, check out Twitter, because Twitter is:
Free,
Easy to Use,
Limited to 140 characters, and
The 3rd most popular social media service.
And using the steps above, you can easily incorporate tweets into the Administrative Record. There are dozens of other tips and tricks for Twitter. Let me know if you have any questions or want some help setting up a twitter account for your planning project.
The US Navy has submitted a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for its proposed Swimmer Interdiction Security System (SISS) for the Washington state Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. According to the FEIS, the SISS would find, identify and intercept waterborne intruders (swimmers or divers) for engagement by harbor security forces.
The Navy’s preferred alternative, the Marine Mammal Alternative, is to use trained sea lions and dolphins to patrol the base’s aquatic perimeter. The animals would be armed with beacons and cuffs to locate and neutralize intruders. Another alternative considered was to use human combat swimmers.
Despite the comical similarities between the Marine Mammal Alternative and Dr. Evil’s battalion of laser-equipped sharks, the Marine Mammal Alternative offers significant advantages to human alternatives. In this Seattle Times article, Tom Lapuzza, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Program, said, “because of their astonishing sonar abilities, dolphins are excellent at patrolling for swimmers and divers. When [they] detect a person in the water, a Navy dolphin drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer.” With their sonar abilities, the marine mammal alternative is superior to the human alternative. Marine mammals 1, humans 0.
The Marine Mammal Alternative has been met with opposition from P.E.T.A. as reported here. In addition, the cost of developing a Marine Mammal Program has been projected in the millions.
NEPA lesson learned: Alternative analysis takes many forms.
The FEIS examined 2 land exchange alternatives and 1 No Action Alternative. The FEIS assumed that even if the land exchange did not occur, Asarco would still mine the land, and therefore, the environmental consequences of the land exchange alternatives and the No Action Alternative were the same.
But the court decided that if the land swap did not occur, then Asarco mining operations on the land would be subject to the Mining Law of 1872—which would likely require multiple Mining Plan of Operations (MPOs) including substantial documentation and public involvement.
So the crux of the court’s ruling is that there would be different environmental consequences between the land exchange alternatives and the No Action Alternative, because the process of getting multiple MPOs approved will “substantially affect the manner in which mining operations will occur…” Unfortunately, the decision did not elaborate on how getting multiple MPOs approved would impact mining operations or in turn, would result in different impacts to the environment.
NEPA lesson learned: if two alternatives differ in procedural requirements, the court may decide that these alternatives will have different environmental impacts.
Project details
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Asarco owns the Ray Mine complex in Gilaand and Pinal Counties, Arizona, the third most productive copper mine in the United States. In 1994, Asarco proposed a land exchange with the BLM to trade 7,300 acres of private land in exchange for 10,976 acres of public land to expand its mining operations. The Center for Biological Diversity, Western Land Exchange Project and the Sierra Club sued the BLM and Asarco under NEPA and other laws.
Interactive Maps are now available to help you pull data for your NEPA document FASTER! Draw a line on a map, and get cut-and-paste ready data about your project area. Check out Interactive Maps here.
With Interactive Maps, Cubit users also get a Preview Map with their Socio-Ec Report. The Preview Map labels the Census geographies in your project area. Currently, this map serves as supporting documentation for your project record. In the future, we hope to provide a print quality map with our reports. Would a print quality map of Census geographies in your project area be helpful for you? Let me know.
Sample Preview Map
Your Saved Projects
What if you already selected your geographies and built a report using the old Cubit Planning system? All of your data is still available. If you want to see your purchased reports, click on the Reports tab on the Projects page.
If you want to see your selected geographies, click on the Preview Your Report tab and scroll down. You won’t have a map for old reports until you draw your project on the new Interactive Map.
Socio-Ec Report Improvements
In addition to Interactive Maps and Preview Maps, there were a few more changes to our products. The free LEP Baseline Report is now a section of the Socio-Ec Report. Instead of having two demographic reports to manage, it made more sense to combine these reports into one document. The LEP Baseline Report is still free–just scroll down to the bottom of the preview Socio-Ec Report to get your free LEP data, tables and text.
Also, we are still working on converting the EJ Estimator to work with our new system. We hope to have this tool up and running in the near future. Let me know if you need an EJ Estimate.
Website Revisions
We heard from our users that our website felt “too corporate” — ouch! Anthony took a few hours and did a quick redesign. On the homepage, he replaced our stock model with a picture of me (Kristen). He added the Kristen’s Nightmare Project page to tell the story of how Cubit Planning got started. And Anthony retooled the description of our products page.
So the website is now tells the story of Cubit Planning. It’s a little different approach, but we think it looks and feels more like us.
If you have any suggestions or complaints, please let me know what you think.
Maps—it’s the feature that you’ve requested more than any other feature. And our amazing beta users are currently test driving Cubit’s Interactive Maps beta.
With Interactive Maps beta, you can draw your project on a map.
In seconds, you get a map showing Census geographies in your project area…
…and get cut-and-paste ready data and text describing your project area. All data and text is ready to go right into your NEPA documents. Check out a sample Socio-Ec Data Report and a sample LEP Baseline Report.
As soon as we can incorporate our beta users’ feedback to make Interactive Maps even more awesome, we will release Interactive Maps for everyone to use.
Want to test drive Interactive Maps now? Become a Beta User.
Have a question about how Interactive Maps work? Contact us, or leave a comment!
“I handed my badge to my boss and headed over to the Capital Factory kickoff party,” said Morales, who was a Web developer at the University of Texas.
“We weren’t charging because we weren’t ready to put a price on it, and we were worried our users wouldn’t pay,” Morales said. “But our mentors kept saying: ‘You’ve got people using your stuff, will they pay for it? Why not? What are you risking?’ So we took the chance, and now we’re selling reports.”
Anthony and I had a great time at Capital Factory’s Demo Day yesterday. Thank you to everyone who attended, and a big thank you to those of you who worked hard to make the Demo Day a success. We had great conversations at the event and look forward to keeping in touch in the future.
Here’s a blog post by Lori Hawkins with the Austin American Statesman about Demo Day. My favorite quote from Lori’s post is “Lots of Ramen noodles and lots of pizza was consumed nearly at toxic levels…” Only too true!
According the BLM’s Instructional Memorandum on this issue, “additional costs will result from implementing this policy” [of discontinuing CEs].
Karen Budd Falen of the Budd-Falen Law Offices in Cheyenne, Wyoming is concerned about the additional cost. Ms. Falen states that “The BLM admits that it is woefully behind completing its NEPA compliance paperwork, even on the smallest of permits and even when the rangeland conditions are in excellent condition.” Ms. Falen’s concern is that if the NEPA documentation not completed by the end of the livestock grazing term, livestock grazing could be eliminated.
Environmental and Native American groups filed a lawsuit blocking a major pipeline project today. Just like in the lawsuit halting the Maury Island pier project, the compliant points to deficiencies in the indirect and cumulative sections.
What if you already selected your geographies and built a report using the old Cubit Planning system? All of your data is still available. If you want to see your purchased reports, click on the Reports tab on the Projects page.
On the homepage, he replaced our stock model with a picture of me (Kristen). He added the 
