Guest post by John C. Shepard, AICP, Laramie County, Cheyenne, Wyoming Small town and rural planning is not city planning writ small. Yet we are also part of the same global economy as our urban cousins, facing the same economic and demographic trends. Over 5,000 urban and regional planners traveled to Chicago last week from…
Do you know what the most commonly asked question is at any of my talks? It’s always about dealing with the negative people, the people who say you can’t, the roadblocks. Jack Schultz calls them the CAVE people: the Citizens Against Virtually Everything. I find that encouraging and discouraging all in one. It’s encouraging because…
One of the principles of a small town business is to be personal. Sometimes, automation can help you to be personal. Here’s what I mean. A friend was taking registrations for an event. If you’ve ever dealt with event registrations, you know it generates a lot of emails. One of the options in his marketing…
My neighbors in Ponca City, Oklahoma, have a famous local barbecue sauce, Head Country. This is the kind of thing that lots of economic development and tourism agencies have long given out in full size bottles to special guests and at booths at travel shows, etc. The problem is, how they heck do people get this stuff…
My friend Johnita Crawford is a county commissioner in Cloud County, Kansas. When we talked about “what is a small town business?” she sent me this note about what several towns under 800 in population in her county are doing to promote small business: “We have a special fund from our Wind Farm that we…
I got a call from a freelance reporter last week. She was assigned to write a positive story about the future of rural. Someone told her she should call me, so she did. It was hard, but I want you to know I showed some restraint, so I only kept her on the line for…
Sheila Scarborough was touring around small towns in Alberta, Canada. The person driving her around said, “Actually, I have a picture of Winston Churchill when he visited here during the war.” He pulled out his phone and showed her and told the story. (I’ll put the story at the end of the post.) He had…
QR codes continue to expand in popularity, but most still suffer from fatal mistakes. Here’s one that get close, at least with its description. This is a retail package that includes barbecue accessories including a bag of wood chips. Some customers who use gas grills may not be sure how to use those special wood…
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