The public meeting on Wednesday went well. The feedback was positive; there were about 25 people in attendance as well as a great number of on-line comments. In addition, all of the local media outlets were at the public meeting. We also received solicitation for a number of interviews from other media, including Business Week – our efforts are getting notice.
At the meeting, we also unveiled the logo associated with the effort, titled “Google Greensboro” (see attached). The logo idea was Councilmember Thompson. It was designed electronically and built by Jay Jones of the Engineering and Inspections staff (for less than $100!).
After reviewing the feedback, is seems the application focus should highlight the following aspects of Greensboro:
-Education
-Healthcare/Public Safety
-Transportation/Logistics/Product Distribution
-Community/Residential connectivity
We will ask Zack Matheny to take the lead in identifying "team leaders" for each of these topics. The team leaders will be asked to recruit people from their fields of interest who would be willing to 1)let us use their names and titles as supporters of Google in our application; 2)appear on video saying they welcome Google to Greensboro or 3)send a community interest application to Google (this is part of the on-line Google application). The team leaders need to be recognizable in their fields of interest. Of course we will want to include an official expression of support from the City Council as part of the RFI as well. Councilmember Matheny has asked the Manager to prepare a resolution in support of the Council to consider a support resolution
The second item we discussed was the social media outreach. We need to create a platform to share the application progress and connect social media outlets, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There have been on-going conversations in the blogosphere on the best way of going about this with varied opinions. We will have a defined direction in the next few days which I will share with Council.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks, Denise
Denise N. Turner, Assistant City Manager
City of Greensboro
300 W. Washington Street
Greensboro, NC 27402-3136
Phone: 336.373.2002 Fax: 336.373.2117
http://www.greensboro-nc.gov
