Episode 15 - Listening First, Acting Smarter with Rosie Knight

In this episode, I’m joined by Rosie Knight, Head of Value Delivery, from Orlo, a Community Engagement Platform designed to help public sector clients create safer, more sustainable communities.

Rosie and I explore how tools like Orlo can support the humans doing this work, not replace them, by surfacing what leaders need to see and what residents are really feeling. We get into structure, culture, and why it is not enough to just collect data or post more content. At the heart of it, this is a conversation about listening first, building trust over time, and giving government communicators permission to focus on fewer things that make a bigger impact.

Learn more at https://orlo.tech/

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About Dana
Dana Berchman is an award-winning expert in marketing and communications with a gift for leading teams, connecting people, and telling the human story. An experienced innovator, public speaker and media professional, Dana is a proven expert at developing communication strategies, maximizing reach, creating digital roadmaps for cities and organizations, and delivering data-driven results with heart.

Transcript

Dana Berchman: Rosie, I'm so happy to have you today as, as my first Trans Atlantic guest. This is so exciting. Welcome.

Rosie Knight: Thank you. I am honored to be the first UK guest on the podcast. It feels like a very special, uh, invite, so thank you.

Dana Berchman: Yes, of course. So I've had the pleasure of getting to know you and your colleagues and the work that you're doing at orlow. , And I've been in this space trying to figure out the best way to capture resident sentiment to improve service delivery. And it's always been kind of at the core of the mission and the work that I've done, and I know that's.

Dana Berchman: Primarily what you are focused on too. So, so happy to have you here today to talk about that. , Tell me a little bit about you. Tell me, , your journey to Orlow and gimme a little sense of your background, how you ended up where you are today.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, absolutely. So my role at Olo head of Value Delivery, it's, it's a new role and it's one that was born out of understanding that you can buy a product but not [00:01:00] necessarily know how to wrap a process around it initially. . Obviously we have a SaaS product, but we really wrap consultancy around that.

Rosie Knight: So setting you up for time to value right at the beginning, which is something I'm very, very passionate about. And I think unless you do the, the first part, the structural part, you'll never get to the storytelling, how do we really sell our impact and how do we talk to our achievements.

Rosie Knight: So I'm all about good structure, good setup, , for us to get to a story. And I think why I work that way and how I got there definitely comes from my time in private sector agency world. We were responsible for huge advertising, revenue budgets, and there's nothing like big pound signs that make you have to sell your your worth very, very quickly.

Rosie Knight: So I became a bit of a, a generalist across performance metrics. Looking for signals to be able to then tell the story. So what's my 0.1 so I can get you to 0.3. And you understand why to keep investing in me. [00:02:00] And I think that skillset from the agency world, from private sector world is something that I really leverage and take into public sector organizations , helping people understand how to communicate their worth, their value, what they're doing in comms. ,

Dana Berchman: I love that. Using signals to tell a story, something that in my opinion, at least here in the United States for sure, cities don't do a great job of, , I think stopping to look and find out what those signals are is also so critical. Or ask, you know, sometimes it can be very simple. It doesn't have to be overly complicated, but I love how you frame that, looking for the signals to tell your story and to engage people , and using that private sector mindset to infuse that idea into the city space, because there's so much power in delivering and knowing what your customer or your resident wants, and if you paint a broad brush across any city and try to do it the same way, it doesn't necessarily work.

Dana Berchman: [00:03:00] You might miss the mark if you don't, if you don't know what people really want.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, exactly. And I think at the moment, if we look at social in particular, there's a lot of noise. , You could quite quickly in, you know, take a crisis scenario, have thousands of comments in the space of, you know, a day, and it's knowing what to focus in on. So you have to have the signal to know what the priority is.

Rosie Knight: You mentioned sentiment right at the start there, 500 angry comments. We need to understand the 10 that are really, really important. Um.

