Call for Presenters

At the 2004 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Community Involvement Conference and Training, to be held in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado, we plan to explore experiences and opportunities for “going the extra mile in meeting community needs.” We hope to challenge presenters and participants to explore how EPA’s public education, partnership and community involvement initiatives can meet both the needs of communities and environmental programs.

We invite you to submit a presentation proposal for the 2004 conference to share your own stories and experiences in meeting community needs through public participation, outreach and education. Tell us about meeting community needs by sharing your knowledge and expertise, presenting a successful approach, telling a story, overcoming challenges, or describing an innovative solution. Consider joining with your federal, state, local or tribal partners to submit a presentation proposal, either for a 90-minute session or for a four- or eight-hour training session. Please refer to the Proposal Evaluation Criteria for more details when developing your proposal. Proposals must be received by Friday, December 19, 2003.

Please share this Call for Presenters with your colleagues and public involvement professionals within EPA, government agencies at all levels, universities, citizen groups, not-for-profit entities, and other organizations. We want to hear from as many people as possible about their approach for going the extra mile.

Presentation Types

In the mile-high city of Denver, we hope to hear original, interesting, engaging and dynamic presentations. We ask you to be creative in designing and preparing your presentation so that it is interactive and enriches others in public participation, public accessibility to information, partnerships, education and outreach, or community involvement. Consider submitting a proposal to:

• Discuss community involvement challenges and ways to respond to these challenges.
• Share results, pitfalls, successes, and lessons learned about projects.
• Provide hands-on examples and tools.
• Facilitate an interactive discussion about a hot issue or opportunity.
• Encourage participants to share their experiences and exchange ideas on a particular issue, challenge, trend, or opportunity.
• Invite and assemble a panel of field personnel and/or community members to share their experiences and ideas.
• Educate and train your peers on a particular skill in community involvement, public outreach, or education.
• Explore new environmental and information technologies.
• Visit a site or host a field trip to show how public participation has impacted the community or to showcase an innovative environmental project that involves the community.

Session Topics

As a presenter, we are looking to you to share your thoughts about meeting community needs within your specific area of expertise. This includes a wide variety of issues and topics related to programs and activities planned and implemented by EPA and its federal, state, local and tribal partners. For example, consider, but do not limit yourself, to a presentation that focuses on:

• Encouraging and integrating public input into environmental decisions.
• Involving the public as stakeholders and partners in environmental issues and decisions.
• Public education and outreach efforts and initiatives.
• Outreach and public participation programs that reach across cultural and ethnic groups or that address environmental justice or tribal issues.
• Collaboration between regulatory agencies for inter- and intra-agency efforts or for multi-media initiatives.
• Building networks for outreach and public participation.
• Establishing and maintaining public–private partnerships for outreach, education and community involvement.
• Community involvement or public outreach/education tools, technologies, approaches or activities.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of community involvement or public outreach/education projects and changing the projects in response to evaluation results.
• Hot issues or current trends in environmental community involvement, public education/outreach and information access.

Proposal Evaluation Criteria

We are looking for presentations that are interactive, engaging, insightful and informative, and that draw on your expertise in public education and outreach, partnerships, and community involvement. Proposals must be submitted in writing and conform to the application instructions. Proposals will be evaluated on all of the following criteria:

• The proposal is well-written and the goals are clearly specified and achievable for the length of the session.
• The proposed presentation is interactive and engages the audience.
• The proposed topic contributes to EPA’s commitment to finding ways to foster and encourage community involvement, partnerships, outreach, and/or education.
• The proposed topic tackles emerging community involvement/outreach challenges or addresses current challenges in an innovative way.

For training proposals, one additional criterion will be used:

• The proposed topic and presentation will enhance the skills of participants and/or provide participants with useful tools.

What You Need to Know About the Presentation Proposals

Session Length: Conference sessions are 90 minutes in length. Training sessions are either four- or eight-hours and are held only on Thursday afternoon, June 17, through Friday morning, June 18.

Registration: All presenters and co-presenters must register for the conference. All non-EPA speakers are responsible for paying the registration fee, which is used to pay for conference refreshments. The conference fee is discounted for presenters (typically half of the registration fee).

Travel Reimbursement: Environmental Management Support, Inc. (EMS), EPA’s conference planning contractor, has limited funding available to reimburse the travel-related expenses for no more than two expert speakers for each presentation (non-federal government presenters only). These expert speakers must arrange and pay for all their travel-related expenses up front and will be reimbursed for expenses after the conference. If you are requesting travel reimbursement for yourself or other co-presenters, complete the appropriate section of the application form. EMS will determine which speakers will be reimbursed. These individuals will be notified by April 1, 2004.

Audio-Visual Equipment: Presenters are expected to use a computer and LCD projector to show all of their presentation materials. Computers with PowerPoint viewer software (or other needed software) and LCD projectors will be provided for all presentations. If needed and requested by April 16, 2004, support will be provided to presenters to convert their materials to the PowerPoint format. If additional equipment is needed, please note your equipment request on the application form. All final electronic presentation materials must be submitted by May 21, 2004.

How to Submit Proposals:

We ask that you submit your proposal application by e-mail, either in WordPerfect or Microsoft Word. A WordPerfect or Microsoft Word file containing the proposal questions is provided at the top of the page. Or you can contact our conference coordinator, Environmental Management Support, by e-mail at ciconference@emsus.com or by phone at 301-589-5318. You also can complete an on-line version of this application form.

CI Conference Coordinator
Environmental Management Support, Inc.
8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: 301-589-5318
Fax: 301-589-8487
E-mail: ciconference@emsus.com