LOBV Letter to Bicycle Advocates - 09/21/2009

Dear Austin bicycle advocate,

As the new Executive Director of the League of Bicycling Voters, I am
very excited to lead the next steps to develop LOBV into a more
robust, local bicycle advocacy organization. We are working to
transform LOBV into a participatory organization that truly represents
the Austin-area community in its bicycle advocacy needs. I am writing
you today to bring you up to date on the process LOBV has planned for
local bicycle advocacy, to solicit feedback, and to ask for your
participation.

The next few steps involve discussion and implementation of how LOBV
endeavors to represent the Austin-area bicycle community. A key part
of this is understanding how LOBV's role can complement and/or
integrate existing valuable efforts by other organizations and
individuals.

You are receiving this e-mail because we value your leadership in
local bicycle advocacy. At this stage, this group is not meant to be
exclusive, so if you think I have neglected someone from this list (of
75 people), please do let me know their name and/or contact info and I
will get in touch with them. Opportunities for an even wider, public
audience to participate will come soon when we have the process better
developed.

This stage over the next few weeks serves two purposes:
1) To bring interested parties up to date on what LOBV has planned
for local bicycle advocacy and to solicit feedback.
2) To help prepare for LOBV's inaugural community bike summit to take
place in late October or early November.

To this end:
a) I will be contacting each of you via phone over the next week to
describe the process we have planned for LOBV. (I only have some of
your phone numbers, so please send me your preferred phone number.)
One-on-one conversations will help answer your specific questions,
will help clarify where we are in the process (what we do have sorted
out and what we don't), and to help understand what role, if any, you
would like to have in this process. These will give us a chance to
connect personally and for me to get your feedback on plans for LOBV's
future.

b) For those interested in what LOBV is planning and how, I encourage
you to attend the next LOBV board meeting, Sept. 29th 6pm. The scope
of this meeting will include:
* Briefly covering local history of advocacy
* Clarifying the scope of LOBV
* Clarify relationship of LOBV to other organizations, e.g. ACA, TBC, BAC
* Present and clarify the LOBV consensus process
* Possibly determine date for community-wide LOBV meeting
* Ask for interested advisers/collaborators to plan community-wide summit
_Not_ on the agenda:
X advocacy goals for the next year
X strategies for improving bicycling conditions in the Austin-area
These last items will be prime subjects for the community-wide bike
summit to occur in late Oct. or early Nov.

c) Hosting an annual or semi-annual community bike summit to engage
the local bicycling community (inaugural summit in late October or
early November 2009)

The intent of this process, which includes the steps above, is to
transform LOBV into a participatory organization that truly represents
the Austin-area community in its bicycle advocacy needs. We are
working to create an organization of active participants and other
interested parties that acts on the bicycling community's will, as
determined by a consensus-based decision-making process.

We have some other tentative details of this process spelled out, but
for the sake of brevity, I will refrain from going into further detail
in this e-mail. As mentioned above, there will be opportunities to
discuss this more over the phone or at the next LOBV board meeting.

Again, please send me your preferred telephone number so that I can
contact you sometime over the next week. And please consider
attending the next LOBV board meeting this coming Tue., Sept. 29th,
beginning with dinner at 6pm. Please RSVP to receive location
information.

To further help us in strengthening the effectiveness of bicycle
advocacy in Austin, consider joining the League of Bicycling Voters
today. It's easy to become a member -- just visit us at
http://lobv.org/join.html

Thank you for your work and I look forward to (continue) working with you.

Tom Wald
Executive Director
League of Bicycling Voters
http://lobv.org
Austin, Texas
tomwald@gmail.com
512-203-7626