Dana Berchman: Yes, and that's. That's really what or does. So I, when I was working in,, the city space. Totally overwhelmed even, even without kind of the heightened rhetoric that we see now. But back 12, 14 years ago, even still, people had a lot to say and had to meet them where they were. They're not gonna nest. Necessarily come to a public meeting, they're not gonna show up in your mayor's office. They're not gonna show up at City Hall. [00:04:00] They're

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: their lives. And so you have to go to them. Right? And where are they? And, and they're on social media and, and exactly where has evolved over time. And like you said, now we're getting even more of that noise that we have to manage. But I think it's really interesting how you talk about. , Knowing the 10 that stood out, , the ones that really matter, and we didn't have a tool like Oro at the time to be able to do that. And so it was overwhelming. I tried to kind of, I say build something like it, , how do I pull in all these touch points to the resident or customer, whether it is those emails they're sending, the calls they're making, even the people that are coming on top of what people are telling us online and on social media to give us an idea, a, a full picture. Of. That profile. Right? , What that resident really wants. And now a tool like Oro exists to do that. And to take it and use it in a, in a proactive way to deliver. To tell a story to engage with the resident or [00:05:00] change your services.

Dana Berchman: , This is really powerful and I think an opportunity that cities need to be looking at how technology can drive, and AI now can drive that interaction and that experience. So that's why I was so thrilled to partner, , with you guys and, and to, to meet. Your coworkers and understand exactly, , what it is that you guys are doing.

Dana Berchman: And so tell me a little bit about that and how the work that you're doing now can help to identify where those 10 important, critical, , most representative customers, residents are instead of getting lost in the noise.

Rosie Knight: There's many ways we do it. You know, there's, there's one way of, of waiting the problem and knowing, so again, the first thing we'll ask our organizations is, what are you working on? What are your initiatives in this next three, six months? And what do we need to build out to get that front and center in your visibility?

Rosie Knight: So what do you need to see when you first log into allo? That's gonna be really important. And when we say important, it's what the people above you are also [00:06:00] focused on. So everyone's singing from the same hymn, street, .

Dana Berchman: Oh, I love that.

Rosie Knight: It's really important that we wait everyone the same, but we wait the problem different.

Rosie Knight: Because at the end of the day, we're responsible for all our residents, it's just making sure that we're pulling out the problem that's gonna drive our organization's current focus and.

Dana Berchman: And I love this idea because it's so, right, if you just focus on what the mayor wants or the CEO and like, you don't understand, or like you said, you could miss a, a large portion of your residents that maybe aren't giving you feedback.

Dana Berchman: Right.

Rosie Knight: Yes.

Dana Berchman: So keeping that in mind, but I love, I love what you just said.

Rosie Knight: There's the other side of this of, and you touched on it there a little bit of how people participate. So we've noticed a trend. So our latest development of moving into more, um, survey feedback space is we noticed with one of the councils that we work with, they'd go out with a consultation.

Rosie Knight: You know, it's something that they have to do. They're gonna go and, . Regenerate one part of their, , housing development so that , they're gonna go and improve it. When people then see that on social, they were leaning into the comment [00:07:00] section and suddenly they were getting this participation in a different way.

Rosie Knight: So what they found is that actually some residents like to feed back by the comments they see that kind of gets them in a place where they're gonna go, actually, I feel this way. So they're publicly sharing their opinion. And they'll never be the people that perhaps go and click on that link and fill that survey out.

Rosie Knight: So it's having, waiting people in that way and not saying, actually, I need you and want you to do the survey. Some people just never will. It's how do we tell the story of those people in the comments? People actively filling the survey out, and also they're just wider chatter, pulling that into one stream.

Rosie Knight: Two, you mentioned overwhelm. Without AI and without a system that's looking at all of those and giving you, again, the fragments and the signals. You are not gonna know what the biggest priority is, 

Dana Berchman: I, I love that. And it's. Kind of like neighborhood groups, you know, they, will post an issue that happens. It might affect your particular neighborhood, but then you remember there's 300,000 other people that live in this community who don't live in that neighborhood, who

Rosie Knight: [00:08:00] yeah.

