The innovative City of Adelaide remains open to new ideas and opportunities to help drive city initiatives when it comes to engaging their residents and improving service delivery. A true innovative city ‘designed for life.’
In this interview with Clayton Wehner, Marketing Strategy and Innovation for the City of Adelaide, we'll dive more into some recent projects from using Minecraft to engage with the community to working closely with a local startup to co-create an AI chatbot. We also talk about how Adelaide approaches innovation and perhaps more importantly, how they market themselves as innovators and how your city, regardless of size, can too!
More info:
Featured government: Adelaide, South Australia
Episode guests: Clayton Wehner, Marketing Strategy and Innovation
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host. Today I chat with Clayton Wehner from the City of Adelaide in Australia to talk about some recent projects from using Minecraft to engage with the community, to working closely with a local startup to co-create an AI chat bot. We'll also talk about how Adelaide approaches innovation and perhaps more importantly, how they market themselves as innovators. So let's turn to Clayton to learn more about what he and his team in Adelaide are up to. Thanks so much for joining me today, Clayton. Can you quickly introduce yourself and share a bit about your role?
Clayton: (01:02)
Yeah, sure. Lindsay, thanks for the opportunity to speak to you. I'm the manager of marketing strategy and innovation at the city of Adelaide. For those of you who aren't familiar with Australia, Adelaide is the fifth largest city in the country. We have about 1.3 million people in our wider metropolitan area. Uh, the city of Adelaide is responsible for the capital city area in the middle of all that. Um, we're located in the beautiful state of South Australia. Perhaps it's best known internationally for its wine regions. We're not a big global metropolis, uh, like Sydney or Melbourne on the Eastern seaboard here in Australia. Um, and our city's brand proposition is that we're designed for life. That's our vision to be the world's most livable city. So my role at the city of Adelaide, um, is to manage all of our digital customer interfaces, uh, our websites, social media, and other online systems. Together, they represent our most popular customer interface and our digital systems they use is really growing. Uh, we've seen that over the last couple of years, so I also have a re innovation responsibility. Uh, it's my job to continually improve those digital interfaces and to look for new ways to interact with our audience, um, as customer expectations evolve. So it's a very interesting job. I enjoy it a lot. It's great.
Lindsay: (02:24)
Adelaide is working on a bunch of projects, spanning different areas, prime for innovation, but your team is very focused on digital transformation as really the gateway to innovation. We at Govlaunch totally agree with this. Um, but can you share why you feel this is the case?
Clayton: (02:39)
Certainly, well, you know, digital transformation, um, is pretty much an imperative for all organizations today, whether you're in the private sector or the public sector, um, particularly if you know, your organization is committed to building and maintaining great relationships with customers. So, um, we all know that digital technology has improved phenomenally over the past 10 years. Um, customer expectations have really grown along with that. Um, you know, customers today, they expect to be able to transact online at any time, uh, at the time of their choosing or whatever device they desire. Um, they expect all of their online experiences to be tailored specifically to their unique requirements. Um, and they need, uh, all of their interactions to be entirely seamless and frictionless. And, um, obviously government hasn't always been good at providing those types of experiences, but, um, today, you know, most people are, um, transacting with the likes of Netflix and Amazon and Google every day. Um, and they expect similar digital experiences, uh, from government as well. And, uh, so quite simply we need to step up and to deliver those experiences as well, perhaps not quite as quickly and as nimbly as those private sector organizations, but, um, we also have to try and, um, get up to speed.
Lindsay: (03:59)
Yeah, it's interesting. And I hear this mostly from the larger cities that I'm speaking with. It's almost like citizens will give you a pass if you're a small city, but if you're a large city they sort of expect to have these seamless digital services. Uh, the bar is extremely high for the set by all these private sector companies. What are some of the projects you've been involved with to transform Adelaide into a more digital and therefore accessible city?
Clayton: (04:27)
Yeah. We've done some, uh, some pretty interesting projects, uh, over the last 18 months or so. At the core of it was we built a brand new user-friendly website from the ground up, started again effectively and a new content management system. We rewrite all that content, a new brand, um, uh, and some interesting functionality that was added to our website. Um, done a series of 3d virtual tours and drone experiences of our city. Um, we've implemented an artificial intelligence chat bot and voice assistant, which, um, has been a very experimental project. We'll talk about later on, um, we've expanded the use of online video. We've empowered people across our organization to, uh, to take their own footage and to produce their own, their own video content. And we've endeavored with the use of, uh, some gaming. We, we, um, we've got a Minecraft world, which we use to engage with our customers to so, so fairly a broad spread of, of projects, um, really interesting projects and some of them being really, really great.
