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Vision to hold first-ever telephone town hall for its members

November 22nd, 2010 · 44 Comments

I’m sure no one here will want to miss this.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    It’s don’t call us, we’ll call you.

    In order to get in you have to provide Vision your phone number.

  • rf

    Freudian slip on how it’s at “7pm-8pm America/Vancouver” ?

  • Julia

    and 25,000 participants… I am impressed.

    Why can’t they just be honest and say what it is. They are looking for a phone list to use next November.

  • Ian Baillie

    The way the technology works is that the phone calls are outbound only, so no we are not doing this to collect phone numbers. We are giving people a choice if they want to be included. I should note that we will only be able to add numbers for a short while longer, the notice Frances linked to was sent out on Friday. Thanks for your interest.

    Ian Baillie, Vision Vancouver

  • eleanor

    This is creepy…who figures out who gets to speak next?…25,000 people on the line will create nothing more than a giant opt-in robo call.

  • Chris

    @rf America/Vancouver is the timezone we are in. At least according to computer standards. Most computer systems don’t use PST/PDT because there are too many exceptions.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

  • Morry

    what next A facebook “friend” me page? Some one is smoking too many BC buds over yonder in them der Vision Fields.

  • George

    call display…

  • Julia

    A ‘townhall meeting’ is called on a Friday afternoon, less than 5 days before the event, with no publicity beyond a website and a blog post by ‘impartial’ Jonathan Ross who claims there is an anticipated participation of 25,000 people… with no explanation of how it works and we are not being told it is almost full? Really.

    You might not want a phone number but we have to provide an email request to participate.

    Really. And to think it was so well publicized that Frances did not know about it until today, and no other media outlets have picked up on it either. But it is almost full… right?

    really.

  • Julia

    did some google research. The host, (in this case,Vision) calls a list of names (where exactly does this list come from???) and invite people to participate. If you want to participate you stay on the line. If you don’t, you hang up. If you want to ask a question, you push zero and your question goes into a que.

  • rf

    If it’s like anything else with the Hollyhock mafia, there may be 25,000 people on the line but only 231 will actually be from Vancouver.

    Maybe it’s in coordination with an Amway Global marketing call?

  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of The Day

    “First, they don’t let city staff take calls from reporters, then, they push Pinocchio to take calls from the public. This is maddness…and I love it!”

    What would they think of next, confirm themselves as the laughing stock of this city?
    They already did that.
    And FYI, after the ‘microphone incident’ when the mayor called citizens present in the room next door, ‘effin’, NPA hacks’ and after everyone listened to the malefic laughs coming from that ‘Democracy cubed Ball’, to go for this telephone shtick is simply stupid, on so many levels, wow…

    The bull is painted in big letters all over their faces, and visible from Hollyhock. This is ‘cockroach caught in the kitchen light run’ action.

    But, to wanted it so bad that they didn’t even care to proofread their own copy is hilarious.
    There:
    “Date:
    November 23, 2010 – 7:00pm – 8:00pm America/Vancouver
    Event Location:
    Your Living Room!
    City and Province:
    Vancouver, BC”

    ‘Cause a local ‘broadcast’ that’s supposed to cater to Vancouver citizens has no business what-so-ever in …America. Stupid nitwits!

    Call it ‘circumstantial evidence’ , ‘admission of guilt’ or ‘the real motive’, because you don’t want to see it as yet another serving of their pure, 100% horrorganic arrogance.

    I’m no longer shaking my head when I read sometghing like this about Vision. The only thing I am left to say to them, poor wandering souls is… “Vaya con Dios!”

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • landlord

    E-preaching to the choir.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    “Maybe it’s in coordination with an Amway Global marketing call?”

    Or Stratcom. Gee, wonder what they’re up to now after they sleazed themselves out for Westbank to conduct a dubious phone poll on West End residents for their 1401 Comox development?

  • piker

    Maybe Vision can pick up a whole telemarketing suite at Able Auctions!
    http://ableauctions.ca/flyer.cfm?EventID=CF0BDF9A-1422-1757-AB55E9A99E2F2780

  • The Fourth Horseman

    I would prefer a “Town Hall” televised/online meeting (you have to enter a random draw for seats, and pick up those tickets to get a seat at the venue), with call-ins, e-mail questions, and some mic time for those in the audience.

