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Will Hampton — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:04:00 GMT

Welcome to Community Conversations, the City of Round Rock's new social media site. We are glad you're here and hope to hear from you soon, either in words or pictures.

With 93 percent of our residents on-line, and 89 percent of those with a high-speed connection, we figured there were a lot of you out there comfortable with things like blogs, photo-sharing sites and RSS feeds. For those of you who aren't, welcome to the blogosphere!

Our goals for this space are pretty straightforward:

Provide additional channels of input for citizens and other potentially-affected interests
Increase the transparency of the City's decision-making process
Facilitate a sense of community
Reach new audiences with City messages and information.

This is an experiment for us, and we hope it's a fruitful one. After a few months, we'll evaluate whether it's meeting the above goals, and make any adjustments necessary.

Instead of describing what's on the site, I'll let you poke around on your own. Suggestions - as long as they are on topic - are always welcome.

Speaking of "on topic," we do want your feedback on our Terms of Use. For those of you new to blogging, a Terms of Use document lays out the rules of engagement. For example, no profane language, no attacks on personal character, no advertising, etc.

The one item we've wrestled with the most with is Registration. You'll have to register to comment on a post. We'll be asking for your real name and address, which isn't the norm for many blogs, but it is important information to us. Your address is needed because we want to know what input is coming from residents and what's coming from non-residents. It's also important for us to know who's talking to us so we can respond to you outside the blog, if necessary. Finally, in all other forums for public input, we always ask for name and address. It's just how we do business when it comes to citizen participation in Round Rock. Note: You can have a screen name that's not your real name.

So have a look at the Terms of Use and let us know what you think. As noted earlier, we're open to suggestions for ways to improve Community Conversations. But please remember this: We haven't hired any new staff for this project, so we're somewhat limited in what we can add as well as what topics we can cover.

Talk to you soon,

Will Hampton
Communications Director

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