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June 25, 2024 • 26 mins

Jennifer Chapman, President of the National Association of Government Web Professionals NAGW) shares how she fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing among her organization's member community.

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(00:00):
From Esri, this is Engagement Matters, a show about people whose work depends on engaging

(00:10):
with stakeholders to make meaningful change.
No matter how you define your community, you can learn from the experts we talk to as they
share their stories about motivating groups of people to care about issues and take action.
On today's show, we'll talk with Jennifer Chapman, the president of the National Association

(00:31):
of Government Webmasters, or NAGW for short, as she talks about fostering collaboration
and knowledge sharing across her member community.
So first of all, Madam President, thank you for joining us.
I know you're busy and you've got all kinds of international issues to attend to, so we
really appreciate the time today.
Well, thank you, Nick.

(00:52):
I'm excited to be here.
Unfortunately, I'm not in an Oval Office today.
I'm in a rectangular space, but that'll be our secret.
At an undisclosed location, I'm sure.
Exactly.
So before we get into what NAGW is and all the work that you do there, can you talk a
little bit about how you got into collaboration, and web, and social media, and all this stuff?

(01:17):
Sure.
So I guess it's not maybe a traditional route, but I studied journalism in college and post-graduating,
I worked at local newspapers.
I'm originally from Michigan, so Go Blue.
I have to plug that.
But I moved down to Georgia a few years ago and continued working with local newspapers.

(01:42):
Loved writing, loved talking with people, loved sharing stories.
And so I transitioned over to local government after a few years when I saw a position open
up at a local municipality that I actually covered as a newspaper reporter.
And they were hiring a Community Relations Staff Assistant, I think my title was, many

(02:07):
years ago.
And so I took that position in which at the time, when I remember getting hired, I thought,
"What is this?"
"What am I going to be doing?"
Because it's kind of a broad title, right?
And so really, I was very fortunate in the fact that I got to kind of make it my own.

(02:27):
I still got to do some writing.
I still was out in the community, meeting people, attending different events, sharing
the city's story.
And so after a few years, I got a promotion to being the Digital Communications Manager.
And so we started social media back at that time.

(02:49):
This is probably around 2014.
And took over some responsibilities from our Webmaster, that was her title back in those
days.
She was retiring.
So I kind of transitioned this role into the digital space.
So I was able to take all of that knowledge from being out in the community and doing

(03:11):
things with our residents and businesses and become a storyteller and tell those stories
of those people from the city's perspective.
So using social media and newsletters and the city website to share how great it is
to live, work, do business within the City of Johns Creek, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

(03:35):
I've been there now 13 years.
And I've held a variety of different roles and have worked on so many different projects.
And one thing that has come from that is being a part of the National Association of Government
Web Professionals or NAGW, as we affectionately call it.
My predecessor, Sue, the former Webmaster, she was a big supporter of NAGW and she sung

(04:00):
its praises that it was a great community to be involved with.
And so I continued on being a member after she left.
A lot of us find our way to our current careers through not the traditional kind of, oh, I'm
six years old and I wake up one morning and I'm like, oh, I want to manage websites for
governments when I get to be an adult.
So I think it's cool how you kind of meandered your way up to where you are.

(04:23):
So for those that are listening that don't know what NAGW is, can you kind of give a
little bit of a background on who NAGW is, how they started, what their goals are?
Well, I guess it's really what your goals are since you're the president now.
No, not just me.
There's a couple hundred other members who have a big impact on what we do.

(04:45):
But we are a professional organization made up of city, county, state, a few federal entities
as well, who work in all things web and digital spaces.
We are everybody from a web editor to a content management system manager to communications

(05:07):
professionals.
Really if you touch the web or a digital space in any kind of a way and you work in local
government or state government, county, et cetera, you're welcome to be a member.
We have been around a little over 20 years and we have members from all across the country,

(05:27):
which really kind of makes us a little bit special because I can talk to somebody who
has a similar problem that's in California.
And obviously I'm on the East Coast, but it's really focused on being a collaborative environment
for those of us in government.

(05:48):
We all kind of share a lot of the same projects, a lot of the same problems, and it's great
to engage with one another to try and solve those problems or bounce ideas off of one
another.
One thing that's really also kind of special about our group is, you know, 20 years ago,

(06:09):
websites and the web in general, so different.
And during that time, there were a lot of folks who were sitting there in their basement
coding, right, making their municipal websites that obviously has evolved and changed over
the last several years.

