

Jason Diceman. Participatory democracy enthusiast. Public consultation / stakeholder engagement professional. Opinions are my own.
Too often, when it comes to engaging communities, we act like askholes. We ask for their story, we extract their experiences and concerns, and then we package and polish them up to share with audiences for our own financial gain. We don’t follow up. We don’t thank them. We don’t ask what they need. We just ask for what we need from them.
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller (1917–1983)