Dana Berchman: Probably about the same issue.

Dana Berchman: Right? So it's so easy to get, get lost in that, But like you said, it's pulling it all together and you can't do that accurately if you don't have these tools and technology to help you to do that.

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And I think, in an AI world where what that's gonna be able to do is look at so much it, it can read data quicker than any human will ever, but it will. What it will output is something that still requires the human to go. This bit's the most important, that will always still rely on us.

Rosie Knight: So it comes back to that storytelling skillset. Of knowing what to hold onto that is still very much our accountability of knowing what to take forward. we were talking last time we chatted about vanity metrics and they've kind of been given a bit of a bad name, and I, I understand why, you know, we relied on them and we didn't go any further.

Rosie Knight: But I think there's something about how we use them as the. Start of the story to then go to the next steps. It's exactly the same logic when you're using [00:09:00] AI it's, you have to find the first thing, but just don't stop there. Keep going.

Dana Berchman: love that. And I think you're exactly right. And storytelling is another thing that at least cities in the US for sure, really struggle with. You can have the greatest technology, the best tool again, but how, you're telling that story back for impact is so critical and that's where. It all ties together, like you said, and even like data visualizations and, and what is that story that it's telling you.

Dana Berchman: And one of the things that uniquely, I think that we did, in a suburb of Phoenix, Gilbert, Arizona, where I was the Chief digital officer, was bring all of those pieces together. So I had the data storyteller and then the outward facing comms people, So the people that were analyzing that data, and then the people that were in charge of pushing it back out and telling that story, we all needed to work together. And I think that that was really a large reason why we had the success we did. And structurally, cities or organizations aren't always correctly designed. [00:10:00] Not only do they not always have the people with the right skill sets or maybe the people that they've had forever who need to think differently about how they do their job or the tools they use to do their job and tell stories, but also I think it's how it's structured and where it lives.

Dana Berchman: And you talked about if it's kind of the same idea that if only people at the top get this, it's kind of like, well, if this only lives in your basement of your IT department, or if this only is in the hands of your comms people, but they can't get. To the data or get to the story, then it's all ineffective if it's not designed in this way.

Dana Berchman: And it's interesting because I talked to one of your colleagues, Dustin, along the way, when he goes into cities to try to talk about implementing this technology, it's like, who do we meet with? Like, are we supposed to meet with the city manager? Do you meet with the mayor? How do you get in? And and I said this was always a big challenge that I see in cities too, because it's kind of like who gets it?

Dana Berchman: And you kind of mentioned this. Everybody needs to get it. You all need to understand the importance [00:11:00] of this work, right? And be aligned in where we're going with it. And, and that's, that's a challenge to deploy these tools, whether it's AI or technologies like Orlow. If you don't have the right people, the right structure, the right setup to understand how to use it all effectively.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, it's playing to, everyone has the thing that moves their job on that little bit further, right? And it's playing into everyone's drive, I guess. So I think our big focus for a product is to consolidate as much as as possible. I see so much value in putting the comms lead next to the engagement lead.

Rosie Knight: we can't always expect the comms person to be so proficient in data. because perhaps they're more creative and perhaps they're, you know, more of a face-to-face people person. Naturally, that lends to that skill set of being a great communicator. But to put them in the same product as the data focus, um, more insight [00:12:00] led.

Rosie Knight: Reducing that barrier is so important, but it is a process, um, one that we are, we are trying to break down and having a log into the same system is one, is one way of doing it, but you have to be prepared to change internal process too.

Dana Berchman: Hmm, absolutely that culture change has to happen and, and thinking of, like you said, all the way down. So I was one of the first to hire, I think I was the first to hire a data storyteller in local government, in the US about 12 years ago. It, it was interesting, one, to make the case of like why this would even be a position that. We would need. And two, also, just like you said, I wasn't necessarily as the communications director, chief digital officer, the data storytelling expert, the data expert, but I knew how to go find the people with the skill sets to kind of shore up where, what I knew. Our residents needed and what we needed to deliver on, which was exactly that, the data storytelling.

