11 GovLove and ELGL with Kent Wyatt
This week we talk to [Kent Wyatt](https://twitter.com/kwyatt23) founder of [Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL)](https://twitter.com/ELGL50) about the 'why' that drives him forward, the ELGL organization, and the [GovLove podcast](https://twitter.com/GovLovePodcast). This podcast swap seeks to help build bridges between the local government professional community and the civic tech movement.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [Vendor Directory](http://elgl.org/vendor-school-directory/)<br>- [Diversity Dashboard](http://elgl.org/diversity-dashboard/)<br>- [GovLove with Leigh Tami](http://elgl.org/2017/06/30/podcast-harnessing-the-power-of-data-with-leigh-tami-cincinnati-oh/)<br>- [GovLove with Brendan Babb & Sam Edelstein](http://elgl.org/2017/10/20/podcast-innovation-doesnt-have-to-be-fancy-with-sam-edelstein-brendan-babb/)
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. This week, we're joined by Kent Wyatt, founder of Engaging Local Government Leaders, ELGL, and one of the hosts of Gov Love, a podcast supported by that organization. Both of these things seek to help build community amongst local government leaders out there by doing things like sharing best practices, sharing ideas and innovations, and bringing education out to the group. This particular episode is part of a podcast swap that we're doing with GovLove. So I would certainly urge you to go ahead and check them out and to give them a listen. I'll leave it to Kent to describe a bit more about the organization and about the podcast, but we'll be learning both of those things as well as about a bit about him personally. So let's go ahead and hop right into the discussion.
Kent, thank you so much for joining us on the program. I'm, personally quite excited to jump into this conversation with you. To get us started, could you, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you're doing now?
Sure. My name is Kent Wyatt, cofounder of e l g l, which is the engaging local government leaders. I'm also a full time employee with the city of Tigard, Oregon as a senior management analyst, in the in the, excuse me, obviously, in the city manager's office doing social media, federal legislative affairs, and communications. And, before we get too farther in this conversation, I do wanna thank you, Ryan, for the work that you're doing, specific tip, chat, especially the I know a number of our members attended the Code for America summit, but, the wrap up episode was really cool to hear, what folks were doing there and how excited they were moving forward. So I know your podcast has been a must listen for a number of our members out there. We have ELDL has about 4,000 members throughout the country, and podcasting really has been a great way for us to connect, with each other across the country, but also with other organizations and and other groups such as yours that are doing,
incredible work in this field. Oh, thank you so much for the kind words. I I definitely agree that, podcasting can be a really interesting way to kind of form a fabric to keep a community, contiguous, I guess, and connected. Related to that, sit in in your work, I would be curious, and this is something I try to ask guests, as a way of, getting to kind of why they go about things. So what is your personal why? What drives you to get out of bed and and do what you do?
I love this question, although sometimes it makes me cry a little bit. My my personal why, I was on a podcast a number of years ago and was kind of asked in the similar vein, what motivates you and what is your why? And at that time, it was really I look at my career backwards. What are people gonna say about me when I retire? My dad was a a city manager for over thirty years, and I remember going to events with him, community events, and people authentically were thanking him for the work he was doing as a city manager, and he knew their names. He knew one or two things about them and was able to engage them in that conversation. Fast forwarding a couple years, I have now I have two daughters, an eight year old and six year old, Eleanor and Josephine, who I hope one day will be loyal listeners to your podcast. But that's really my why I get out of bed in in trying to figure out how we can make local government better for them, for their generation. There's obviously, and we may talk about this later, a pretty big gender gap when it comes to leadership in government. Obviously, it's also prevalent in the tech world. And we as the LGL and me as a person don't think that should continue to exist. In thirty years, actually, from 1984 to 2014, 13%, of the leaders in local government were female. That number did not change from 1984 to 2014. If you think about your listeners think about where they were in those two different age periods, if they were even born, I was six years old at that time. The fact that that hasn't changed is just disgraceful to me, and I appreciate the great work done by my dad's generation and other generations in the local government field especially, but it's time for real change when it comes to diversity, when it comes to gender, race, sexuality. And along those lines, it comes to it it's now the time to start embracing these new ways of doing things in government. And I think one of them being, technology and how we use that, in our local government life. So for me, I hope my daughters, Josephine, Eleanor, are around for my retirement party. And and when they hear people talking about their dad, I want them to hear genuine comments about, the ways I was able to help people either in a small way or larger ways. And that's really what drives me to get up every morning and and go to work for the city of Tigard and in my spare time,
do what I can do with DLGL and trying to advance our mission. Nice. I I really love that answer. You've clearly thought about your your why there, and it sounds like you've got a very strong core that kinda emanates out then into what you do out in the world. And, I definitely also, like your mention of the, the gender gap there as, I was gonna ask you a bit about that. As our listeners may well know, you have a quite a path, through, state and local government where you've gained some pretty significant experience. As you talk about that gap, have you seen things in your experience that maybe that could be replicated, could be used to perhaps be helpful, in the endeavor to close it as opposed to, behaviors that are perhaps damaging and only seek to, like, perpetuate that?
