On the weekend of January 8th 2016, I attended The American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA)'s Public Awareness Summit in Charleston, South Carolina.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, it was my first ever ASLA National event. There were 56 total attendees, representing all of the 49 chapters in the country. I'm involved with the Public Awareness/Public Relations Committee here at the Northern California Chapter, and everyone attending the Summit is involved in the same committees in their respective chapters. From the start, I knew that the event would be fruitful.
The conference leaders organized all attendees into small groups, a great way to manage a large amount of people with many ideas. Specific chapter representatives presented their Public Relation/Awareness success stories, and main objectives. The small-groups brainstormed, and then communicated the group's ideas to the entire audience. This was a great way to get intricate details and examples without spending an overwhelming amount of time discussing.
Park(ing) Day, Adopt-a-School programs, Sketch-Out-Loud and Social Media presence were among the topics covered in presentations during the Summit. Though the content and approach of all topics were different, the end results and goals were the same, covering important questions such as: How are landscape architects perceived by the public? What is ASLA doing to reach the public? Who is the public that should be focused on? These questions then led into more brainstorming sessions which flowed into a larger group discussion, where our ideas and approaches were further refined.
The Summit was diverse in its approaches, ideas and backgrounds due to the large geographic area of its attendees. I left Charleston feeling very fortunate to have been able to attend the Public Awareness Summit, and set my hopes high to help our Northern California Chapter turn many of the concepts and ideas into a reality.
