First Congress Planning Meeting Report

Thank you to all who participated Saturday, Jan. 15 for the first 2011 Citywide Congress planning meeting and for volunteering to take leadership roles in the various congress planning areas. Our next meeting will be Saturday, February 5 at 2:00 p.m., [NOTE TIME CHANGE TO 2 PM] same location at the Hollywood Constituent Center. Everyone is invited.

Here is a quick recap from our meeting. Names in parenthesis are those taking the lead on getting more details in these areas.

Congress Location Ideas: (Mary Garcia & Heinrich Keifer)
Central location is best.
LA Convention Center
City Hall
CBS Studios
LA Trade Tech
Downtown Arts School on Grand Avenue (LAUSD school)
USC
Deaton Auditorium

Congress Date Ideas (Fall 2011):
#1 Choice = Saturday, September 24
#2 Choice = Saturday, September 17
#3 Choice = Saturday, October 15

Congress Budget:
$20,000 is the targeted base cost from prior citywide and regional NC congress events. DONE will bring financial recaps from prior congress events and share at our next meeting.

Congress Sponsors: (Mary Garcia and Cliff Jacobs)
Sponsors for major needs such as lunch, audio visual, location, other.

Other:
Program -- Marlene Savage, Maggi Fajnor (Planning topics / PlanCheckNC alliance), Ivan Spiegel, Tony Wilkinson.
Ideas included:
NC 101
Peer Mentoring / Building network and mentoring
Best Practices - how NCs spend their $45,000
Land Use and Planning (PlanCheckNCLA will coordinate)
Effective management and meetings, Brown Act / Sunshine Law, Ethics Training, Parliamentary Procedure (Rosenberg's and Roberts), Resolutions

CERT/Emergency
Outreach, Capacity Building, NC Benefits, E-Blasts
Community Impact Statements
Accomplishments and Impacts from NCs

Government 101 - How to make change
City Department Overviews
Navigating City Departments
Advocate for topic / issues all NC's can support
Know what community fighting for and interacting with the City
Community Partnerships
Community Building
Deliberative process for issues (how to)
city budget basics

Other:
Vision for the Congress & Congress Theme
Exhibitor tables/city departments
Double track break outs

structure to get NC on every commission
pre-congress video
making sure we get reps from all alliances and areas of the City participating in the planning and attending the Congress

Day of Event:
lunch seating to encourage networking

Thank you to BH, Leyla and Gracie at DONE for participating too.

This is just the kick-start. There's much to do, discuss and enjoy. Please call me anytime with questions or to volunteer in any Congress planning areas.