Sure. And and it's a personal issue too. My wife was the assistant city manager for the city of West Linn. That's that's actually why we moved from Richmond, Virginia to West Linn, ten, twelve years ago and was a superstar there for a number of years, moved out moved throughout the organization, moved up, in about five or six years after she had been there, and they were deciding on who to appoint as the next city interim city manager. One of the female counselors actually pointed out in that discussion that a young mom with kids should not really be up for consideration for that job. That young mom with kids was my wife, Kirsten. So that's the most, burning experience I've had with that. But to flip that question and kinda where it started on on what I've seen as effective and I don't I think we we struggle with this because there's not a short term fix. You really do have to get into elementary schools and high schools, and start introducing the field of local government to people and letting them know the opportunities that are there. Really, if you think about it, what we do in local government, city, county government, there's some sort of skill set that matches what you're interested in, and that's for boys and girls. We don't do a good good enough job of of selling the profession. And then something that we're working on in ELGO, mentioned a minute ago, the diversity bat dashboard, It started off as the 13% initiative, which was really just to highlight that discrepancy and the lack of change that we've had. And with the diversity dashboard, what we hope to accomplish is in all 50 states, we're measuring the number of female CAOs or CEOs, that top level position in the organization. We're measuring that by race, gender, veteran status, and we hope, in the next few weeks, we'll release that data and we'll it is quite disturbing in the lack of of progress, but with that, release some initiatives that we can take to move forward. And I think that starts with all of us from executive recruiters. I think a lot of times they have their circle of people who tend to be older white males that they continue to contact for these same jobs. And to me, they hold the responsibility of not being out there and building their network. You have city councils who are comfortable with each other and often with each other is older white males. So you're even leaving out some of that younger generation. And then as a lot of us in the ELGL and and folks listening probably, those of us who are in it day to day as senior management analysts or department heads, it's up to us to advocate, when we're doing a hiring that the interview panel should represent the organization and represent the community. It shouldn't necessarily be everybody from that department. It shouldn't be people who have been there fifteen years. It should be a wide range, of diversity. Those are some of the smaller steps, I think, as just employees of a local government that we can take and start to ingrain in our organizations. And, yes, I realize that's easier said than done, but I do feel like there is that movement brewing for people wanting to have that small part of making sure that their organizations are addressing the future needs of their workforce.
What you're saying there, really resonates with me. I know, in fact, even on kind of the technology side, there's been a struggle to have, participants that are, representative of the communities we're trying to serve. And it sounds like that is the kind of the similar sort of struggle that you're seeing there on the government side as well. And I think that trying to accomplish that really only seeks to do something that is eminently positive. And related to your path, I noticed you you've been accruing some experience in analyst type roles now in three different cities, including Richmond, Virginia, Salem, Oregon,
and Tigard, Oregon. And I'd be curious to hear, as you've gone along your path there, what has surprised you the most and what has surprised you the least about your service? Yeah. You're right. I've been in in been in that analyst role, and I I it is good from the respect that, or from the point that you get a wide range of experience of projects. And I I would say the surprising thing and and probably not surprising for a lot of the listeners is just how far we are behind in in embracing new technologies. I knew when I worked in Salem, which that was probably 2008, 2009, time frame. When I started there, they were still using WordPerfect, and they were going through a big transition to get folks onto Microsoft Word. And that was there was a lot of pushback in simply doing that. So I I've been, I guess, a little bit discouraged in the lack of progress that I've seen in the ability, for local government to embrace those new technologies that are out there. And, yes, I think a lot of of what the areas for improvement as government start with ourselves, but it also starts with recognizing there's tools out there. There's people out there, that can do it better than we can, and whether that's bringing an open data platform to your organization, whether that's bringing a civic engagement tool to your organization. These, in a lot of times, are not expensive tools that are out there, and really begging to be used. You know, it's similar to we deal a lot with executive recruiters in the ELJL and trying to connect our members to that next, step in their career. And with that, there seems to be kind of this wall that we put up on, well, we can't get too close in talking to those recruiters or that might spoil the process. And I feel like we have the same, mentality when it comes to working with folks outside our organization, whether that's vendors, contractors, groups that are out there offering a product. Just because you're talking to somebody somebody doesn't mean you have to use it. We as government are scared to even look at it because that might give off the wrong impression. So I think a lot of that comes down to just building connections and not being fearful in building those connections.
Nice. In in a vein similar to, connections, as you mentioned, something else I noticed doing a little background is that a former colleague of yours had some really incredible things to say about their experience of being mentored by you. In your experience, what qualities make for a good mentorship, like what was what clearly happened there?
