Instead of offering an inspiring story or informative tip, in this blog I want to let you know of a project that Luke Hohmann, a friend and colleague, is producing to help citizens engage with their government. If you are interested in collaboration at scale, this could be an exciting opportunity.

For four years Luke’s company, Conteneo, has been producing Participatory Budgeting events for San José, CA through a 501(c)3 non-profit, Every Voice Engaged Foundation.

In 2016 he’s producing two exciting Participatory Budgeting programs for San José. These are the biggest programs they’ve ever produced – and he wants our help. I’m writing to invite you to consider joining his facilitation team.

Here is an overview of these programs:

• Citywide Participatory Budgeting (Feb 2016) – This project will emphasize scale and building for the future by using Conteneo’s platforms to engage citizens in a zero-based budget process to identify how the City should prioritize an approximately $120M budget for communities and neighborhoods. They‘re targeting 1000 people in-person (Feb 20) and 50,000 people online (week of Feb 22).
• D3 Participatory Budgeting: Nov 2015 to Mar 2016 (website) – This project will emphasize citizen input. It will solicit ideas for citizens, shape these ideas into projects and then engage citizens by allowing them to directly control how the city will spend $100K.

You can facilitate in-person or online. Just register at Every Voice Engaged. (Note, click on “Sign Up to Help”. On the registration form, don’t be intimidated that you don’t have a Conteneo certification. Select “I don’t have a belt – YET!” and then describe your facilitation experience. There is a place for you.)

To make it easier to justify joining the facilitation team Conteneo runs an informative and inspiring conference before the event. The Conteneo Collaboration Confab will be held February 18-19, 2016 at the Microsoft Center in Silicon Valley. It will include training on February 18th and extraordinary speakers on February 19th.

Thank you – and I hope you consider joining the team.

Christopher Avery authored Teamwork Is An Individual Skill for everyone who wants to be done with bad teams. He founded The Leadership Gift™ Program to make world-class personal leadership development accessible to individuals worldwide.