Lindsay: (05:30)
I'd love to get into Adelaide's work a little bit more in Minecraft to engage with the community. I've heard of a few others experimenting with this as a way of presenting GIS in a way that's engaging and fun for the end user. But can you explain first what Minecraft is for any of our listeners who are perhaps less familiar and how this project even got started?
Clayton: (05:51)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, Minecraft is a game. My kids absolutely love playing Minecraft. It's, um, it's a popular online construction game, um, where basically set in a blocky 3d world and you traverse the terrain in this world, um, finding raw materials and tools, and you can use those things to build, build structures. So it's a very constructive, uh, game, um, very educational and indeed many schools around the world are now using Minecraft in their educational curriculum for, um, for their students. So, um, look earlier this year, we were lucky enough to stumble upon a way to use Minecraft, um, at the city of Adelaide. Um, we ha we had the good fortune of, uh, hosting a work experience student the four weeks. Uh, his name was Jonathan. He was a math student at a local university. Um, and it turned out that he was a very passionate Minecraft gamer.
And, um, we found that out early on and, and, uh, it sort of presented us with an opportunity. We thought we could team him up with our internal geographic information systems, specialist himself, also a Minecrafter, um, and see if they might be able to put their heads together and build an Adelaide world in Minecraft. So Josh, who was our GIS guru, um, he took Jonathan under his wing from day one. And, um, after about four weeks of intense work, um, what they produced was absolutely remarkable. They basically created a complete replica of Adelaide in Minecraft utilizing the GIS data that we had. So, um, utilizing Josh's GIS skills and Jonathan's Minecraft coding experience, um, they basically replicated Adelaide in its current form, showing all the buildings, public infrastructure, streets, park plans, and all the other landmarks. So, um, they put down 8 billion Minecraft blocks, um, and, uh, what came of it was our Adelaide 2021 world, as we know it.
Lindsay: (07:56)
That is so cool. Um, and timing for this project actually worked out quite well from an engagement perspective. Can you share more about the rollout and the engagement since you've released your Adelaide 2021 world?
Clayton: (08:10)
Yeah, absolutely. So the first cut of the new Minecraft world actually coincided with the onset of COVID-19. So as schools and workplaces closed, um, everyone here, like in other parts of the world was forced into isolation and it was clear that kids would be at home with their parents and the parents would be pulling their hair out, trying to keep their kids busy. So we actually had something to engage kids at a time when they needed things to do so. We quickly put together a scenario, built a website landing page and released the Minecraft world to the public. Um, basically we challenged the kids to assume the role of the chief town planner and engineer for the city of Adelaide, um, and using the Adelaide 2021 world as their canvas, we asked them to build the future city of Adelaide. So, you know, whether the city needs a new rectangular sports stadium or a concert hall or a freeway through the middle or a subway rail system, we asked the kids to go ahead and build it. Um, and look, the challenge was accepted really enthusiastically. We had about 1200 people download the Minecraft world and we've also seen some really great examples of work that's been produced by the community. We've had interest from, uh, the South Australian Catholic school system here, which, um, is intending to incorporate the Adelaide 2021 into its educational curriculum too. So, um, one eager Minecrafter, um, has been a real standout. He's actually built the Adelaide town hall, both internal and external, the general post office, and our city's major public space, Victoria square in unbelievable detail in Minecraft. It’s quite remarkable. Um, you know, what can be built in the game. So, and for all the listeners out there, you know, if you're interested in checking it out, you can go to cityofadelaide.com/minecraft, um, to download the world and give it a go.
Lindsay: (10:10)
What potential do you see for this project beyond just something for kids to do during quarantine?
Clayton: (10:17)
Well, look, I think, you know, there's tremendous, um, applications for Minecraft and gaming more broadly, um, in, in the public service. Um, you know, typically gaming is not sort of considered to be something that we do too often, but, um, and I think know probably that there are applications that, you know, even beyond our imagination that we haven't thought of yet, but on the, on the, on the face of it, you know, it can be a great community engagement tool, as I said, particularly, um, encouraging participation, um, and getting feedback from, from the younger generations. Um, you know, there's uses for potentially for town planning, uh, for ideation about public spaces and placemaking for storytelling. Um, you know, if it's delivering stories about history and heritage of our city, uh, education tourism as well. So look, I think there's myriad opportunities and, um, we're very much at the, at the start of the journey. Um, it's been very experimental and I think, you know, in time, some of those, um, those opportunities will materialize and, um, you know, hopefully we can take, take the Minecraft world down some different pathways.