Time. I've seen this in organizations that I've been at. Everybody wants to have an intern or a fellow, but when it comes time to actually, having real substantial work for that person to do, we don't always step up and say, oh, yeah. I have a project for this person. This is him or her. And I think it's really unfortunate because I I know I've been in meetings weekly where people say that, yeah, I can't do this because I'm too busy, or we have to put this off until later because we don't have the resources. Well, we have great resources, younger people that are willing to work for basically free for six months to a year and not putting them to work and do giving them some something substantial. And to put specific on that, the last couple interns that that I've worked with, you know, we had them working on a basically taking over and working the task force for the homeless that we were doing. They worked on some of our local option levy communications. So not just filing in the corner, they were part of the organization, part of that, matters about where they're sitting. They're sitting near the city manager's office, so they kinda see that informal communication. But, you know, if we don't care about these people that we're bringing into our organization, they're gonna find a different career path, and I've seen that happen. So I personally don't wanna see that experience, with folks that I work with. And I know when I did my internships, I started off with a internship for the Bank of America, but I thought I wanted to be in the banking world. And that six months was probably the worst experience of my life. And I'm sure the the profession is great, but the people that I was reporting to didn't provide a fulfilling experience. So I try to carry that into local government and and making sure that we're doing the best we can, with the folks that are coming to our organization.
It's it's really great to hear you, describe it that way. I know on, on some prior iterations of this program, we've had folks come on and talk a bit about how important, like, that employee experience is in trying to keep, people around in your organization. And it sounds like you've put a lot of energy into trying to create that positive environment, to keep folks of value around you. Shifting gears a little bit, I wanna ask you a question that, I brought up during the, voices of summit. This is one of the interview questions because I'm I'm very curious to hear your perspective. So it's an open ended type thing. Okay. But what does the term civic tech mean to you?
Yeah. I love that question. I know we talked about it, on the gov love podcast too. I think, unfortunately, it's it's starting to become a buzzword in local government circles. But simply what I think it should be or what I would hope it would be, from a broader perspective is just the the willingness for governments to look out there and see how they can make, the processes or what they're doing more efficient. You know, you have great examples from the city of Cincinnati who was at the ELGL eighteen conference in Golden with Lee Tammy and, you know, using technology and data to take on, you know, some of the biggest issues that we face as a society, whether it's the heroin, epidemic, homelessness, and then to smaller issues, you know, I think that people relate to more, in the local government realm is, you know, can we use civic civic tech to do a better job snowplowing and letting folks know where our snowplows are going and why we have street priorities? But I think civic tech, right now in local government has a pretty basic meaning of just trying to improve of trying to look to technology, and that may be stuff that we already have that maybe our IT department putting together maps, that pull that can pull out how much a household will pay extra from a local option levy. I think that's where a lot of our small and medium sized cities, I think that's where they are. Some of your larger cities, like a Cincinnati, but you also have, like, the city of San Rafael, California with Rebecca Woodbury doing incredible things. So for local government, I think it's a wide ranging definition. But I think it's the the key for us in folk in folks who are trying to get this more integrated in our daily work is to point out those examples, those successes that are easy to not easy, but are able to be had. And that's like I said, a lot of people go back to a snowplowing example or just being able to see their budget, their open data their open data of their budget online. So it's an interesting question, and it's one I'll probably steal and use with our, future GovLab guests because I think you'll get a wide range of responses.
Oh, I I agree wholeheartedly. That was something I noticed, going around to your crowd as well is everyone has their own kind of little twist on what that very simple set of words means. So I'll definitely be curious as I listen in on gov love to, hear what folks have to say about that. Now since you bring up Cincinnati, and as you know, civic tech chat is a hard hitting journalistic endeavor. So I I have to ask you about something a bit unfortunate. I was kinda looking through, your Twitter account there, and I noticed that back in March, you tweeted an apology to your stomach just before trying a bit of Skyline chili. So I have to ask, on a scale of nine to 10, how much shame do you feel about that tweet?
Oh, probably, I'm probably an eight. I mean, I think Skyline Chili, and I know we're gonna have a heated disagreement on this. I think that is a, a trick, a joke, prank that Cincinnati is trying to play on all of us. I don't I don't get it. I don't see the need for the noodles. I'm good with the chili. I think the noodles may be a a bit much. If I'm Cincinnati, if I'm Ohio, I'm looking for something else to maybe stake my claim to as opposed to Skyline chili. So I apologize if that's gonna end this interview, but, I do have very strong opinions about Skyline chili. And as you mentioned, as does my stomach.
Well, your your strong opinions are a part of the reason why we wanted to have you on here. So I guess, we'll we'll continue. Perhaps next time, we'll we'll have to have you try it without the noodles. Maybe that is a bit of a barrier.
I like it.
Okay. So on that serious note, I'd like to go ahead and, move topics here and talk to you a little bit about your organization, engaging local government leaders or ELGL. As a base question to start us off, what inspired you to, found that organization?