(06:30):
And like I mentioned, we not only just have those folks who do know how to code, but we
also have communications folks who come from the PR world and they are part of our group.
They provide and everybody provides really great feedback and collaboration with each

(06:54):
other no matter what type of actual title that you hold.
But yeah, we have a lot of fun too.
So we're a good bunch.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
I mean, you know, being I'm a little bit biased, I have been to one of your conferences, the
one in Salt Lake City, and it was really cool to experience just how the level of camaraderie,

(07:17):
you know, with the group that you have.
I mean, sometimes you go to conferences and it's hard to connect with people and sometimes
you still get a lot out of it.
You know, you get a lot of technical experience, but you guys I've found are really, really
good at just being able to meet the people that you've been talking to online and sharing
ideas with and like, okay, let's go have a beer afterwards, you know, and talk through

(07:40):
this crazy problem that we're dealing with.
That's what we really pride ourselves on is some of the intimate conversations and friendships
that we're able to make from our group.
I'm a part of a few other organizations and they're fantastic and I've been to their conferences
and they're awesome.
And like you said, you can take away a lot from these types of events and groups, but

(08:04):
ours uniquely has this vibe that we're able to walk away feeling like you genuinely made
a friend.
And I do, I have friendships based all around the country now.
And I can't even tell you how we do that in a weird way because it's just, I think it's

(08:26):
the great group of people that we have and that they genuinely love what they do and
they genuinely care about making experiences, making quality experiences for the public
that they serve and the communities that they serve.
That's the goal in our jobs is to collaborate with our communities.

(08:48):
And so in turn, they want to collaborate with each other and that's very showing in our
group.
Yeah.
So is that kind of what motivated you to go from being a member to the Southeast director
to president eventually, that value that you were seeing and all the stuff you were getting
on collaboration and networking?

(09:08):
Was that the reason or was it just that you're power hungry?
Because I know you personally and I know that's absolutely not the case.
Maybe a little.
No, as I mentioned, I had taken on the role at the city and I didn't know a whole lot

(09:29):
about web development and design and experiences.
And so I looked at NAGW as not only a resource, but an opportunity to continue learning.
That's why I love what I do each day.
That's why I love being a part of this group.
I am constantly learning new ways of doing things, new platforms, new technologies.

(09:54):
I love learning.
I'm a nerd, but I love it.
So that really kind of drove me my interest to be on the board, at least.
I thought to myself, well, you know, I looked at the experience of some of the other board
members and I thought, wow, okay, these people know what they're talking about.
Perhaps if I join, I can learn a thing or two from them and bring it back to my regular

(10:16):
day job and maybe I'm able to implement something really cool for the city.
So that kind of drove that aspect.
And I loved being on the board for a handful of years.
It's a great group of people.
And it just kind of happened that I became the president.

(10:37):
I'm not sure if it was sort of by default or they just really liked me.
It's hard not to, you know, right?
I'm just kidding.
But it's true.
It's true.
Yeah.
I'm a fun person.
You are.
Right.
So but no, it's been great.
I'm completely honored to hold this position.

(10:59):
And I'd be remiss not to mention our immediate past president, Jason, who had the very daunting
task of leading our group through COVID in that period of time, which was which was rough.
So he did an excellent job.
And I have big shoes to fill on that.
I think that's something interesting that we should dig into a little bit more.

(11:21):
It's just the different ways that you guys have engaged over the past and how you're
continually evolving.
It's one thing to say, like, yep, we do engagement at our city or county or company or whatever.
And everybody collaborates, like check.
It's done.
But you guys do all this different engaging and collaboration among your members pretty

(11:42):
continuously throughout the year and in a bunch of different ways.
So it's almost like the pick your own adventure kind of thing.
Can you kind of talk a little bit about that?
Sure.
We engage with our membership in all kinds of different ways, from small things, your
everyday social media posts to providing tips and tricks and different tools and links to

(12:03):
various scholarly articles about things related to technology or web to trying to hone in
on a great LinkedIn presence, for example, and really try to engage with our members
and potential members.
We use something that's a little outdated, but our membership loves it.

(12:27):
And it's a listserv.
Yes.
But it's it literally brings a smile to my face when I get the email notification every
day at four o'clock that somebody has posted in there and I can't wait to read about it.
And I think it's actually a great point to talk about because here your social media

(12:48):
channels in these groups with other organizations, they get bogged down with all kinds of topics
and questions and posts.
And this is a breath of fresh air that you get one email per day if you subscribe to
the Digest.
But you get one email that shows all of the different conversations that may have happened

(13:08):
that day or that week.
And it's just one place and it's not overwhelming.
And then you see that, you know, Steven was talking with Leslie and, oh, okay, great.
They solved this problem together.
And I love that.
It's probably one of my favorites.
And I know it's our membership's favorite as well.
And we also revitalized our newsletter this year.