Lindsay: (11:27)
Definitely. Well, and we'll have to, into this more too. Uh, I've, I've heard about a few local governments doing it, but I'm sure there are more so we'll see if we can put something together, uh, for those folks who are interested in getting involved. You're working on another project, this one with potential that's already starting to be realized, uh, Adelaide is experimenting with an AI chat bot with voice assistance, which I want to get into a little bit more. Are you building this tool in house or working with a third party?
Clayton: (11:55)
Yeah, we are, uh, we are experimenting with, uh, an AI chat bot and, and very much like our Minecraft experiment. It was quite serendipitous that, um, we chose to go down that pathway. Um, at the time we were rebuilding our website and we were looking for a number of bells and whistles to give it a wow factor for its launch. Um, and about the time that we were doing that, we were approached by a small Adelaide startup called Hopstay, um, who were in the business of building chatbots for tourism organizations. And what was unique about this small business was that they just won an international competition to set up their business, um, in an incubator in Paris, which is great for a small Adelaide business, um, good work if you can get it. Um, so we, we thought at that juncture that it was a, a worthy experiment. Um, and we basically worked together with Hopstay to co-design a citizen services chat bot, uh, for the council, from the ground up. As the product has improved, it's, um, it's become more enticing for other councils and Hopstay have managed to win some more business by leveraging the work that they've done with us. And, you know, we see it as a real win, win scenario for both our organization and for Hopstay. So it's been a good, a good experience so far.
Lindsay: (13:13)
Definitely. So give me a rundown of what the chat bot does.
Clayton: (13:17)
Yeah, sure. Um, you know, it's base, uh, functionalities to provide, um, you know, uh, responses to questions that are commonly asked by, by the community. Um, it currently manages about 150 odd questions, but, um, it, it, uh, can respond in, um, to about 35,000 different utterances of those questions. So in the various ways that those questions are posed by public, um, but it also has a bunch of other, uh, in-built functions that we we've sort of augmenting the chat bot with. Um, you know, not just that, that FAQ style response, but also, uh, there's tools like the ability to report issues, um, in the public realm. So graffiti or caught holes or rubbish bins out flying. You've got the ability to check, uh, you've bin, uh, pick up dates. Um, there's also a tool that, um, provides you with information about which bin to put particular items into, whether it's your green recycles bin, your green waste bin, your yellow recycles bin and the like, um, often it's a, it's a bit of a conundrum, which bin to throw a particular items in our tool, provides, provides information about that.
Clayton: (14:36)
Um, and look, we're also experimenting with voice with Google assistant. Um, so we've, we've added some real time car parking availability functionality. So if you're driving into the city, um, you can ask Google, um, as you're driving, without having to take your hands off the steering wheel, of course, you know, how many spaces are available in particular city car parks, we own a number of car parks in the city, um, so that, you know, you don't arrive at the car park and, and find it to be full. So, um, so that's a good example of, uh, you know, a service that, um, specific really specific sort of a use case that delivers value. So, um, and look, we're, we're continually adding new functionality to our bots. Um, anything that, um, inside of time for people or offer, um, a more frictionless experience with the council, um, it's early days, but there's, there's an ever growing demand for these sort of automated services. And we've seen good growth in the use of our chatbot over the year and a half that it's been, we've been experimenting with it. Um, and again, if people want to give it a try, um, it's, um, it's in Facebook messenger, uh, just search city of Adelaide, um, and you'll be able to have a play.
Lindsay: (15:53)
Fantastic. Uh, so there are a few established companies that provide specifically municipal chatbots. What was your motivation to go with this startup from the building phase versus deploying more of a turnkey solution?
Clayton: (16:08)
Yeah, look, there's, um, certainly the, the world of chat bots automation, um, artificial intelligence is still pretty, um, embryonic it's early on, and it's a space in which, um, you know, you can experiment and this, there's certainly a number of software, bigger software companies out there that are selling solutions in this space, and they're quite expensive. Um, and, and in my mind, the, uh, the technology that some of them are pushing is not necessarily any better, um, or mature than that provided by smaller, more nimble organizations, startups, and the like. So, so we sort of start a partnership with Hopstay as a bit of an opportunity for us. Um, I mean, they're, they're an Adelaide business, so it's in our part of, one of our functions is to support local business. So, um, we, we saw it as an opportunity to support them in their early stages.
