Wigley and Associates » National Civic Summit

Target Corp. VP Nate Garvis on civil civic conversations

Griff Wigley — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:26:58 +0000

Nate Garvis, Vice President of Government Affairs for Target Corporation (he has a Twitter feed but doesn’t appear to have his own web page), gave a great speech at last week’s National Civic Summit last week titled, “Weaving Civic Fabric Out of Our Tangled Mess.” The pre-speech abstract:

Polarization has become a powerful force with social and civic consequences and has potential to strengthen based on the vast leap in communications technologies that have allowed us to become more insular. Nate will offer his keen perspective on the forces shaping society today and suggest ways to weave ourselves back together by promoting civil, civic conversations that better connect citizens in our communities for the common good.

Here’s the audio of Nate’s speech.

Click play to listen. 33 minutes.

I chatted briefly with Nate after his presentation and told him that I moderate the online discussions on Locally Grown, a civic issues blog in my hometown of Northfield, where we get 500-1000 comments a month. Our discussion guidelines have two unusual rules that have helped to ensure civility over the years.

Scenes from the National Civic Summit party at Mill City Museum

Griff Wigley — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:05:52 +0000

Target Corp. hosted quite a bash last night at the Mill City Museum in downtown Mpls for the National Civic Summit’s opening night party and Tweet-Up. The FREE conference continues today and tomorrow at the Mpls. Hilton.

National Civic Summit to focus on social media

Griff Wigley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:09:38 +0000

The National Civic Summit is being held in downtown Minneapolis next week, July 15-17. The two-day conference is free and open to the public, though there is a charge for the pre-conference party and National Tweetup at the Mill City Museum on Wed. night. I’ll be attending all three days. The key questions for the conference:

“How can we increase civic imagination and capacity to solve today’s challenges in ways that serve the public interest?”
“How do we use technology to move from isolation and overload to effective collaboration and solutions?”

The folks at the Citizens League, one of the event’s co-sponsors, will be unveiling CitiZing!, their new online civic collaboration utility, at the Summit.