In the Heroik Innovation Lab (HIL) we started a community outreach project called Built in R-Town (Roseville, CA). We started with an identity campaign for the city of Roseville, which had yet to differentiate itself as anything other than a Sacramento suburb with a train heritage. We wanted to build a unique, inspirational brand for the city, that distinguishes it from its metropolitan neighbors (Sacramento), and inspires the community to take pride in what has been, what is, and what will be.  At some point, the project escaped the lab and found a place of its own on the web.

Culture and identity go hand in hand so our goal wasn’t just to come up with a bumper sticker slogan, but to start a movement and build a culture. We needed to encourage the community to learn about what’s going on, take pride in it and get involved. So we decided to start telling stories about the opportunities, happenings, people and communities built in the region. Other organizations have attempted to package Roseville with a narrative, but we felt we could do a better job.

Eventually, after countless meetings and interactions with local officials, we dreamed up the idea of a better regional event calendar that used Roseville as the epicenter. We thought that it would be a great way to bring people together, demonstrate our value and innovative gusto.

The BIRT calendar is capable of doing several things, among them:

• It allows event coordinators to share their entire calendar feed with the community. Anyone using Outlook, Google Apps, or ICAL can share their calendar with our community.
• Users & Visitors who come to the site and see the calendar can personalize it based on categories and tags based their preference and interests.
• Users can subscribe to their own, personalized, filtered calendar feed and bring it into Outlook, Google, or iCal. In effect,  our calendar users are kept up to date on the happenings in R-Town right inside their own calendar.So they’re not required to visit our site again, unless they want to.

It’s unique in that as a community project, we’re not too concerned with monetizing via advertising the way most regionally focused calendars work. So our focus isn’t on maintaining constant level of traffic and attention on our website directly. Although we love sharing stories of all the things people and happenings in R-Town, we’re equally happy helping our local community plan their day, from the convenience of their calendars. Meeting people where they are and want to be is a delightful way to add value.

What does the calendar do for the community?

Communities like Roseville, are suburban havens for families and often suffer from vanilla identity syndrome. The city brand is largely retail off the shelf and yet to be differentiated. Despite being an amazing place to live, work and play, much of the regional attention is paid to near by metropolitan areas, in R case, Sacramento. This manifests in the creation of regional interest calendars that emphasize events in places

• Imagine having a clear view of everything going on in town from one location. By that I mean, you can get the details of the local biz mixers, art events, date night, family night whatever. Not scattered across specialty sites with calendars that don’t import into your own; we’re talking about true one-stop, click, click, subscribe and go experience.
• It’s now easier than ever to stay in the loop, see all of what you want and none of what you don’t. Because users can subscribe to their personalized view, they are less likely to ignore the events that appear in their calendar. There’s simply a high signal vs. noise ratio for everyone. And we’re careful to moderate for event flooding and information overload.
• Think about the organizations, local government entities, non-profits and local chambers that schedule events that compete with one another. They all compete for attention and attendance. It’s very expensive in terms of marketing dollars and sweat equity. My fiance and I are actively involved in volunteer efforts in the community and nothing is worse than your nonprofit fundraiser competing with your wife/husband’s event. That’s a tough negotiation let me tell you. There’s a bit of a better way though. In a few clicks on R-Town Calendar, they could see who has what planned and create smarter schedules that optimize the whole calendar, decreasing the competition for attention and marketing dollars wasted a bit. The community as a whole is offered a more manageable schedule of opportunities for everyday not just Thursday nights for example.

Framing New Stories For R-Town

Upon asking local officials, organizations and business owners why R-Town is great,  they responded in a seemingly pre-programmed chorus of vanilla answers that involve retail shopping, safety, low utility costs, great schools, etc. that make Roseville a great place to “live,work and play” . That last phrase wreaks of disingenuous blather. The vanilla language is bland and increasingly inaccurate. It gives the impression of a conscious effort to avoid making an effort to really connect or resonate with the values and interest of a particular audience. It begs a few questions question

What is the role of culture in a city’s identity? Is it our job to capture and share what is present now or to lead in a new direction?

These questions perplex local officials. It seems it falls to the community as a whole to build an independent movement and define an aspiration for the city and shape the brand. It seems local government is there to lend support and formalize the adoption of a predefined direction. Luckily, In the lab at Heroik Media, we have the advantage a company culture that demands us to lead, build, learn  and grow.

Why are they telling stories in the first place?

The real goal of the various entities promoting the city are strictly economic. They want to make R-Town a destination location for businesses and consumers. Some are focused on development, others revitalization, and all of them try to lay claim to desiring to bring innovation to R-Town. For us, a firm with experience living and working in Silicon Valley and interacting with Innovative culture, we know that it takes innovation, and well, culture to make that happen. To quote a famous line from Fight Club “Stuffing feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.” The same is true for creating rich, innovative culture. Wishing doesn’t make it so. Sprinkling in a college or two does not start it either. You need a real effort, campaign and rally cry.

So for us, our mission is really about sharing our culture with R-Town, inspiring people to Get Heroik and tell their stories, share what they’re working on and celebrate it all together as a community.