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After our talk at the RuralX Conference, the second question Mike Knutson asked everyone was what had challenged them or made them feel uncomfortable. One person said, “All ideas are good ideas.”  That is definitely one of the things we said. We even had people practice saying, “That’s a great idea!” even when they didn’t…

At the RuralX Conference last week, Mike Knutson asked the audience what they heard from us that was new to them. One person said, “you don’t need committees.” Amen! People just want to come together for a project and then move on. You don’t need another committee. An audience once came to its feet and…

Resource maps come up occasionally as a recommended project for all small towns. It’s one of those stock answers. It seems like making a resource map would be progress because you’re doing something concrete, creating a resource that will last for a long time and help a lot of people. But it’s a trap.  Map…

Some towns seem to be endlessly positive. It’s always sunny in Castle Rock.  Other towns are a mess. People are fighting. Every issue erupts into conflict. Meetings are just short of knock down, drag out fights.  Sometimes the positive towns get sucked down into the pit. They turn negative, maybe because of one single controversy…

Do you have a lot of negative talk about your town on Facebook? Yeah, you’re not alone. There’s a lot of that going around.  Something about being online makes it too easy to complain. People say things they would never (or should never) say face to face. And that gives a hint of the best…

There’s always more than one way to look at a small town. There’s more than one story or point of view.  This is what gets us in trouble when out of town reporters show up, spend an afternoon or so talking to a few people, then leave. Inevitably, they’ve found, or been steered to, the…

Do you have to do strategic planning? I used to do a lot of it, so I know some good words to use.  Since you’re doing strategic planning, I know that you’re serving in an official role. So your new official role in the Idea Friendly way is the Venture Capitalist of New Ideas. You…

Sometimes, it only takes one “I’m not moving there!” story to give your town an inferiority complex for years and years.  A rural town of about 11,000 people near me was recruiting for a high school football coach. That’s important stuff in Oklahoma! The leading candidate visited the town with his wife. She took one…

At the Main Street Now conference, I sat in on a session about coffee shops. I wrote down bunches of ideas that the audience shared. I thought you might know a coffee shop person, or you might think of ways to use these with other types of businesses. Hold trivia nights or allow groups to…

I heard this brilliant four step plan from Gina Taruscio from Moscow, Idaho. When she was introducing a project that had been tried before, she shared four important points. This didn’t work last time we tried it. Here’s what we learned. Here’s my part in that. Here’s what we’re going to do different. She starts…

This is one of those ideas that could work for any town, of any size, anywhere on earth. When I heard about it, I knew you’d want to hear about it, too.  It’s the Mobile Toy Library: a rolling cart filled with outdoor toys that gets put out at public places like parks. That’s really…

I have this idea that meetings that deal with downtown would be more fun if they were held outside, actually in the downtown. If you’re having a meeting about anything to do with downtown, wouldn’t it make sense to do that where you can look around at downtown? If you can’t think of anyplace to…