City of Dunwoody Meetings and How to Participate

Last night, Dunwoody held a meeting to discuss an updated plan for our city's parks and the outreach that would go along with that.

It was at exactly the same time as the Planning Commission meeting at City Hall where several zoning variance requests were discussed, including those involving a proposed townhome development in Dunwoody Village.

Next week is the first Town Hall of this administration.  Topics for discussion are being accepted at www.connectdunwoody.com.

These meetings have some traits in common:

1)  They are all held in the early evening during prime commuting or family care hours.
2)  There is no live broadcast of the meetings so those unable to attend cannot observe and be informed.**
3)   There is no mechanism for remote feedback from the community outside the meeting room.

**City Council meetings and other meetings held in council chambers are streamed online via the city's SIRE system which organizes official calendars, agendas, and minutes.  However, SIRE's video encoding permits the live feed to be viewed only on Internet Explorer, on a standard laptop or desktop.  It is not possible to view it on any other browser, including the new MS Edge.  They also cannot be viewed on any tablet or smartphone.  The technology is so limited it is almost obsolete in 2015.

Meetings or other informal gatherings (eg, Coffee with a Cop) in the afternoons or evenings are an essential part of soliciting feedback from the public.  But as I have posed elsewhere in DWG, meetings at this particular time frame self-selects for only that part of Dunwoody citizens that are not caring for families at home.  Their time is their own.

Those of us who are meeting buses, running carpools, shuttling kids to activities and doctors' appointments, preparing dinner, managing homes, helping with homework and projects, getting younger children bathed and in bed, as well as working our tails off to earn and provide are not able to share their input in the context of the event because they cannot be in THAT place at THAT time.

I have made requests to city hall to make meetings and live feedback available via social media and streaming video.  Others have done the same via Facebook.  I haven't the foggiest idea whether that will happen or not.

In the mean time, SDOC has a solution.

I would like to contribute SDOC's infrastructure and social media assets to the cause of making public meetings available online to families unable to attend. 

This effort will require some collaboration and logistic testing to determine the best method to stream events.  There are options for streaming video via website and social media, as well as live chat for feedback.

If any Dunwoody citizen is interested in collaborating on this effort, please contact me at duncan@sdocpublishing.com.  

Let's make Dunwoody's official events accessible to more of Dunwoody's citizens!

Water will be shut off temporarily as part of Dunwoody Mt Vernon water main upgrade

From Reporter Newspapers:


Mount Vernon Road’s ongoing water main work requires water to be shut off on Fri., Jan. 8 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for those homes and businesses on Vernon Ridge Drive, Vernon Ridge Court and Thornhill Court in Dunwoody.

The city of Dunwoody began working with DeKalb County on the water main pipeline replacement project in March. The project is part of a rehabilitation program by DeKalb County to address the aging water pipelines within Dunwoody and throughout the county. The Mount Vernon Road project will involve the replacement of two aging water mains with one new 16-inch diameter main.

A Happy and Prosperous 2016 to All!

I hope everyone reading has been able to enjoy some time that does not involve nose-to-the-grindstone work:  by yourself, with family, travelling, or whatever makes you happy.

In the Duncan house we have a mix of work (there is no such thing as "vacation" for entrepreneurs), laundry, cooking holiday specialties, sports, play, and just lounging around until work and school pick up again.

SDOC had a banner year!  We built and launched new websites for:

• DeKalb Commissioner Nancy Jester 
• Timberhood Consulting (Dunwoody citizen-owned business)
• Learning on the Log (Sandy Springs service location with Dunwoody business office)
• Georgians for Local Area School Systems (GLASS)
• Kenneth Gordon - Private Jeweler (Dunwoody citizen-owned business)

SDOC returned to Business Radio X for a live interview and discussion of web trends and business needs.

SDOC was accredited by the Metro Atlanta Better Business Bureau - an achievement not made by most website design and development firms.


In addition, we continued our long friendships with these clients via hosting and maintenance services as well as long-needed complete redesigns that were not only more modern but improved mobile usability.

• Atlanta Alumnae Panhellenic Association
• RikEmmett.com

2016 is already looking bright.  We are discussing new projects with their clients.  Upgrades for our current friends are always in the hopper.  SDOC continually reaches out to build new relationships with organizations in need of a modern web presence and lightning-fast communications with people of all ages.  We might even treat ourselves to a new look on the SDOC website.  (Shhh!  Don't tell the owner.  It's a surprise!)  

SDOC is also returning as a Platinum Sponsor of the 2016 Taste of Dunwoody on February 20 at the Westin Perimeter hotel.  Get your tickets NOW before they sell out!

Thank you everyone for a wonderful 2015 and I wish you all the best in the coming New Year!