• Is your goal to ensure a thriving future for all the residents of your community?
• Do you want to learn how to transform your community challenges into community solutions?
• Do you want to hear what some of the best practice communities have done to create and enhance vibrancy in their cities and towns?
• Do you want to build a sense of hope and possibility for the future? If so, we have a program for YOU.

Virginia Tech's Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement (COTA) is proud to partner with internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and civic action expert Dr. Suzanne Morse, president of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, to offer this exciting opportunity to civic leaders wishing to make their communities the best they can be.

Attend the Smart Communities seminar and learn a proven model that can move your community forward in a positive direction in the 21^stCentury!

About The Smart Communities Seminar

The Smart Communities seminar is designed to acquaint participants with the model of smart community change and how communities and regions can begin to thrive, not just survive.

The seminar focuses on processes that will give participants the most leverage for their effort. Participants begin the strategic planning process while in the seminar and leave with the short and long-term strategic next steps to create a smarter more successful community and region.

The Smart Communities seminar introduces participants from public, private, and nonprofit sectors to a proven strategy to improve the odds for community success. Using the Smart Communities model and data collected from the most successful American communities, participants learn how their own community measures up based on a series of "success" criteria.

The process is designed to help participants learn how their community can increase its long-term prosperity by benchmarking where it is now and identifying the strategies that will improve the factors common to thriving communities.

Participants also work on brand positioning of their community, identify critical new partnerships, and learn about solutions adopted by successful communities. Ultimately, those who attend the Smart Communities seminar will leave with the knowledge necessary to work with others to organize their community's strategic development in a more effective way. Leading the seminars will be Dr. Suzanne Morse, president of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, and author of Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future.

Who Should Attend?

Most communities use the Smart Communities seminar to bring committed civic leaders to the table and get them talking about what is working for the community and how to strategically organize their efforts to be more successful. As a result, the seminar is of interest to elected officials, city/county managers, civically-minded executives from economic development groups, higher education institutions, leadership groups, private industry, cooperative extension, municipal leagues, regional, county and city governments, chambers of commerce, and all those interested in making their communities a more thriving place to live.

What are some expected outcomes of attending the Smart Communities seminar?

• A benchmarking process and access to quantitative analysis that will identify where assets may be hidden, where challenges lie, and where small efforts can make a big difference.
• Communities in the early stages of new strategic development can use the seminars as a way to organize and guide their efforts.
• Communities with existing strategic efforts have used the seminars as a sort of independent review of the research used to inform their existing efforts.
• Regions have incorporated Smart Communities into their regional development efforts to bring all the players together.
• The seminar informs existing efforts but also suggests new avenues for engagement. The seminar relies heavily on ways to meet challenges through collaboration and new partnerships, innovative ways to identify and use existing assets, and the types of investments in the community that will have the greatest return.
• In all cases, the seminar builds a sense of hope and possibility for the future.