Clayton: (17:04)
Um, but also into co-design something that's of value for us, um, as well as for them, so they could leverage it to win other other clients. So, um, look, the cost hasn't been significant. Um, you know, they're, they're hungry to build a product that they can market to other organizations. So, um, we found them extremely attentive to our, to our needs, really fast at turning around the work that, um, that we ask of them. And it's a really good symbiotic relationship. And, uh, I, I just don't think you'd get that same sort of relationship with a major software company. And, um, uh, I think it's been a really good marriage.
Lindsay: (17:45)
Yeah. Great. As part of your efforts to boost engagement through digital transformation, you're really focused on content and content marketing. Uh, now there's a lot to this. Can you explain a bit more about what this is in a local government context and how Adelaide has been focusing on this?
Clayton: (18:04)
Yeah, certainly. So your content marketing is a bit of a pillar of, of, um, of why we do our, our business here at the city of Adelaide. I think most modern marketers understand that, um, content is very important. Content is King. Um, and look, our organization has invested in it over the past 18 months, um, particularly to promote its capital city functions. Um, so we're a local government. We, you know, we look at the roads rates and rubbish as a lot of, uh, as most local government entities do, but we also, our capital city council are responsible for drawing tourism, uh, the visitor economy in Adelaide, uh, economic development, investment attraction for the city. So, um, we've used content to really drive in those, those areas, um, how we do it. Well, we, we've got a fairly well-orchestrated content calendar that incorporates, um, a bunch of elements.
We do long form written content and we use, um, our explore Adelaide website, which is our visitor economy website, to publish that as well as a storytelling blog called Adelaide living. Um, we do short form content distributed every day via social media channels that drives traffic back to our website. Um, we do weekly email marketing to nine, very large mailing lists, um, across the city we've doubled down on video and podcast content. And, um, I suppose at the core of all that is our website and the website is, um, the center of our universe and we drive as much traffic as we possibly can to the site. We do, uh, quite a bit of search engine optimization to maximize organic traffic. Um, and we augment that also with paid search on Google ads, paid social on Facebook. And look since we built, rebuilt the website, um, about 18 months ago now we've seen significant growth in our visitations to the site. Um, in spite of COVID, we've seen about 35% growth in visitation in pure, uh, user numbers, um, as compared to the same time last year and, and our organic traffic, you know, that, um, those Google unpaid listings is up 29% and that's really, uh, directly attributable to the content that's being published on our website the past 18 months.
Lindsay: (20:34)
Yeah, well I know also some governments have reported that their traffic is also higher because of COVID rather than in spite of COVID because I think people are now seeking digital services much more than they were before and, and checking to see what services are available to them. Um, so I think COVID, if anything has really helped get the word out on a lot of these, uh, local authorities who have taken the time to really focus on their website and the services that they're offering, um, and making them as user-friendly and accessible as possible, it's going to encourage folks to come back even after hopefully all of this is behind us.
Lindsay: (21:17)
As a company with an editorial arm and obviously a podcast, I know how much work this is. The difficulty with content marketing is consistency. Your community is hopefully going to come to rely on this content and on a regular basis, how are you addressing this from a capacity standpoint?
Clayton: (21:35)
Yeah. Um, look, there's no doubt that producing content, uh, is resource intensive and, um, and like most local government entities, we, um, we have finite resources. We don't have an endless, um, page of, uh, of people to write content, you know, it's, um, um, it is finite. So, um, and a lot of the time organizations like ours are quite reactive and short-term focused and, and it's often difficult to demonstrate the longer term value of investing in content. So, uh, and I, I suspect that's a challenge for all local government entities. Um, we've tried to mitigate that a little bit by broadening our content authorship within our organization. So it's not just marketers that produce the content. We try and encourage others in the organization to write content. And we've also entered into some external content partnerships too, outside of the organization, um, to broaden that authorship.
