Everyone:

I took liberty to email our city leadership about this site and received the following response. It is GREAT to hear our city leaders as enthusiastic and supportive of the Renaissance effort that has taken place downtown for the last 15 years.

Hopefully this momentum will surely continue. (Note, Dave even uses a variation of our slogun - the Renaissance will indeed Continue!). The following is his reply.

***


Hot Rod,

Thanks for the advisory about OKCTalk and about your enthusiasm for
downtown. We will add you to our e-newsletter mail list to keep you
posted on downtown activities. We also look forward to seeing the ideas
that emerge from the forum or any that you care to pass on directly.
With the help of you and other stakeholders, the renaissance will indeed
continue.


Dave Lopez
DowntownOKC


-----Original Message-----
From: Hot Rod
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 9:15 PM
To: OKC Leadership emails
Subject: OKCTalk.com - A new forum online discussing Downtown Oklahoma
City

To:
Honourable Mayor, City of Oklahoma City
DowntownOKC.com
Oklahoma City Convention and Visitor Bureau
Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce
Bricktown Association

Good day to you:

I just wanted to bring to your attention a web forum that discusses many issues about downtown Oklahoma City and the renaissance that has been going on called OKCTalk.com. This email is addressed to the leadership of Oklahoma City and key contacts thereof. Please forward as necessary.

At OKCTalk, people who really care about downtown OKC post and share ideas
and frustrations. We discuss issues concerning the progress and development of Oklahoma City, especially downtown and Bricktown.

While many of the discussions are pipe-dreams, many could serve as
visions or ideas for your organization and the leadership of Oklahoma City in
general. We have come-up with interesting monikers and phrases for
Oklahoma City and downtown, such as Oklahoma City - The Renaissance City and
"Continue the Renaissance." We also conduct polls about issues and venues downtown (such as the new name of the galleria garage) and Oklahoma City.

Originally, I and many members belonged to a forum from the Daily Oklahoman
back in the mid 1990s. When the paper closed their forum, we moved to a city run forum and eventually to OKCTalk. Many of the original members (of the renaissance as we say) have joined on and we are trying to get the word out especially to city officials as we believe our ideas could add to or improve our downtown and city. OKCTalk began as a forum for posters to address issues concerning Oklahoma City and has become a great resource about information downtown and a forum for discussion. We have members on the forum from Oklahoma as well as other states, as I live in Seattle.

I invite you to check out the site at http://www.okctalk.com and add it to your toolbox of resources whenever you want a sounding-board or opinion about a downtown development. You can browse for free or join as a member to add to the discussion (hopefully inform us when there is good news downtown).

Thank you and please Continue the Renaissance in downtown Oklahoma City!
and drop in at the site.

Hot Rod

An idea that I had at video boy's forum was to email a summary of discussions every month to the Mayor & Council. One of the driving forces behind the success of the original OKC TalkBack, was the knowledge that the "Powers that Be" actually followed the comments. We had their ear.

I think that there is not enough critical mass here yet, but it may be a case of chicken or egg. Maybe a monthly executive summary would bring in more participants. People want to know that their ideas are heard.

After working with Municipal Gov. for 12 years I'm more convinced that individual votes don't count. The only things that politicians care about are things that can embarrass them or make them look good. Pressure groups are grassroots modern democracy in action.

If anyone sees a need, I volunteer to create a html based email newsletter summary of the month's forum activity to be mailed to City leaders.

And then we need to promote the newsletter as a way to let the government hear what the "eCitizens" are saying.

Just a thought...

Hi Joe,

We sent out our first newsletter just a few days ago. If you did not receive one I will be glad to send a copy. I think that is an excellent idea and the help in getting it rolling would be much appreciated. The general newsletter template is already designed. It would just be a matter of dropping in the summary, etc. every month. We are playing around with a new forum index page that includes the ability to subscribe and unsubscribe from the newsletter. You can get a preview of the design here:

http://www.okctalk.com/index3.php

Please PM me with your thoughts and details.

Cheers!
oktalk

Great connection, Hot Rod. You've even got Dave using the lingo. I hope this newsletter we send becomes regular reading for him and other city leaders!

Me too, and I hope the city leaders will use our forum as a sounding board before they make decisions that impact downtown and the inner city.

We are a great bunch of planners, visionaries - and many of our ideas are successful elsewhere or just make sense.

I think Dave from DOKC will tune in, I just hope the municipal folks will as well. And perhaps the e-citizen update provided by OKCTalk will really get the ball rolling! But at least we have a great start and a pretty mature forum.

This is definitely great news. Thanks Hot Rod for contacting Mr. Lopez at Downtownokc. It's great to hear that they're going to start looking at this site and at least give some of the thoughts epxressed here some consideration. That should encourage us even more to express our ideas on this site, as we have been.

oktalk and Joe Schmoe, that would be awesome if you guys could get together and put the thoughts listed into action. I think sending a monthly summary to the city council, city manager, mayor, and Dave Lopez at downtownokc would be a great idea. If you guys need some help with this matter, please let me know.

By the way, oktalk, I think I may have accidently deleted the newsletter from my inbox. Can you send it to me again?

I'll try to put a list together of our city leader's email address, contact info, etc. I'll post it on the topof this forum, in case anyone decides they want to contact one of our city leaders directly!

Hot Rod, do you have Dave Lopez's email address? If so, please forward it to me via PM!

Hi Patrick!

You can view the last issue of the newsletter here:
http://www.oklahomacitytalk.com/newsletter/okctalk_newsletter_V1.0.htm

oktalk

Thanks for the info! I might make a separate post about it and list the link.