Share Your City’s Collaboration Story, Get a Free Ticket to LMC Annual Conference

Contribute content to the Annual Conference! Share your city’s story at our Friday collaboration sessions, and earn a free conference registration!

The League is excited to announce this opportunity at the LMC 2013 Annual Conference and Marketplace in St. Paul. On Friday, June 21, we’ll offer concurrent sessions, City Stories: Collaborating and Partnering to Improve Service Delivery, in which you or your staff can share how your city is working with others to deliver city services.

We are using a broad definition of success and are interested in stories that achieved cost savings, resulted in better service quality, expanded service delivery, or otherwise improved services in the city. Your story should highlight a city collaboration effort that achieved measurable results and could be easily replicated in other cities.

We plan to offer up to eight collaboration stories at the conference. Each selected city will have 10 minutes to present its story, including benefits/results, lessons learned, and how the idea was implemented. City presenters will then answer questions about the collaboration project and explore how the idea might be replicated in other cities during follow-up roundtable discussions with participants.

The conference committee will select from proposals submitted by March 29. Selection will be based on appeal to our audience, variety, and applicability to other cities. Cities that are selected to present their stories will receive one free conference registration.

Interested? Submit a proposal!
If you’d like to submit your story for consideration, please send the following to Lena Gould at lgould@lmc.org. Proposals must be received by 5 p.m. on March 29.

  • City name, name of contact, and main contact information (phone/email).
  • Presenter(s) (if different than contact).
    • Briefly describe:
    • The problem/issue addressed and the approach/process used by the city, including partners involved in the collaboration.
    • Barriers encountered; what was easier than expected/what was more difficult.
    • Timing: time to implement, when implemented, etc.
    • Pluses and minuses realized by the city so far.

Selection criteria
Cities will be selected based on the following criteria:

  • The story presents practical ideas.
  • The story demonstrates how the example is applicable/replicable to other cities (e.g., shows how a city that is different from yours might use a similar approach).
  • Selected stories will represent different service categories (e.g., public safety, public works, parks & rec, administration, technology, etc.). Effort will also be made to select cities from across the state and of all population categories.

Presentation guidelines
Selected cities will be expected to:

  • Deliver a 10-minute presentation covering:
    • The problem: what was addressed or what motivated the change.
    • The process: who was involved and what questions were answered, hoops jumped through, barriers encountered, etc.
    • Key lessons: what was hard/easy; what would you change; advice for others.
    • Key outcomes: why is this collaboration a success? How are you defining success?
    • Lead a follow-up roundtable discussion with participants to answer questions and explore how the approach might be replicated by other cities.
    • Complete a handout (based on LMC template) with project details and follow-up contact information. (NOTE: This handout will be distributed to conference attendees.)

    Read the current issue of the Cities Bulletin