So this kinda goes back a little bit to my why and some of my early answers. My wife and I relocated from Virginia to Oregon ten years ago. She had a job. I didn't. I spent six months trying to find one and sat through, countless informational interviews that led to very little, really didn't even provide connections. And then cert once I started work in local government in Oregon, really became abundantly clear that we're not talking to each other as local governments. I can't call or it's difficult for me to call Lake Oswego or Tualatin and try to get information that, a citizen could walk up to the counter and get just as easy. So why don't why doesn't a person, in the city manager's office have connections with these other departments from public works, community development? What I do in my day job is not I don't spend eight hours a day talking to other senior man management analysts. I'm talking to all other departments. And I those connections didn't exist. So we started ELGL as a Port Portland area organization with 16 members, who met for lunch each month, and really expanded rapidly from developing a a blog, our Twitter account, our Facebook feed, to now we have, roughly 4,000 members pretty much every state. And we've really coalesced now around this mission of engaging the brightest minds in local government. And I think our our core tenants really highlight what we're trying to do, and one of those is just provide timely relevant real content. And we do that through our Gov Love podcast, which we had you on. We've had Lee Tammy from Cincinnati on. We've had Sam from the city of Syracuse on, and letting folks know this is what's being done out there. And then the equity and inclusion piece is also very important to us, because as I stated earlier, we're we're not gonna have the best workforce we can have unless we're addressing and embracing, all of these different groups. So and I think the one that may stick out or the area of ELGL that may stick out to your listeners is myself and our three board members recently, committed to one of our pillars is just encouraging joy in public service. I think right now, especially in a federal level, it's sometimes difficult to to have joy in what we do, to have a passion, to show a passion. We do this at ELGL a number of ways, one through our city hall selfie day. So I would encourage, your listeners to participate every August 15. This is the third year in a row we've had city hall selfie day, and that's just simply local government professionals. Sometimes it's state, government professionals just taking pictures, selfies outside their office building. And I think, you may, if you're listening to, think that's a pretty small thing, but if I would encourage you to go back and look at the the last two years and the, the sheer joy that people have, from sharing that, experience and showing people where they work. And it not on the joy side, but beyond the kind of just being a realist and and letting people know the struggles that we deal with. You know, at ELGO, we also take on tough issues. Like, we had one of our members just this week write about mental mental illness. Really raw about his struggles, with mental illness and how that impacted his career in local government. So ELJO really is a wide ranging, organization, and I wouldn't say we're a cheerleader for government. We, realize that there is are good things being done, but also that there's a lot of room for change in local government.
Nice. Oh, since you mentioned the, the city hall selfie day, could you one more time, tell us the date just to make sure everybody in the audience has it? And, is there a, a hashtag or anything we should use if we wanna kinda be a part of the collective
collection of photos there? Yeah. I I appreciate that. City hall selfie day is August 15, 2018. The hashtag is hashtag city hall selfie. We do give out awards for the best selfie. Last year, we actually had, probably one of our highlights is the the cast of Law and Order did a, selfie from the New York City, City Hall. So we welcome everybody, everybody to participate. I believe last year, we had over 250, entries from different city halls across the country.
Oh, that's really cool. I mean, who wouldn't want their selfie to be put up next to the cast of law and order there? Exactly. Exactly. Alright. So I'm gonna ask you to make a hard choice here involving e l g l. So you're gonna wanna mentally prepare yourself. Okay. Who is your favorite ELGL board member and why?
Oh, that is brutal. I love them all. So we have a right now, we just have four four people on the Yale board, one including myself. So, and Ben Kittleson really was with us from the start. And going back to the issue of mentoring and and bringing people into local government, He's one of our proudest, proudest members because he we he started working with us when he was a MPA student at the city of port or a a Portland State University, and now is out working for the city of Durham, just doing incredible stuff, including, leading some of their initiatives with data, and getting the public involved, working with Josh Edwards who, some of your listeners may know. So would encourage your folks to check out what's the the city of Durham is doing in that realm. But also Stacey Stacey Swigart, who is our Ohio representative and, unfortunately slash fortunately, she was the one who introduced me to Skyline Chili. So you guys you would have a lot of connections there. But she's been she's brought a whole new perspective to ELGL from the communication side, and also helping us professionalize the association. And then Dan with Route County, Colorado, who is the deputy county manager out there. And he's really helped us to grow us by, finding partnerships and sponsorships for for ELGL, and that's really one of the main reasons we've been able to grow as fast as we have. So as you may or may not noticed, I just went ahead and and talked about each one of those members, because they're they're like my kids. I I can't possibly pick a favorite.
Nice. I like how you kind of alluded to their being a favorite, but then methodically praised all of them. That was, some pretty savvy
answering right there. I I figured if I talked fast enough, you couldn't cut me off, and I would just get in all three names there.
Well, that that definitely worked. The the other thing I'm getting the impression of is I'm clearly going to have to have a panel discussion episode focused on Skyline so we can we can sort this issue out. I'll, I'll just send you an invite when I put that together.
