Planning Projects Note
From Common Energy UVic
Planning Projects Note is a briefing note structured in a question and answer format to bring in the different questions from Working Groups over the past week and to show where the Planning Projects are coming from, and where we are going with them.
[edit] Planning Projects: What do the Planning Projects help us do?
The development of the Planning Projects will help us turn the work we have done in the progress report, lists of good ideas and background material, into a more developed strategic plan to move UVic beyond climate-neutral. Those plan sections will then be refined during our September conference – with a strong emphasis on beginning to organize the implementation of the plan. The Planning Projects are a way for us to practically answer this question: How do we turn our ideas, knowledge, and relationships into deep and sustained change?
[edit] How do we, as a self-organizing network, turn our report into a good plan with the deep support that will be needed to implement it?
Planning Projects are projects that turn sections of the progress report into corresponding sections of the plan. Each Planning Project will improve and expand a section of the progress report (e.g. institutional transportation, food consumption, civic engagement). A completed Planning Project will have strategic goals that answer their key questions (i.e. How do we use our purchasing and investment to green the region’s economy?) with a list of the actions, things that Common Energy will do, and proposals, things we want the administration of UVic to do, that will be necessary to achieve them.
Your are probably thinking: How detailed does the plan need to be?
It's not our job to write a blueprint for UVic with detailed instructions on everything. We're creating a guide for people at the university to use to organize themselves over the coming years to move BCN. For example, we don't have to come up with every detail of a building policy but we should come up with some of the key features that we would want to see and a clear indication why, how, and by whom we would like to see that implemented. Perhaps the single most important thing will be to show a progression from things that we can do immediately to more visionary things whose development and implementation will need more time, thought, and resources (for example, supporting the community garden vs. developing an agricultural research institute on UVic land).
At the Going Beyond Climate-Neutral Conference, on September 28th, 29th, and 30th, we will focus on further developing these sections of the plan and beginning to organize their implementation. The conference, participants (students, staff, faculty, and regional partners) that will do this work on the plan are the broad network that we will need to build the support to insure the plan is implemented. The plan, with strategic goals and objectives and a road map for achieving them expressed in actions and proposals, will be released after the conference.
This process allows the maximum amount of collaboration for creating this comprehensive plan and will generate the deepest support for it. That is crucial, because we need both the best ideas and the political support to make them happen. Once the BCN plan is complete, Common Energy UVic can direct our energy to implementation of the actions in the sections of the plan, and working with UVic to undertake the proposals.
[edit] How do we develop this plan in our limited time frame?
The key for this summer is working smarter, not harder. The most efficient way to develop our actions and proposals is to get out there and talk to the people that have knowledge in the areas and/or will make things we want to see happen. People can use the Planning Projects to create new networks around each section to develop the ideas and the support. This is a key part of one the main objectives for the summer: getting our decentralized network buzzing again.
Here's where the Seven Question Tool comes in. The Seven Question Tool can be used for almost any kind of complex project, and it will be the main tool we use for the Planning Project. If you read the tool’s page on the wiki you will see that it has seven questions that are a guide for focusing in on what we want to accomplish and who needs to be engaged to make those goals happen.
The Seven Question Tool is iterative, the answers continually develop as you work through them. For the Planning Projects, sitting down to start answering them will initially create a plan of action for researching and creating the section of the plan. As we execute those action plans we can constantly update and improve the Seven Question Tool until in its developed form the Tool will become the section of the plan. In other words, Planning Projects start by beginning to answer the questions in the Seven Question Tool, and end wit h a fleshed out version of it.
The final question ("What is it going to take, and how are we going to do it?") is answered with the actions and proposals. I have copy and pasted all of the actions and proposals from the sections of the progress report into those pages - for example: Purchasing and Investment Planning Tool. (A page has been created for each section of the progress report - all linked in the Planning Projects page.)
[edit] Why "engage" people? What do we mean by engaging people?
To move UVic beyond climate-neutral will require a network of people working towards common goals in a variety of different areas. To engage someone requires more than making them aware of what we are doing. Engaging people is about inviting them to help us solve our common problems by working together. Really good engagement builds on each participant’s expertise and combines those strengths to cancel group weaknesses.
How do we engage people? Ask them the questions that we are facing. Show them the progress report (with a clear indication of where to look!) and sit them down with the Seven Question Tool for your Planning Project to bring them into our work. Get them to see themselves as part of the solutions that we are trying to create and they will become exactly that.
Who do we engage? Over the summer the key people to engage are the staff, faculty, and regional partners. It will often take several interactions, but we can recruit people from those three groups to directly help with the Planning Projects and make sure they come to the conference. Also, Coordination team’s recruitment initiative for students will also continue.
[edit] How do the Planning Projects relate to other projects, such as the actions?
Generally, there are two ways to develop a Planning Project. First, following the questions in the Seven Question Tool and engaging people to answer them can develop Planning Projects. Second, the experience of working on a more concrete project (say, one of the actions for your Working Group) can be a very good way to answer most of the questions for the Planning Project.
However, while the Seven Question Tool can be used for most projects, the end product of such uses (say, creating a plan to build a green business directory for example) is not the same as the end product of a Planning Project – which is a section of the plan to move UVic BCN. So concrete projects can help with a Planning Project, but cannot substitute for it completely. We still need a plan!
[edit] What is available to support this work?
In many cases, the Working Groups will be important sites to develop ideas for the questions in your Seven Question Tools and organize making connections with the right people. Furthermore;
- The Research Team meetings will become a place for people to come for support and group discussion on their Planning Projects – email Jamie (jamesbiggar@gmail.com) to get on the agenda.
- Research and Communications will focus on supporting the networking by doing things like getting the progress report out there in the hands of people that would be interested and may be engaged (with that said, each working group should be doing this as well in order to get experts in their area interested, for example, the Civic Engagement & Governance working group will be doing this with local governance bodies)
- The Recruitment and Retention team is organizing to bring in and orientate new people to get involved in the Planning Projects.