Clayton: (22:41)
Um, and not only does that give us more content, but it also enables us to, to, um, to publish, uh, different voices and different perspectives. And, um, no one wants to read just the same single council oriented voice all the time. They want to, they want some diversity in the content they read. So it's a good, it's a good plan to, to get, um, you know, to, to widen that authorship. So one such, uh, relationship is with a local university, the university of South Australia, um, our Adelaide living content blog, uh, provides the journalist students there as a real life platform for them to publish their content. They write stories about Adelaide and, um, we publish their content in the public sphere on, on our website. So it's a, it's a way for them to get their content published as part of their curriculum. Um, and, uh, you know, we win as well because we've got a flow of, of great well-written content on our websites and social media. So, um, we've also entered into a content arrangement with a local book publisher that publishes books about Adelaide. So again, it's, win-win, you know, we help promote their books and we publish excerpts of their content on our websites and that that's helped lessen the resource burden on us.
Lindsay: (24:01)
For smaller local governments who may not have the ability to try all of these different outlets, you mentioned, uh, are there one or two you found to be the most effective in terms of engagement and reach?
Clayton: (24:12)
Yeah, look the, I think it's keeping it simple and I think that the best approach, um, you know, if you're just starting out in this space is to just write some great evergreen stories about your municipality on a blog, on your website, and then use that content to distribute through other channels through social media or email newsletters, and to drive traffic back to the blog. Um, you know, if those articles are evergreen, that is, they, you know, they never go out a day, they'll always, they're enduring and they'll provide value forever more than you can resurface them at a later time, we'll curate them for other purposes. So they, they keep paying you back as, um, as time goes on, um, to give you some examples, some of our most popular articles that we've written about, um, important spots in Adelaide, um, the history of our annual Christmas pageant stories about, um, old nightspots that, um, you know, people and nostalgic about, um, food and, and drink, you know, the best bubble tea spots in the city, the best place to get Luxor, you know, those sorts of things.
Clayton: (25:20)
Um, the hidden secrets of our Parklands, all of those sorts of, um, topics, you know, generate, um, you know, great organic search results in Google and other search engines. And they continually drive traffic to our website over time. And if you build up a bank of those, um, they'll keep, they'll keep providing for you. And, uh, sure. It does take resourcing to do that. You know, there's, there's people that can help you. Look, I understand the government also provides, um, some content marketing support in this regard. Um, you know, that there are people that can help you to, to write these stories and to host these stories into a, to promote them. So
Lindsay: (26:00)
Sure. Uh, Govlaunch does provide a free tool for local governments to share their innovative work or to participate in thought leadership through our Govlaunch stories. Any member of our community can reach out to me directly to talk about how to get your content into our platform, which can then be shared publicly. And all of this is free. The idea was to create a tool that would allow governments to seed content quickly and without needing to go through a developer, you know, for any website changes. So changing gears a little, I'd like to ask a few more general questions if you're game.
Clayton: (26:34)
Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Shoot.
Lindsay: (26:36)
Awesome. As you know, failure is a big part of innovation and being able to iterate quickly and move on to the next project. Uh, we're trying to help avoid the same mistake being made elsewhere. So I think our listeners would be appreciative if you'd share something that you've tried that didn't work.
Clayton: (26:55)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely innovation um, you know, it doesn't always come off and, um, it's obviously part of the process to fail from time to time, learn from those failures and, and hopefully then choose a pathway, which is, um, which is, which is better. Um, look at it as an organization. You know, we've not been immune to failures. Um, there's been some missteps in our digital transformation journey. One sort of big issue for our organization is we haven't really been successful in implementing an organization wide CRM and achieving a single view of the customer. We're still in a situation where we have quite a, a number of disparate databases across the organization and they all serve their various purposes, but there's no coming together of, of, um, of that data. And it's something the organization has attempted to rectify, but, um, hasn't really been successful.
Clayton: (27:57)
A lot of that is because the challenge of any change program innovation is the people bit. Um, you need to bring people along on the journey and, uh, you can't really hope to embed a system into the culture of an organization without detailed engagement with the people, communicating, training, support, working people through the process. And, um, unfortunately I think in a lot of those sorts of system based projects, uh, it's the human element that often gets overlooked. So, and I think we've been a bit guilty of that in our organization too. So, um, so that's still a work in progress. Uh, hopefully in time we'll get to a position where, you know, the organization is all singing off the same sheet of music and we have a single view of the customer.
Lindsay: (28:47)
Right. Uh, what advice would you share with others in local government you feel would resonate with even the smallest city or town?