Dana Berchman: And one of the things that she quickly [00:13:00] realized was that the organization wasn't ready. And she did small things, make small moves, and I think this is really important. People think you have to have these big overhauls or we're never gonna get there. But you can start with really small steps. But she went into the budget process and made a dropdown for every budget item that came in, like whether you're using data or not. And if you weren't explained why and where it was, and it just got everyone thinking differently. And in government. That's not easy to do. know, they didn't wanna change the way they did it. They thought we were, you know, uh, oh, I'm gonna get in trouble if I, you know, don't have the data behind it. But it was really an exercise in, in teaching people to stop and think about, you know, the things that they're asking for on an annual basis and making the case for it and the need behind it.

Dana Berchman: And it was just a simple little. Technical change that she made, which was a, a dropdown menu. Um, but it created this different way of thinking in [00:14:00] organizations, and I think that's so powerful. And I'd love to know, um, what you see where those opportunities may lie in organizations you go into to think differently about using orlow, for example, or tools to, make their jobs easier and to engage people differently.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, I think. We are at risk of trying to speed up. We are in a world where we, everyone says you should be doing everything really, really quickly. Um, and I think that is the nature of the AI effect. And everyone thinks suddenly I can become more efficient and do more things. Yes you can, but actually you need to understand how you are now, have more access to more information.

Rosie Knight: So I think it's actually understanding that you should. Possibly be doing less, not doing more, and I think that is the biggest thing that we could focus on and work on doing less high quality impact work and cutting out some of the stuff that just hasn't been delivering. [00:15:00] And that should be the job.

Rosie Knight: Also of a storyteller though, particularly looking at data. What are we doing that hasn't been serving us? That hasn't been driving the value? What remains and what do we need to move forward with? And I think it's that it's not getting stuck on I need to do more and speed up. It's actually what have I got access to and what is working for me?

Rosie Knight: And that's a bit scary because I think everyone wants to look like the most efficient person.

Dana Berchman: Absolutely. I used to always say that that was like that. on mentality of like, oh, we have to do this on top of what we're already doing. And it was like, no, you know, you have to stop doing the way we've always done it, um, in order to make space to do things differently. And I love that idea of, know, thinking about things that you might see as high value add or so important that really aren't moving you forward so that you

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: take the time to stop and do the little things that could have a huge impact.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, [00:16:00] and I think, we need to put some responsibility on the, on the stakeholders of that, you know, the people who have the requests and don't perhaps understand the job of comms and the job of bringing your residents and your community with you. one thing I do with with our customers, you say you're gonna set three campaigns up.

Rosie Knight: Two of them are gonna be your high focus priorities for this quarter, the things that you know, you have to drive, and the other one's just gonna be this. SOS send out stuff and you're gonna put every request that you are that it, that doesn't fit into these priorities, and you're gonna put it into this campaign.

Rosie Knight: And then slowly what you're gonna do is build up this, actually, this is all the stuff that I'm being told to do. And you can start to group it and you can report on that, on it as its own entity if you like. And it's a real small but effective change. And that, you know, that's just content out. We could group our inbound contact in the same way, but it's small, but it gives you a structure to then go back and tell the right narrative internally.

Rosie Knight: And we've got to stop doing [00:17:00] these ad hoc requests for content out because here's the metrics, here's the report. It isn't working for us.

Dana Berchman: And another thing that I think is really an interesting point about. At is that the people that hold the metrics and that story sometimes have to not just be thinking about telling it to the resident, but convincing everyone within the organization to go along and at the top right, you mentioned that it's critical.

Dana Berchman: And I always say that, well, you know, what does your mayor think and what's your city manager think? Or who are the people at the top and, but how can you use the data and the story that you have to convince them and bring them along? Because a lot of times. they're disconnected too. you talked about the stakeholders.