I just I would ask you when I was in Skyline, Stacy put rolled out the red carpet for me, but when I was asking the people who work there, why isn't this in other states? They were like, well, we tried this in Michigan, and and Michigan didn't want it. So why do other states not embrace Skyline Chili? To me, that's that's that's fishy a little bit, but they're not into it as much as as Ohio people. Well, now, Florida has it. Although, I'll I'll grant you it's probably mostly because everybody who retires in Ohio moves to Florida. I even have to work right out of my mouth on that.
Yeah. It's probably more that it's just the Ohio part of Florida.
Yeah.
That's great. So we talked about this a bit earlier when we were talking, more focused on you. But, you mentioned earlier the, diversity dashboard as an ELGL project. Was there anything more that you'd like to, delve into that, that perhaps we haven't covered already?
The main thing I would say is is when the data comes out, I I I would like people out there listening to push their states, their state organizations, whether it's local government officials, whether that's state government. Push them on what they're doing. You know, when we present at conferences, on the dashboard, there's the 13% initiative. And, yes, for the for your listeners, I I am a 40 year old white male, speaking about this, but, I am pretty passionate about it. When you when we present at these conferences on the topic, I really encourage people to ask, what specifically are your organizations doing to advance diversity and inclusion? There's a lot of organizations out there, a lot of them charging somewhat high level of, or have a high cost involved. So at the very least, they should be meeting your needs and your desires to see a more diverse workforce. And if they're not, I think that question is is a good way to start a dialogue on what are we doing and what are we gonna do moving forward. Personally, I'm tired of attending sessions on this topic. I think a lot of times, it's just to pat ourselves on the back and then we move forward like it never happened. It's time for that to stop. It's great if we wanna have sessions highlighting what other cities are doing and have done, but we need to stop talking in these these general terms, and we need to start doing something about it.
Nice. I I like the way you ended that answer because as you're talking, what I was sensing from you is you're kind of into that sentiment of perhaps we need a little less talking and more doing. And, so I think you have the perfect closer there. Another, ELGL project that came up, actually, in our conversation, before we hit the record button here was, you started describing to me a, portal that you were looking to put together to assist local leaders in the acquisition process with something that I think you described as a Yelp like functionality as far as, like, letting folks know what vendors are are have given them a positive experience and and the like.
Could you, talk a bit about your vision for that and what that might look like? Definitely. So it's called ELGO Connect, and I hope those who are listening turn the radio up or or turn their earbuds up for this because I think I think you can really help us in what we're trying to do. You know, we've having having two kids and having shopped plenty, I think I've I've been on Amazon a bunch, and you read the reviews about your experience with this product or somebody else's experience with that product. And we have vendors who talk about their experience with Citi, then it's awful to work with this person. It's really difficult to work with this city. But we've never looked at it from the other lens of the city standpoint. We deal with, in my work in the city of Tigard, I think we have probably over 200 active contracts. There's not right now a single place that I can go as a senior management analyst for the city of Tigard. If my boss asked me, can you please go find, the vendor that would best suit our needs to redesign our website? If I was tasked with that, project right now, I'd be searching on the web. I'd contact a couple folks I know. What we're doing at ELGL is creating a one stop shopping portal that you can go on. It's live right now. It has over 250 listings. We break it down, by the different areas that people are these companies are working in, including Civic Tech. We have over 70 listings in that area, and we have some subcategories. And so one, we're trying to build out who's listed. We wanna list everybody out there. There's no barrier to entry. We will we will put any company's name on there. And then our members will go through, members and nonmembers will have the ability to review their experience with a certain company. We have some of that on there right now. That's the part we're really trying to build out is are those reviews of how was your experience with this company? How was your experience with that? One of the things short of that is we wanna make it easier for us as local government professionals to be able to actually get a bid or a quote from a company. I know I have sat through many demos before, and then when it comes to what's the cost involved, there's a lot of hemming and hauling and, well, it depends on this and that. We're developing listings where we'll either have that information right on there of how much it would cost an organization, or we'll have that contact information of who you can contact to get a real estimate cost a real cost estimate on the price of using this service. So I hope that, your folks listening will will contact, me either e via email or Twitter because it really is something that we're trying to build up this next year, and and I believe ELDL is uniquely suited to do it because, we are completely independent. We don't have any big organization or big company funding us. It's literally membership dues and some sponsorships to our conference. So we don't have a dog in the fight, but we do wanna help our members make educated decisions on who the best vendor or contractor is to work with on a project.
That sounds like a remarkable resource. And I have to admit, the civic tech, like, part of my brain has this very, strong tingling sensation hearing you describe it. And, I have to ask them, if there are folks out there, in our audience, which, as you know, consists of a lot of, civic technologists, and they wanna pitch in and give you a hand with this project. Is there any way for them to do so? And if so, how should they go about trying to get involved?
Yes. Please, contact me, either via Twitter or my email, which we can put up on this on this blog post or we can put that out there. There's a lot of there's a lot more to do. Right now, I think we need more companies, and I strongly believe that there's probably some better we can probably have more functionality of this tool, with the help of some people who have more experience. We've worked with Proud City who's revamping our website, but also trying to help us build out this tool. But, we really know we know there's some areas that need improvement, so I would welcome the opportunity to talk to folks out there who, who can take a look at it on our website and and give us feedback. And if you have time to help, that would be even better.
