I offer facilitation for envisioning futures and action planning for communities who may be ready to commit to development plans that feature watershed restoration. At this time my competencies include two "off-the-shelf" large group intervention methods, and some tested workshops of my own design for smaller groups. I work with other experienced facilitators who are also skilled in these techniques.
I have been active in community and environmental groups. I am an experienced business executive in the computer design business. My education has been focused on ecologically sustainable community development.
For those concerned with community vision development, I recommend a visit to the Co-intelligence Institute which presents a multitude of dimensions to community thinking (and just about everything else). You should also visit the Civic Practices Network subtitled "A Learning Collaborative for Civic Renewal", if you haven't yet. Also relevant to group adventures is The Center for Group Learning. A fine example of a Future Search done for community development is the CISA report.
For those with plenty of patience, a rough transcript of a series of planning sessions for a "transformational social dialogue" conference to be held in the San Francisco bay area are made available here.
I am familiar with geographic information systems (GIS), particularly one called "GRASS", the Geographic Resources Assessment Support System . This is the one and only public domain geographic information system. If you're serious about community controlled development of the watershed, this is a good one to use. It was developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USACERL) using our tax dollars. It is user supported in a referee'd open software development system similar to Linux, and it runs on Linux as well as many other UNIX platforms including PCs.
Last time I looked, the major player in the GIS market was Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI). They are known to be very helpful to communities and groups who are trying to improve their relationships to their watersheds. In the last several years their GIS has become more accessible to non-experts. Also recommended. Jack Dangermond, their president, just won a well-deserved public service award, which is indicative of his, and their, commitment to geographic education and conservation.
See my resume.
Take me back home.
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email to tsd@smsys.com