Clayton: (28:56)
Yeah, I think some of my comments before about content marketing, even as a small, um, municipality, you can still be an influential publisher irrespective of your size. Um, it used to be that content was very much the domain of big media companies through those traditional media, TV, radio, and newspapers, but these days anybody can be a content publisher. Um, and whilst it takes some effort and time to do it, there's no reason why, um, you know, a small local government entity can't create their own media channel and their own following and write timeless interesting stories about their town, which provides interest in and an audience for a small body like that. So I'd say, you know, content marketing is, um, get into it and, uh, and give it a go and see how it goes.
Lindsay: (29:48)
It's really interesting advice and not something I've heard very often. I think this concept of more of a marketing type role within local government is relatively new. You all are very progressive in that sense, the idea that, Oh, wait, we have to market ourselves if we want people to move here and businesses to move and talent to come here and economic development. So I want to say kudos, you all. And, uh, and for those local governments of all sizes, I would really encourage you to, um, to look into some of these principles that Clayton sharing today. And know that the smaller governments shouldn't overlook this it, isn't something that you need to massive team to tackle. It's a very basic way of engaging with the community that you can make as complex or as simple as you, as you really want. So is there one product or a product suite out there that you would highly recommend? And if so, why?
Clayton: (30:46)
Yeah, look, um, I think, uh, I, I recommend that you invest in a social media management tool. Um, we use Hootsuite there's others on the market though, like, uh, Falcon IO or sprout social, um, that, that tool is an important part of, um, managing your social media. I think it's very important to have a degree of centralized control over all your various social media channels here at the city of Adelaide. We've got about 25. So we, um, we've got a number of subsidiaries and, and, uh, conditional businesses that we operate in all up. We have 25 social media grants across the organization, with a host of different administrators and content contributors across the, across the council. And having a central social media management tool gives us visibility across the whole portfolio, um, and allows us to exercise a degree of control and governance, which being government, you know, it's, um, it's important that there's a degree of that. Um, you know, there is potential for a social media crisis, um, if someone posts the wrong thing. Um, so having that centralized control I think is, is a good thing and just allows us to, um, to keep our eye on, on whatever's going out on social media and what's coming back at us from, uh, from the community,
Lindsay: (32:12)
Something to help with risk management - say no more. Sign everyone up.
Clayton: (32:15)
Absolutely. Yeah. Very important.
Lindsay: (32:18)
Lastly, what's something that excites you about the future of Adelaide?
Clayton: (32:24)
Um, I'm really excited about the future of our city. Um, we're all very bullish about, about it. Um, we think it's on the up and up. We're seeing some real, um, green shoots of growth, uh, in Adelaide at the moment where, um, setting ourselves up as a technology city. So there's major developments going on, uh, in the defense sector in space. Um, we've got Australia's first space agency has started up here in the city. Um, there's a lot of focus on data science and, uh, biotechnology and renewable energy in the city. And, um, so I think, and increasingly, uh, international, um, businesses are looking to Adelaide as a place to, to set up, um, their Australian operations. So I think, um, Australia as a whole has fared very well in the wake of the COVID crisis, when compared to some other parts of the world. So there's quite a bit of optimism about, you know, the next 12, 18 months as we move out of the COVID situation, hopefully, um, I think, you know, Australia is going to be, um, never more appealing as a tourism destination or a place to live or a place to be businesses and invest. So I think, I think, you know, there's real green shoots and, um, I'm really looking forward to, um, to the future for this city.
Lindsay: (33:56)
Well, that sounds fantastic. And we're really excited to continue to track the progress and the different innovation projects you all are working on in the city of Adelaide. Uh, so thanks so much for joining me today, Clayton. We love what you all are doing. So keep up the exciting work and thank you again for being here.
Clayton: (34:13)
Thanks Lindsay much appreciate it. It's been enjoyable. Thanks.
Lindsay: (34:23)
The Govlaunch platform, being a Wiki resource for local governments globally allows us to gather some great insights into the trends across local governments of all sizes. We're seeing more local government folks in marketing, communications, and PR join our community to search and share innovative strategies and tools. We're certainly seeing a shift toward creative ways to promote one's local authority, whether to boost recruiting efforts, to spur economic development, to engage more widely with the community, or all of the above. The city of Adelaide's efforts to leverage technology, to better engage the community, coupled with their robust content strategy appears to be a winning combination and we look forward to tracking their ongoing success. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the gov launch podcast.