Excellent. And, in our, episode description here, folks, we'll have the, the Twitter handle and, was it email address was the other thing you mentioned? Yeah. Either one is great. Okay. Well, we'll place both of those in the, description so folks can reach out, with their offers to volunteer.
Thank you.
Alright. Okay. Cool. That is that section. Alright. So now I would like to, go ahead and, talk a bit about the podcast specifically, Gov Love, which is one that I think is a pretty awesome one in its own right. Could you introduce our audience to it and, tell them a little bit about it and most importantly, why they should tune in?
Sure. It's I I think we can both agree between Gov Love and Civic Tech Chat. These are the top two podcasts out there, on iTunes. I'll let your listeners rank them quietly. But GovLab is but GovLab has been around for, probably four or five years now. We actually started off partnering with SeeClickFix, for the first year or so, and then they they went their separate way. We went ours, and continued to develop the gov lab podcast. So we're really all about highlighting peep highlighting the peoples the people, policies, and the profession of local government. And there's also, some other things kinda thrown in there. For example, Malcolm Gladwell was a guest on the podcast last year. One of our members went actually went to high school and college with him, interviewed for him in the podcast. We all recently had an NFL player, Connor Barwin, who has played for the Philadelphia Eagles and the LA Rams. He's, incredibly involved in the community of Philadelphia building parks in underprivileged areas, but his dad is the city manager of the city of Sarasota, Florida. So we had both of them on the podcast, about their work and, you know, kind of trying to make the comparison or seeing if there was any comparison between the NFL and government. So those are two episodes I would point out to kinda highlight what we're about, in the podcast. And we've had, everybody from MPA students to mayors on our podcast. The mayor of Richmond, Virginia was on there about a year ago. So we wanna take on the things that are interesting. That's why I think it was great to have have you on the podcast or record that episode a few weeks ago because, it go it goes back to that knowledge and just connecting our folks with who's out there, and how they can use that to improve their careers.
Nice. And so in in relation to the fact that we are the top two podcasts on iTunes, one thing that is very serious about that and amazing is that GovLab is a very well loved podcast. I believe when I last checked on iTunes, it has a rating of five stars, which is no easy feat. So I have to ask you, what's your secret? I'm definitely not gonna steal it when you tell me.
You can. You can steal our secret. We do encourage, our folks to leave five star reviews. We'll do giveaways. So if you leave five star review, we have the new and exclusive ELGL 18 socks that we may send you. We'll also give you the opportunity to, give input on future guests of the GovLab Podcast. And it's really something we do try to plug, obviously, partially for our own benefit, but also for our guests. I mean, these guests, we obviously don't pay them. They're taking time out of their their careers, their day jobs. And, the more people who leave those reviews, the more the podcast gets out there. So that's been really helpful. And we do use Twitter a lot to publicize Govlov, and that's along with doing it on the podcast, giving away things on Twitter for folks who leave five star reviews, has been another way to be, be helpful in getting the word out there. But, to your kind of point, it is difficult. People aren't always thinking about leaving reviews, but it is amazing how, how big of a difference that can be can make and something that I certainly try to do for the podcast I, listen to.
Awesome. Now, when I last checked, the, podcast was up to I think it was a 178 episodes. Does does that sound accurate to you? Yes. Correct. Now that that's quite a bit of content. Now if someone was, like, just starting out, they just pop over there in their podcast app, and they're ready to get started. Are there, like, one or two episodes you would say are, like, the ones they should listen to first?
Sure. I'm biased. So we do have a rotating cast of, people who host the podcast, but the episodes that that I've done, and I'll fall back on this one, Lee Tammy from the city of Cincinnati in talking about, civic tech and data, but also being a at the time, I think a 29 year old female in a pretty prominent position in the city is something we also touched on and, was really powerful and went, along with, with our emphasis on diversity and inclusion and kinda breaking down those barriers and and telling people's story about how they got there and and realizing that it wasn't all easy. And, our guests are usually pretty willing to be honest, to be open and honest about what they've experienced in getting to their to that point in their career. And then the second one I would highlight, we interviewed a, Aaron Rouse, who is a candidate for the city of Virginia Beach City Council, who, is a former former NFL player also, played for Virginia Tech in college. And the reason we focused on him is he he started from he was basically born into the projects, lived his whole life in the projects, had a had a for his first kid, I think, when he was 18, 19 years old, but made a commitment to raising that kid in the right way. And since he ended his NFL career, he's really went on to do incredible work in the in the Virginia Beach community, and now he's running for city council. And those are two stories that stick with me and and are ones that I I would point your listeners to.
Nice. And I I've noticed that there's kind of a pattern there of engagement with, former NFL players who are very civically minded. Would you say that Gov Love is the favorite podcast of that particular demographic?