Dana Berchman: I always say the internal stakeholders are just as important as those external ones to be sure that everyone's moving in the right direction. And again, in the city space, I would say it's really challenging right now and in the US you have a lot of leadership turnover. You get a new mayor, get somebody new in charge and they don't like that direction anymore.

Dana Berchman: I've been through that. Personally, it's [00:18:00] very challenging when you have that leadership turnover, But when you're structurally designed in this way or you're operating and you know, and you have a handle on, but here's what our residents really want. Here's what they told us, then there's no arguing with that.

Dana Berchman: And again, if it's not living in one place, and it's not an easy story to tell. It will be lost in your organization and it won't be effective up, down, or out, you know? And I think it's a big challenge for a lot of major American cities too right now. and then I think you made the point earlier, which is so critical, is that. social media and online chatter or resident engagement in general can seem so overwhelming and a lot to manage. It's not one way, it's two way. You can't just push information out there. That's why tools like orlow are so critical for relationship building, but I know it's like, it's overwhelming. So a lot of cities and organizations that I work with are like. We don't have the staff to manage it, we can't [00:19:00] do it. it's too much, it's too overwhelming.

Dana Berchman: So they don't, and are out of fear of what people might say. what other advice do you have for organizations, groups, cities that are scared to step into this space or maybe to truly. They don't wanna know necessarily what it is that people really think. Right. what advice do you have for people that are a little stuck?

Rosie Knight: Yeah, it's really hard because, you know, we don't have control over staff. Churn and you know, new leadership coming in, that's inevitably gonna shake things up and change how we approach things. But I think if you can get your basics and your, this is my non-negotiable of how I'm gonna communicate my impact, and there's a few ways you can do it.

Rosie Knight: And I think. I think it's a simple way, but it might just be how my brain works. It's if you can put a quantity metric and pair it with a quality metric. So we reached this many people. That's my big number. I'm gonna draw you in with that because you care about hopefully how many [00:20:00] residents we can, we can reach with our communication.

Rosie Knight: I'm gonna pair it with a quantity and the quantity is why it matters. So that might be sentiment. Um, in order you can report on trust and emotion. That should very simply give you a story of here's the size of the problem or here's the size of the opportunity and this is why it matters. And it's, so, this is why it matters part that is gonna be the most effective.

Rosie Knight: But I think the one we struggle with, we should be asking questions like, did we reach our minority groups? Did we change perception? Have we shifted the needle? have we built trust or has that broken? For me, the simple way is that quantity and quality and pairing them together, it feels quite low barrier entry to, the storytelling piece.

Rosie Knight: ultimately we need to get to a place where we can talk to ROI, but I think it's just not as simple as it, you know, in private sector you can put a pound in and get five back. We don't have that luxury

Dana Berchman: Mm-hmm.

Rosie Knight: we were working with someone [00:21:00] recently on, on flight tipping custom nearly 200 grand a year with people fly tipping.

Rosie Knight: And we are working on a project to prove that through communication, through, reaching the audience through social. They have reduced that. And if we can get to 50 less reported incidents of it by the end of the year, we can put a monetary value to it. So understanding the ROI is definitely a place we should get to, but it's longer term.

Dana Berchman: People used to ask me that all the time, like how, especially, I mean, and I guess in general with like marketing, they, people are always like, well, I, I don't know what you do and how do you do, but people used to say like, how much money do you think, that you save per resident, or 

Dana Berchman: What is that impact? And, and it is, it is hard to measure. but I do think you're right that that's like the ultimate goal. When you can be able to connect all of those pieces to show and, and it is so challenging. And also when you're working in the public sector, on the taxpayer's dime, it's so [00:22:00] critical. I used to say that like, Hey, some of the ways you do that is just stop the old ways of doing printing and you know, these. Old archaic ways, that just drain money and cost. And look, I can do this online and digitally for, a penny to the dollar. And people don't always understand that it, that already is a challenge, in marketing in general.

