Tag Archives: City of Eden Prairie

Eden Prairie City Manager Scott Neal, leadership blogger, soon taking the reins at Edina

A month ago, Eden Prairie MN City Manager Scott Neal announced on his blog that he’d accepted a new job as City Manager for the City of Edina, MN.  See this recent feature in the Star Tribune newspaper profiling his career: Edina’s new city manager has lifelong interest in governance.

Griff Wigley and Scott Neal

Scott and I had breakfast last week at Turtle Bread in south Minneapolis near his home.

I got to know Scott when he became Northfield’s city administrator in 1996. Only 100 days on the job, he became our first guest in an online web forum that I moderated titled State of the City (transcript). When he departed Northfield for the city manager job Eden Prairie in late 2002, he became my second leadership blogging client (see this blog post of mine dated March 31, 2003).

UK government delegation visits Northfield, 2004Scott Neal gives keys to Kingston Scott Neal gets keys from Kingston
(Left photo): When a delegation from the UK government visited Northfield during the summer of 2004 to learn about the civic leadership blogging in Northfield and Eden Prairie, it turned into a trip to the UK in Feb. 2005 for both us to teach local leaders there about leadership blogging (see the album of 240 photos).

(Center and right photos): Scott gave ceremonial keys to the city to the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames when we visited the city, and Kingston Councilor Mary Reid (recently retired) did likewise when she and others from the UK visited MN for the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy and spent a day in Northfield (see my blog post with photos here) to discuss leadership blogging at the local government level. (See Mary Reid’s blog post on our visit here.)

Scott’s blogging taught me more about the power of a leadership blog than I taught him. I remember the most startling revelation for me was the extent to which he used his blog to communicate indirectly to the employees of the City of Eden Prairie. ‘Indirectly’ because the audience for his blog was primarily local citizens but his staff followed his blog closely.

Affirming people is one of the key ways to use a leadership blog and Scott consistently did this in his 7+ years of blogging as Eden Prairie City Manager. See this recent blog post where he singles out three employees for detailed recognition.

Will Scott be blogging in his new job?  Stay tuned.

New liquor blog for City of Eden Prairie, MN

Eden Prairie Liquor Blog The City of Eden Prairie, MN has been a client since early 2003 when I helped City Manager Scott Neal get going with his blog. Fire Chief George Esbensen started his blog in early 2005, and the EP Police Department started their blog in early 2009 (after former Police Chief Dan Carlson retired along with his long-running blog).

The latest to join the City of Eden Prairie blogosphere: the Eden Prairie Liquor blog, launched last month by communications staffers Joyce Lorenz and Katie Beal, with the managers of the EP municipal liquor stores doing the blogging: Mitch Dean, Tammy Wanchena, Holly Smith, and Tana Wold.

Mitch Dean Tammy Wanchena Holly Smith Tana Wold