I think, yeah, it's been voted unanimously to nothing amongst that demographic. But, you know, it it is interesting because I NFL players are often stereotyped, and I would be lying if I didn't sometimes stereotype what I think a a typical NFL player is. But, you know, some of the both of these stories, I came across my Google alerts, of of them running or them participating in these, in the Philadelphia playgrounds. And, it really is pretty cool to see what former NFL players are doing to use that name and recognition they have. You know? Like any profession, we all have some that don't go on to do the best work, but, they definitely are are are two shining examples for the NFL at this point.
Absolutely. It's it's always inspiring to see folks, trying to use, like, whatever their particular superpower is, whatever platform they have to, be them their best self. Definitely inspiring to see that. Now recently, I've had some folks start to ask me for advice about starting their own podcast. Like, I had a couple conversations and summit to that end. But given your success with GovLove, I'd like to go ahead and just pawn that off on you if you don't mind. What would you tell someone who's just starting out?
No. I love I love that question, and we, ELGO have been getting that question more. And I love that people are asking because it, in my mind, it, it is pretty easy. I would say time is your biggest, your biggest resource that you would have to use and just desire to dig in on a topic. We we learned a lot by trial and error, so I'm sure if you went back to episode eight, it probably wouldn't be as great as some of our latest ones. But, I think it's important for your listeners who might be considering that to realize there's there's not a large financial commitment to it. And I think it's a great way to interview and get to meet people that you just are curious about. That's the perspective that I use when I look for for guests to book. So, you know, there's definitely ways you can upgrade your podcast or have some of the equipment that might help some with the sound, but we're pretty bare bones, on the GovLab podcast in terms of money that we spend on equipment. So it's really hour and a half, two hours total with the interview being an hour and then the other half hour to hour being just prep time on figuring out questions that that you wanna learn. And I would encourage anybody to to to have a Twitter feed or Facebook to push your information out there about the podcast even if you're not totally comfortable in social media. That's the way I at least I find out a lot about podcasts, that are out there. So I would I would simply encourage you to do it. There's people, like both of us, I'm sure, more than more than willing to help, but to get that out there and there there are a lot of areas that need to be addressed. And, you know, the tip that I would have for guests and having conversations with people is to make them to make the conversation as specific as possible. Our listeners really wanna know how they can take my or my conversation with Ryan and use that in in their job. What can they learn from my conversation with Ryan that they can take back and say to their manager or implement themselves, in their organization. That's really what folks are looking for, at least the kind of the gov love crowd that we've we hear from.
I'm really glad I, passed that question to you because that that was an excellent answer. And, I think folks that are interested in that have a lot of notes to take. They they may even wanna go ahead and go back and relisten to that part. There's a lot of wisdom there. And related to that, what would you say has been your favorite thing about being a podcast host, and what would you say has been your least favorite thing?
The easiest, that that's, the ease or the my favorite that that's the easy part. I interviewed brand Brandon Babb from, Anchorage and Sam from City of Syracuse probably a year ago, about what they're doing with open data, Code for America. Both of those organizations are leading the way. And the rewarding part was the interview, but also afterwards, I believe it was Brandon who followed up with me about an email that he had received from another somebody who had heard the podcast and wanted to know how they could do this in their organization. And it was something pretty simple and something that Brandon definitely could help with, but that really is at the core of why we do these podcasts. It's it really is. We want people to learn, from these superstars out there. So just to see that, you know, kinda warms my heart a little bit in a in a, I guess, a cheesy way, but, really was powerful and something that I think about. Sometimes when, you know, time is of the essence and there's other things you can be doing and debating on whether to interview somebody or not, it's always good to keep in mind that there there are people out there listening, and they really are getting value out of it. To change a whole another level, my least favorite memory, or challenging was interviewing the the mayor of Nashville at the time, mayor Berry. This was probably two months before, she was removed from office for a whole host of indiscretions that were not known at the time. The podcast that episode is still up and live on, on GovLab, but it was really, one, the interview was challenging because I chalked it more up to interviewing mayors. Sometimes they're difficult. They're not always as forthcoming as other folks. And then looking back on it, when stuff started to come out about she had basically misused funds, state funds with somebody she was having, an affair with. Really looking back on that episode, and and it just felt very uncomfortable, kind of sense that maybe she was hiding something. We've had people I've had people contact me that want me to take the episode down. They want me to write a big diatribe about why this was a horrible episode and why she's a horrible person. I don't believe in any of that. I I disagree on all accounts. And one of the things the positives of that interview was she had a son who passed away, from an opioid overdose a couple years ago. So it did give her a platform another platform to talk about that, and I know that part did connect with some listeners. But, you know, to the overall negative, you never know what's gonna happen to some of these folks six months down the road, a year from down the road on, their careers. So that's always kind of, touch and go, and, that experience especially definitely sticks out in my mind.