    With that integrated approach you might actually have half a chance that at least some people there would not be “the usual suspects” or operatives/cheerleaders for the political parties.

    Now, THAT would be representaional democracy.

  • The Fourth Horseman

    PS. 5 day meeting notification is effing ridiculous, to coin a phrase…

  • Julia

    especially when the notice only appears on the Vision website.

  • George

    I just received a prerecorded message from the Mayor asking me to be by my phone tomorrow night. I haven’t e-mailed my name in.
    Anyone know how this works? So much for call display.

  • rf

    hmmmm…. don’t they call voice mail spam “spit”.

    Maybe they are rebranding Civicscene as “Civicspit”?

    Or maybe once the weather got cold Gregor headed to Cuba again so they had to put the timezone on to remind him?

  • George

    rf, …. that is funny

  • Mark Allerton

    @Morry 7

    Perhaps you were being sarcastic (hard to say online) but you will be overjoyed to discover that Vision already has a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/VisionVancouver

  • Dan Cooper

    @George #19: Maybe you gave them your number at some point attached to a comment/complaint/etc., and they’re reaching out to people who have in any of those ways expressed interest in what is going on?

    (The thing here that interests me is that they must be using a very different system than I do for my teleconferencing, or it’s gonna bankrupt ’em even if they have far less than 25k lines going….)

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    I’ve heard now from three people who got a Gregor Robertson robo call last night and have no idea how Vision got their number since they aren’t members and didn’t contact them.

  • George

    @ Dan Cooper

    Thanks that makes perfect sense…

  • George

    sadly my question is redundant as it was submitted months ago and was answered by blogger sources, not Vision a long time ago…waste of time and money… sigh

  • Julia

    I really want to understand what list they are using to call. Is he calling as the Mayor of Vancouver or Vision and who is paying the tab.

  • George

    Julia
    when I get my call tonight perhaps I’ll make that my question;-)
    what I don’t understand is how they can cover 25,000 calls, or do you just ask/record your question, and you don’t get an answer…..that to me makes the whole exercise redundant.

  • Ashley

    Julia, I agree.

    I find it troubling that the notice for this event only appears on Vision Vancouver’s website and NOT on the City of Vancouver’s – not even in their event listing. As far as I’m concerned, he is the Mayor of Vancouver until we tell him otherwise and should not be using his position to consult people for his party’s benefit. I know it’s often a fine line but this crosses it in the same way that Sam Sullivan did when he personally trademarked EcoDensity. If council decided not to allocate money for this gig then that is the final decision – he should not then spend private money to do it anyway while he holds the title of Mayor.

  • George

    biggest waste of an hour of my life…..

  • George

    rigged process

  • Westender1

    George, can you share a bit more? How was this process set up? Those of us not on the Vision call list (thankfully?) were denied the opportunity to participate in this new form of “eco-sustainable-demo-cracy.”

  • George

    @ Westender1
    first of all I didn’t sign up they called me last night and told me to wait by my phone.
    tonight you received a call and you could hear the conversation going on, if you had a question you pushed #9 on keypad…. you had to sit and listen to callers that were obviously reading off of written speak sheets.
    Never made it past the Que, but interestingly they stopped and asked you to participate in polls.
    At one point you were asked if you wanted to volunteer for Vision or sign up for more Vision info.
    At the end of the process for those of us not able to ask our questions we were allowed to leave a recorded message for the Mayor and we were told that we would get a call back with the answer to our question…. here is the troubling part, you didn’t have to leave your phone number or name the computer catches it all, that to me was the biggest problem…

  • George

    all questions seemed to be safe questions very Vision flattering rehashing things like, feeling safer in bike lanes,or why/when will I hear if I am chosen to live in OV housing…

  • Westender1

    Thanks George for the report. Sounds like a rather self-congratulatory exercise in “back-patting” rather than a sincere attempt at community engagement. The privacy issues related to names and telephone numbers are rather troubling – perhaps the desired outcome was a telephone call list?

  • George

    Westender1
    I think you’re right…so now here is another little puzzle.. pg. B9 Province newspaper.
    Wednesday Nov.24(tomorrow) @1-1:30 power chat with the Mayor at the province.com and I quote it gives readers the chance to put questions to BC’s movers and shakers….;-0

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    At the end Gregor said the telephone townhall was new technology, something new and different.