Dana Berchman: But I love that that's how you're thinking about it and approaching that. And I love the idea of zeroing in on a problem. That could, that affects everyone or that touches everyone. And because that's also how you get people's attention, Like if you, if your problem that you're trying to solve is, um, and I just dealt with this with actually a very large American city who was focused on a problem that was. Impacting one small corner of the city, one tiny population. And the question I had was, well, how do you make everyone else care about this? And they really didn't have an answer because they never had really thought of it. It was just, well, we're just gonna solve this small problem for this. group.

Dana Berchman: Right? [00:23:00] But what about the rest? The rest of the community. So I love that idea of kind of zeroing in on something. We did that a lot in COVID

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: COVID, like using a dashboard, right? Setting up a dashboard and tracking the metrics and then following the data and telling that story back every day.

Dana Berchman: And we had a. a drumbeat with our mayor where she was making these daily video updates and, we didn't know it was gonna be a long game. We thought it was just, you know, a few weeks. but looking for those opportunities for, for something that touches everyone, right? Where you can track something and make an impact and show the value, I think is so spot on.

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And I think to get to that place and to know that there has to be this listening piece so that constant always ear to the ground what's bubbling away, what, what's happening that we're perhaps not quite aware of. And I think in a misinformation world, that's gonna be really important. Have you gotten always on ear to the ground of what the community are talking about?

Rosie Knight: because something could be tapping away or bubbling away that you are not aware of yet [00:24:00] that does need your time and attention. But it also will help you not to go out asking for something at the wrong time or when you are not ready to provide the answer also. So listen first. So we say, listen, understand, then act.

Rosie Knight: Um,

Dana Berchman: that.

Rosie Knight: Because

Dana Berchman: understand and act.

Rosie Knight: yeah. Yeah.

Dana Berchman: you talked about running. If you're just going and doing, or whether it's the way you've always done it or if it's you're being really reactive to what's happening in the world around you, which is easy to do. you're not stopping and listening. And then understanding how to act on it. and it sometimes, like you said earlier, it's can be very simple. I think about, trash schedule changes, again, back to things that are gonna impact and touch every resident, right? every single resident. trash picked up and when we would make a change, it seemed, it always seemed like we weren't asking the customer what they [00:25:00] wanted.

Dana Berchman: First it was just based on the trash truck driver's schedules or the amount of trucks we had in service. And it was like, wait, wait, wait. But what do the residents want? And it turned out that they were willing to pay more for service in a certain way, but we never had even asked them. So surveying as a tool. So easy. to go into people's inboxes or ask them on social media. It doesn't have to be some fancy, statistically valid survey. I mean, sometimes it, it does, but not always just to

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: people what they want and they love it. And then when you follow through on what they tell you, oh yeah, we're willing to pay an extra dollar a month to have, another truck in service.

Dana Berchman: Oh. cool. And then they're not upset when you raise their rates and then they're getting better service. And then you go back like, Hey, we heard you loud and clear when you said act. We asked you, we listened, then now here's what we're gonna do based on what you told us. Like there's such power in [00:26:00] that. And yet I don't see a lot of cities or maybe organizations doing that effectively.

Rosie Knight: It's a really interesting example. I mean, we, a council that we are working with went out with a, they were gonna change their bin collection to, um, four days a month, which, um. It's quite a, it's quite a big jump you can imagine. The community definitely jumped on that and got into the comment section, but what they were able to do is listen to those comments, understand that actually there was a real issue with the current service they were offering.

Rosie Knight: So they paused and went, right, we're not ready to make a change. We thinking future, we need to fix current. They got to that even before the survey results started to come through, they got just that from the comment section where people were clearly disgruntled about current service. And that to me is closer to an ROI story.

Rosie Knight: Also, we listened to be able to ROI or or, or value on investment. It's people are gonna trust us more because we're making a better financial decision [00:27:00] and we're poor. We we're doing that strategic pause almost for the sake of the community 

Dana Berchman: I love that you said trust because I, I hear from people in cities all over and that is their number one, I would say focus area is trying to build or rebuild trust, resident trust right now. I think trust in government in general is. Just so low. Trust in even what you see online is just so low.

