Here’s a quick video screencast I made with some tips on navigating Columbia Tomorrow. If you want to see some of the features we’ve built into the site, take two minutes and give this video a whirl. (more…)

If you couldn’t make it to last night’s panel discussion on the future of Columbia, worry not — but stay tuned. Highlights from the event will appear on this site next week.

Meanwhile, you can read an overview of the event from today’s Missourian.

Thanks to our panelists and audience members, we had a great discussion. I hope it’s one of many on the subject.

Few things have a larger and less obvious impact on your day-to-day life than growth and development. Your trek to work or school each day, the character of your neighborhood, the quality of the air you breathe — these are just some of the elements in which our decisions about growth play a giant factor.

Join us on Thursday, April 16th, for a conversation about how Columbia works, and what the city will look like tomorrow. Mayor Darwin Hindman, Boone County Commissioner Karen Miller, Planning and Zoning Commissioner Jeff Barrow, and Planning Dept. Director Tim Teddy will discuss growth and development in our city and take audience questions on the subject. The conversation will take place in the Fred W. Smith Forum, on the 2nd floor of the Reynolds Journalism Institute (see map below). The event will begin at 6:30 p.m., and is free to the public. (more…)

What: A discussion about growth and development in Columbia, Mo.

When: Thursday, April 16, 2009

Where: Reynolds Journalism Institute, U of M campus, across the street from Noodles & Co. on 9th St.

Who: Anyone who’s passionate about the future of Columbia.

How much: Free.

We are creating a completely different type of news site to cover the subject of growth and development in Columbia, Mo. Most news sites focus on the latest — the news. That’s important to us, and you’ll find the latest news reflected all over our site. But we aim to bring you something even more important as well — the context.

This site was created by a team of students working with the Reynolds Journalism Institute, in partnership with the Columbia Missourian and KOMU. During the process of creating this site, we digested hundreds and hundreds of pages of news articles about growth and development in Columbia. We conducted extensive interviews with many key stakeholders on the subject. Now we’ve distilled all that information into several key topics reflecting the issues and questions that come up time and time again in news headlines, City Council meetings and neighborhood get-togethers.

Our goal is to make it easy and enjoyable for you to get up to speed on all the changes happening in your city, and just as easy to follow issues as they advance over time. We also want to provide a place for you to discuss the growth-and-development issues that affect your life. So please enjoy the site. And please tell us how we’re doing.

Thanks for reading.

After an early morning meeting about blogging today, Watchword readers can expect to see some changes around here. The most important change I hope to see is for this to be more of a community discussion. What do you want to see on this blog? What issues do you care about? What’s going to spark discussion? The Missourian Public Lifers are writing this for you, so tell us what you want! We promise to listen.

On that note, I’d like to start a weekly feature at The Watchword that lists the city’s meetings for each week, but I’m not sure if it would be helpful to people. So the post below is a little bit of a test. What would make a feature like this helpful to you?