Session: "You're Talking - Is Anybody Listening?"
Track: Communication and Marketing

9:00am - 12:00pm
Speaker: Penny Mabie, EnviroIssues

Description: So you don’t love standing up in front of an audience talking about a project or a program that maybe not everyone loves. But someone has to do it, and you’ve been volunteered. What’s different about public speaking for public involvement? Why are people there – what do they want? How do you answer the tough questions? Join this session to sharpen your preparation, realign your thinking, get ideas for helping your project team, and remove some of the terror around those rough Q & A sessions. It’s all in the prep – and the practice. Let’s get to it in this lively interactive session.

During the session you’ll:

• Develop an understanding of the unique needs of communicating for public involvement.
• Learn from each other by sharing experiences and identifying successes, near misses and scary moments.
• Improve skills and tools for preparing for a presentation, practice presenting information cogently and answering follow-up questions, and experience that on-the-spot feeling during a Q & A session.
• Be able to apply basic communication skills in presentations – key messages, delivery mechanisms, listening skills, succinct responses, etc.
  

Speaker Bio: Penny Mabie

Penny Mabie is a public participation leader with more than two decades of experience engaging audiences in decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods. Penny specializes in public involvement, facilitation, development and delivery of training programs, and supporting inter-jurisdictional strategic planning and communication efforts.  Prior to her work in the consulting arena, Penny provided education, outreach, program planning and public involvement for Thurston County and the City of Olympia’s solid waste programs for almost 10 years.
Since 2000, as a public involvement consultant for EnviroIssues, Penny has provided facilitation and public participation services to support public infrastructure siting and design, multi-jurisdictional task forces on topics including flood control, transportation planning, and landscape-scale conservation and advisory committees on protected bike lanes, groundwater contamination and school facilities planning.  
Penny is known for her facilitation, management and implementation of short- and long-term processes with respect and a focus on achieving measurable and durable outcomes. Penny received her MA in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University and her BA in Public Policy and Environmental Studies from The Evergreen State College. She is a licensed trainer with the International Association of Public Participation.

 

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