Dana Berchman: And so trust is the key of this. And, and like I mentioned earlier, that two-way relationship because you can't build trust if you're just pushing information out and walking away from it. It's this constant. And, and also to your point about, listening and pausing, like you have to do it frequently. You have to. you make a change again, you have to ask them again, how's it going for you? Is this working? And that's another thing that I, I would argue that cities don't do well on is, oh, we fixed it. It's over, it's done. and in general, and the way, the pace of. Life is working. And, and I, I, I just never really [00:28:00] understood too, and I always say like, government shouldn't be an exception to the way the world worked, but like when I started in 2012, working in local government and we didn't accept credit card payment for anything. People live their lives and expect a, a level of service. And that's what I love about using a tool like Orlow to understand what people want because there is such this huge, huge disconnect, especially in the public sector and in government, in delivering on those services. Like they don't wanna wait, 

Dana Berchman: They don't wanna wait till your next strategic planning session or your next election or your next mayoral term. They expect how, in how their lives are changing and working, that I can reach for my phone and pick something up and get what I need. Why can't government deliver that way? Right.

Dana Berchman: Like, and the only way they can is if they deploy technology and the tools that they need to figure, figure out, like you said, how, what people want, and then how to tell the story. Hmm.

Rosie Knight: Yeah, absolutely. I think [00:29:00] trust is interlinked with confidence. How confident are they that they can reach you in the same way that they do their. Amazon, but if they wanna go on live chat, they can go on live chat. If they wanna WhatsApp you, they can WhatsApp you.

Dana Berchman: Yes.

Rosie Knight: a lot of trust is that you can show up consistently in a way that meets your residents how they used to work in currently, you know, they, the digital landscape, we need to catch up and meet them where they are.

Rosie Knight: There's also another part of trust that we discuss of like, I believe you can empathize with me and I believe you'll make logical decisions, and that comes from closing the loop and, and being transparent in services that you're offering and, talking to us about the budget, why the decisions been made, keeping that always on communication stream.

Dana Berchman: Absolutely, and I think, maybe if you actually made it easier for people to engage with your government, they would, and people always say, oh, people don't care, or They don't wanna run for office, or they don't wanna work in these jobs.

Dana Berchman: It's like, well, 'cause you don't make it easy on them. It feels clunky, it feels archaic, it feels [00:30:00] so far behind, you feel like you're dying a slow death. And, and, and to think about. deploying all of the things we talked about, using the right tools and technology to make that easier Absolutely what comes on the other end of that is that trust is being built, but also along that way, what earns that trust is people having positive experiences interacting with their local governments, knowing what's even going on.

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: we're, we're talking, I think, like so advanced for some cities who like aren't even doing like basic. Here's what's happening, you know, in your city or your community. And so there's again, little ways and big ways that you do that and you drive that relationship so that government is a trusted partner, and then that relationship is built. If I make it easy, if it's seamless, if it seems like working right, my, my toilets are [00:31:00] flushing, my water's running. is getting picked up and my streets are fixed, and the my neighborhood is safe and clean and all of these things that builds trust. You have to build the relationship first. And the only way, like you said you can do it, is where people are living their lives and that's online and going there. And so that's, one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you because I know that you understand this space and also the challenges, right?

Dana Berchman: Like these are real challenges, when you're trying to deploy tools. Or, or any kind of engagement tool and do it the right way when you're trying to explain people what the value is on the other side.

Rosie Knight: Yeah. And I think, if the barrier is having this internal resource, you need a good soundboard in, your product. And, and when you meet them monthly, you should be able to soundboard with these and [00:32:00] get closer to it. You know, like you say, it's a, it's a journey. And for those looking after a smaller population.

