2018 Public Awareness Summit Overview
This January 6-8th, the annual Public Awareness Summit was held by ASLA National in Austin, Texas. I was able to attend this year, making it my second consecutive year attending this wonderful event.
This year we discussed the successes and takeaways of WLAM, Overall Public Awareness in our Profession, and how we can get a wide variety of people engaged in the procession of Landscape Architecture.
On Friday I opted to take a tour of some of the amazing projects that have recently occurred in Downtown Austin including a green roof on the brand new Austin Library, highlighted works of Ai Weiwei along the Colorado River Greenbelt, and amazing new public space behind the historic Austin Power Plant.
On Saturday and Sunday landscape architects from all over the country dove into how we, as professionals can be better communicators with each other as well as with the general public. A few highlights included a great discussion by Amelia Rusbar, from Louisiana on branding and updating your chapter website, Michael Kileen from Prairie Gateway Chapter, on doing outreach in schools including a multi-disciplinary curriculum and collaboration, and how to be better at informing the press of an event your chapter is conducting. We also discussed the best way to handle launching ASLA National's new branding to help build momentum and also be consistent with the messaging of the organization.
This summit was especially wonderful because, lets be honest, there is nothing like facetime with a group of passionate like minded individuals looking to promote a positive message! Thank you to the Alaska Chapter for allowing me to represent them at this event and thank you National for sponsoring and organizing this wonderful weekend.
To view the article from LAND covering this summit, please follow this link: