Chattanooga Stand announced City Share, a speaker-based lunch series focused on finding creative solutions to community issues, that will act as an enhancement to the visioning effort’s weekly planning meetings. The City Share series is presented as a feature of “We Stand,” a pop-up civic engagement laboratory designed in partnership with CreateHere.

The survey phase of Chattanooga Stand officially came to a close on Sept. 31. Building off a 25-year legacy of visioning, Stand became the world’s largest survey-based community visioning effort, collecting over 26,000 responses to a four-question survey.

Officials said, "It has been a monumental summer for Chattanooga. Now, however, is the time to make history with Stand."

City Share continues the dialogue that began with four simple questions, expanding it into a much broader community conversation. In preparation for the release of Stand survey data in early 2010, Stand is keeping residents engaged and informed through the City Share series.

Each session will feature a guest speaker—someone who has been instrumental in enacting creative solutions to issues in their own community—who'll be visiting via video chat.

After each speaker shares the story of their struggles and successes, participating Chattanooga citizens will break up into small groups to discuss their thoughts and reactions to the topic.

“An informed public is a powerful thing,” said campaign coordinator Katherine Nielsen. “It is our hope that the City Share series will serve as a curriculum for emerging leaders in our community.”

This new conversation series will kick off with an exciting lineup of virtual visitors:

-Dec. 2: “Gov 2.0”
featuring Ben Berkowitz, founder and CEO of SeeClickFix.

-Dec. 16: “Visioning in Real Time”
featuring Russell Stall, executive director of Greenville Forward.

-Jan. 6: “Collectives and Collaboration”
featuring Justin Langlois, founding member of Broken City Lab.

Join Stand every first and third Wednesday from 12-1 p.m. at CreateHere for light lunch, broad insight, and thoughtful discussion. City Share is free and open to the public.