Rosie Knight: And they're not, as advanced as perhaps we're talking. It's making sure that you do partner with someone where you can bounce ideas and you can show up for that meeting and say, help. What do I do? I think that's the closest perhaps we can get, you know, data, a data storyteller might not be there yet, but have someone that you can have a consultative relationship with.

Rosie Knight: Definitely.

Dana Berchman: I love that. I think that's an e excellent point. You may never have the staff, you may never get another FTE. You may never get another body to help you to do this work. So again, it becomes so overwhelming. Another reason why you look to. Ask those questions and build that partnership with people that can help you and want to help you. People

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: To take technology in general to make people's lives better, and to not be. I think afraid of it or letting people in and I think, I think you're totally [00:33:00] spot on in that, creating these partnerships and relationships. I mean, that's what I am trying to do in my work.

Dana Berchman: I always wanted to kind of scale what I had built to help other cities and help other people to figure out these problems. And so, that is really the goal, but you have to kind of do it together and there are more similarities. organizations, in cities, then there are not, and even among residents.

Dana Berchman: and it's more critical, I would say now more than ever. So I'm so happy that you were able to join me to have this conversation today. I, before you go, I do wanna know what do you see? Like what would, and, and I don't know. How familiar you are with American cities in general, but like what do you see the differences so far?

Dana Berchman: Orlow has come into the US recently and like

Rosie Knight: Yeah,

Dana Berchman: what are maybe quickly, like what are the differences and what are the similarities that you see here versus there?

Rosie Knight: It is interesting because we've coined a phrase of same problems, different accent. Yeah. [00:34:00] That's become,

Dana Berchman: Yes,

Rosie Knight: Actually there's a lot of the same happening. I think obviously size and scale is the biggest difference. I got to go over to Vegas to a conference and one thing I would took away from it is the creativity some of the campaigns that you guys are running are really, like, there's less of a barrier there for the creative angle.

Rosie Knight: Um, I dunno if you've seen it, the, the recent, there's a library. Account in on Instagram that they have gone so viral and they were on my feed randomly the other day just because they're doing these trend led. Videos on Instagram and they've reached millions of people. I actually think so far my experience with, yeah, work with the US is that there, there's a lot of creativity there.

Rosie Knight: I think perhaps, you know, you've obviously done more. There might be a slight confidence thing of just going and doing it, but I've definitely seen more creativity coming from, from the US in terms of pushing that what private sector are doing, pushing the [00:35:00] boundaries a little bit.

Dana Berchman: I love that. I once got a Justin Timberlake retweet and I was like. That was my like swan song moment. But it

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: we jumped on a trend that lots of organizations and sports groups were doing, and I'm like, why can't a city do it? Right? It was the dance to his, can't stop the feeling video.

Dana Berchman: And so we just did it and then it went viral and so I I love that you say that because I think it's so. Critical and don't squash creativity and good ideas. And I think when we get talking about, you know, bans on TikTok and you can't use these, tools in government, but yet that's where the majority of people are getting their information in news.

Dana Berchman: Like those are missed opportunities to be engaging creatively and we need to be infusing more creativity into local government. I'm so glad that you saw that and I, there are a lot of standout. Channels like I love that you say library 'cause there's some like amazing parks programs and there's [00:36:00] public works streets workers in certain cities and some police departments that are doing amazing things and I'm just such a huge fan of that, Taking these things that you see are trending and doing them in local government, people love that. Your audience wants that

Rosie Knight: Yeah.

Dana Berchman: That's amazing. I'm glad you felt that way. That's good to know. 'cause I still think we have a long way to go, but.

Rosie Knight: It'll always be a long way to go, but I think it's, that's the one thing that stood out. It was like, there's so much creativity here. 

Dana Berchman: I love

Rosie Knight: yeah. That it struck me.

Dana Berchman: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you and I hope someday we can meet in person.

Rosie Knight: That would be fun. I would like that. Hopefully I'm in America. That would be good.

Dana Berchman: I need a trip to Europe. Come on. Well, great chatting with you.

Rosie Knight: Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on. It's been great fun.