Synteractive presented SocialRally during the CEO for Cities Urban Leaders Summit on November 8, 2010.
CEOs for Cities is a civic lab of today's urban leaders catalyzing a movement to advance the next generation of great American cities. Their aim is to connect community leaders of developing urban areas with resources, technologies, and ideas that can help them succeed. They also serve as advocates on a national level for the promotion of the most pressing issues for these developing communities and actively seek out ways to further their mission. Their Urban Leaders Summit is a peer-to-peer forum for over 100 national thought leaders to share ideas and action strategies for advancing America’s developing urban areas.
Synteractive CEO, Evan Burfield states, “SocialRally provides a powerful tool for these developing cities to compete with America’s rapidly growing megacities by facilitating collaboration across functional and jurisdictional boundaries. By leveraging the ability to crowdsource ideas, they can take advantage of the resource pool of a much larger community.”
Several leaders present at the summit concurred that SocialRally can facilitate such specific cross-jurisdictional partnerships possible between small to medium-sized communities in the same geographical area allowing them to leverage the combined mindshare and resources. Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, referenced the existing partnership between Chicago and Milwaukee and expressed the need for cities such as Detroit, Buffalo, and others to similarly partner.
Another suggestion was that SocialRally can aid in school reform by providing a cost-effective solution for the establishment of virtual communities for parents, administrators, and reformers to brainstorm ideas, voice concerns, and ask questions. It was identified that the most effective form of advocacy is between parents. This tool provides a simple way for them to connect in a convenient format.
A SocialRally forum was created for use by CEOs for Cities, and can be found at: http://forum.ofbyandforus.org/