Wow. I I can definitely understand why. It sounds like you've had to go through a pretty heavy bit of consideration, after the fact, weighing kind of the, I guess, the pros and cons of platform and then, like, how that person's viewed afterwards and how that reflects upon the the podcast.
Yeah. I mean, it's these are these are point in time interviews. I I guess I understand what people are saying. I I guess I don't actually understand why we should remove a podcast from somebody who did what she did. I think it does give insight to the person. Like I said, there was some good that she's done and probably will continue to do, but, it it wasn't an endorsement of she's the greatest person ever, but, you know, it just highlighted her career to that point and, had no desire to to remove that from our our listings.
Yeah. I I definitely hear you there. I I I think and and while while perhaps what we do isn't exactly a a journalistic pursuit despite what I said earlier in our conversation Mhmm. You end up at times close to those fringes. And when you do something like that, you know, you're gonna talk to people that aren't always gonna make the best decisions. And I don't think it's particularly fair then to, I guess, impose their actions upon, you know, a conversation that happened in the past. So I I I think I can definitely grok what you're what you're, expressing there. Right. Still, on the topic of podcast, perhaps on a a bit of a lighter note, do you have any podcast recommendations you might give, to our audience out there as far as ones that, you enjoy?
I do. Pardon my take is a sports slash comedy podcast. It somehow actually ranks ahead of us, in the iTunes charts, but I'm sure we'll fix that. But, that one is kind of an inspiration for me and and how I like to do podcasting with trying to throw in kinda like you've done today, throw in some semi serious questions, kinda get people a little bit off the normal talking points. And they it's mainly a sports podcast, but they'll also have some some people in other realms there. The David Axelrod podcast, the Axe Files is one, probably one of the first podcasts I started to listen to mainly because I think his first or second guest was Mitt Romney, and it was shortly after, after the election. And I really welcome podcasts that have both sides of the equation on or both sides, of a debate on, and David Axelrod's done a good job, with that. So those are the two podcasts that well, the third one obviously being civic tech chat. Those are the ones that I really when something when a new episode pops up, I get really excited about.
Awesome. Those sound like some pretty fantastic recommendations. In particular, I I think I'm gonna go try to hunt down that that Axelrod Romney conversation. That just seems like that would be a particularly intriguing thing to listen to, especially if it was, shortly after the election as you as you described.
Yep.
Alright. So one of the things I like to do with the program, of course, is to, give the guests the the last word, the the last chance to kind of leave us with the thought they'd like to. So in that vein, are there any concluding thoughts you'd like to leave us with?
Sure. I thanks for thank you for this opportunity, and I I love the, I've been on a couple of podcasts before, but I love the the realm of questions that you've had today, and I hope it's been good for your for your listeners. I'll put in a little bit of a shameless plug, to anybody and everybody out there. I hope you'll join us at e in the ELG on what we're trying to do. We really are trying to appeal to everybody in the realm, in our mission of trying to engage the brightest minds in local government. And whether that's you whether you join as an official member or you just participate, in our online conversation and dialogue on Twitter or Facebook group, or listen to our podcast, We really are trying to increase our reach of of, our members and also who is hearing from us. So I think, whether it's the vendor directory that we talked about earlier, that's definitely one area, where your expertise, probably trumps ours, very in in a large, large way. So we'd welcome that, that those comments. If you're willing to volunteer and help with that, I'd appreciate that too. And I'll hammer in hammer home again, as my last comment, just the piece about diversity and inclusion in our organizations. We've read the articles. We've read the studies. Please go back to your organizations and see what they're doing and see how you can help, in making them making them get out of their comfort zone, and develop these develop an organization, that better represents our community out there. Do it for my eight year old, Eleanor, my six year old, Josephine, who hopefully will be listening to this podcast. Do it for them. Make their careers easier when they get to that point where they're judged more on what they know, and less on on who they are as a as a gender.
After that, I I don't know who out there could could say no. So definitely, folks out there in the audience, please go go support ELGL. Give the gov love podcast to listen and be involved in that community and and its projects. It is definitely doing some things that are helping the public good, which is, of course, our shared mission here at Civic Tech Chat. And, Kent, I wanna thank you so much for, taking the time out of your day to come talk to us and kinda help us build bridges between, couple of communities of people. And, hopefully, that's something we'll continue to do as we go along here.
So before you kick me off, I I do have one proposal for you. I would like this to become a reoccurring, reoccurring episode. Every year, I think we should get together and kinda touch base on, progress we made, progress we haven't made, progress we can help each other with. You know, I think these dialogues between different groups who who do somewhat have similar missions, it would be great to have you as a as a reoccurring guest every year on ELGO's gov love. So if you can give us that insight into the, civic tech community and what we're missing or what we can be involved in, and then vice versa. I think that would be be a great next step, for us, and hopefully our listeners have enjoyed, these two interviews that we've had.
That that sounds like an amazing idea. There is a ton of alignment in what both you and I are trying to do as well as what I imagine our audiences out there want to have happen in the world. So I I agree wholeheartedly. Let's let's keep this thing going.
Right on.
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