    Mayor Hazel McCallion has been doing a live call-in cable access show for over two decades in the Toronto neighbouring city of Mississauga, where citizens call in with their questions and concerns. It costs nothing to produce since volunteers man the cable access productions.

    No phone number harvesting. No moderating by Vision spin doctor Marcella Munro. No instant phone polling asking you to press 1) to volunteer for Vision, press 2) if interested in becoming a member, or press 3) to receive more information about Vision.

    Just Hazel live, a camera, her lav mic, and the caller. What’s more, she can think on her feet without need of a script.

    She’s 89, so clearly viewers are not tuning in for her celebrity looks. Nevertheless, she has been doing something right in the ‘transparency and accountability’ department since she was just elected to her 12th term as mayor, and that’s despite allegations of conflict of interest involving her son and a developer.

    So clearly if someone pressed 1) or 2) from the poll mentioned above, how exactly would somebody at Vision reach that person, or how would Gregor deal with any of the messages at the end of the “townhall” requiring follow-up if the system wasn’t collecting numbers?

    Telephone townhall, meh. Whatev.

  • David

    It’s a little odd that people are so worried about how their numbers ended up on Vision’s list seeing as they probably gave the Party their number years ago. You people do realize this is the 21st century right? Data storage isn’t very hard anymore. And who knows, if you never actively gave Vision your info, maybe someone else did.

    I for one didn’t volunteer for them, but I know full well how they got my number, because I did join years ago to make sure Allan DeGenova didn’t get the nomination and turn Vision into NPA-light. It isn’t very hard to record and keep a number, so it shouldn’t be very hard to call people back. Perhaps this isn’t some giant conspiracy folks?

    As for the quality of the event, it was mixed. On the one hand it was annoying that the Mayor and people calling in were allowed to go on and on, when they should’ve been time limited (the questions to 30 seconds and the Mayor to 2) minutes). It was also annoying that the “host” kept rambling on at times too. But considering that this is the first time anyone has done this here, and no this is far different from a cable access call in show that less than a fraction of people listening in to this would watch, I’m willing to be patient with them. It was obviously a somewhat partisan list seeing as they called people who gave Vision their info, but some of the calls were difficult/useful. I could really only count a couple of them, specifically the bike lane one and the person who called about their social housing unit, being a bit lame.

    As to the appropriateness of the event, so long as Vision paid for it how isn’t it appropriate? Are parties not allowed to contact the public and try to engage them? Parties do polling and outreach all the time. You don’t hear anyone bitching about that. Have we turned into a dictatorship? Because no one has informed me about it. Obviously this would be scandalous if taxpayers money went towards it, but I seriously doubt they’d be that stupid.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    “It was obviously a somewhat partisan list seeing as they called people who gave Vision their info, but some of the calls were difficult/useful.”

    For whom?? The party machinery? Or the public?

  • Julia

    http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Mayor+phone+meeting+gets+ringing+endorsement/3881673/story.html

  • Shaffer

    It was great for the Vancouver community to gather around their cozy living-rooms with the fireplace on, and Christmas tree lit- up, sipping on tea and coffee, and nibbling on Belgium chocolate cookies.

    It’s also great that our neighbours, the United States were able to share. Every city, province and state handles their areas differenly. It is beneficial for the citizens, Mayor Robertson and his team to encorporate other ideas. Brainstorming ideas were based on peoples experiences and will help to improve the quaility of life of Vancouver, and developing techniques with better managment and dealing with current and past concerns and issues.

    Hopefully, everything discussed is remembered and integrated with what they are doing next with planning a wonderful Vancouver.

  • editing fool

    i found the initial pre-recorded invitation to take part in this on my machine the day before it happened.
    as i was not going to be home before 8 the following day, i did not respond.
    however, the following day when i got home after 8:30 pm, the entire space on the answering machine was filled up….with this.
    i applaud the city for this new idea. but i really did not agree to take part and the answering machine filled up anyway.
    must be a way of working out this kink.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    Also heard from some who wanted to be on the tele-townhall but didn’t get called until 7:20 or 7:30pm, when the meeting was already halfway over.

  • Julia

    editing fool… you said something interesting. The city was not involved in the event, process or the messaging. It was a private political party that held this event and you – like many others, likely thought it was an official conversation.