(13:29):
When I took over being president, one of the things I really wanted to do is bring back
our monthly newsletter.
And so I've tried to put a fun spin on that each month and include a wide variety of information
and tools for our membership to use.
We have consistently done monthly webinars for our membership, and that could be done

(13:51):
by different vendors or different content management systems to different third party
providers who might assist with accessibility needs for your website or for different areas
along that lines.
One other thing that we have started this year was the creation of a fireside chat.

(14:12):
It actually stemmed from a couple of our members who have spoken at our annual conference.
Shout out to Lauren and Chris, who came up with the idea.
And that's another thing that I love.
Our membership, they tell us what they want and they provide suggestions.
Again, that collaboration.
And so they did our first fireside chat this year and they spoke about their website redesign

(14:36):
project and they spent about 15-20 minutes giving the highlights.
And then the rest of the time was an interactive piece with fellow members online and able
to ask questions.
Another one of our members just did a fireside chat about intranets, which was fantastic.
Great collaboration and engagement between our members on that.

(15:00):
So many people are going through the same thing.
They're, okay, I need to build this intranet.
How can I do this?
Oh, you did that?
Great.
I'm going to take a little piece of that and I'm going to bring that back to my team.
So it's been a big hit.
We love it.
And we've got several more planned.
Then from the bigger side of things that we do, we have an annual conference, which like

(15:22):
everybody else, we had to cancel both the 2020 and 2021 conference.
We were able to come back in 2022.
However, our particular organization saw a big drop in membership.
During the pandemic, we had a large number of people retire and get laid off.

(15:43):
We saw that across the board, even with some of our sponsors and the vendors that we work
with.
So we're in recovery mode and we are working our way back up to be able to hold another
in-person conference because we lost about a quarter or so of members during that time.
I mean, it definitely was not easy.

(16:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And sort of to try to put on an annual conference with that number just wasn't going to feasibly
work last year.
So we are looking to come back next year in 2025 location, et cetera, to be determined.
But yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's interesting that you guys are so collaborative because a lot of

(16:26):
professional organizations, it's very top down.
There's engagement and collaboration in big quotes that it's like, yes, we're sending
information to you.
But you guys at NAGW and under your leadership and the past president's leadership, it seems
like you're very focused on creating as much value as possible.
So you mentioned keeping the listserv going for the diehards like us, updating the newsletters,

(16:51):
but not getting rid of them, monthly webinars, the fireside chats, the conference.
But my understanding is that you also have very task specific kind of subgroups or even
working groups specifically around evolving or emerging issues and trends.
Yes.
One thing that we recently started was due to the Department of Justice, a recent ruling

(17:14):
on accessibility for government that will include a lot of changes for municipalities
and county governments, state governments.
Basically everything from a PDF to a third party provider, you will have to ensure that

(17:34):
those items are accessible to those who may be hearing impaired or visually impaired.
And so it's a big undertaking and the ruling is dozens of pages long.
And so trying to read through that, trying to navigate all of those different rules and

(17:54):
regulations that we're going to have to come in compliance with, it's tough.
We all have our regular jobs every day that we're trying to stay afloat with.
And so this added new initiative, our members have raised their hands and said, help, what
do we do?
How am I going to handle making sure that all of these PDFs on our site are accessible?

(18:20):
Or how am I going to handle the contract language with this third party provider?
And so we decided to come up with a working group comprised of our very own members and
put the call out.
I had about a dozen folks respond and they're just regular members from all across the country.

(18:41):
And we've had a couple of meetings so far.
Most of us at least are in the very beginning stages of understanding this ruling.
We're starting to create the timelines and the planning aspect of, okay, how are we going
to attack this to ensure compliance?
And so it's been fantastic.
It's a great way for not only our members to interact and engage with each other, but

(19:06):
they're also problem solving, right?
I mean, that's what we're here for.
And sharing ideas.
I mean, for example, I had Lynn from California say, hey, I started a really brief, rough
draft outline of my timeline.
I'm happy to share it.
And I'm thinking, okay, Lynn, I'm going to steal that because.
Right.

(19:27):
Yeah, totally.
It's time to start.
Right.
And so while her needs may be a little different over in California than they are here in Georgia
or municipality versus municipality, but bottom line is she's got something started.
And I'm so thankful to her to share that with me.
And I'm sure I could call up a neighboring city and say, hey, what do you have going

(19:49):
on?
We've built such a great rapport with one another within the NAGW community that
it's like calling up a friend.
I'm just trying to think when I used to work in government, state, county, local, I can't
really picture.
And this is no knock against the people I used to work with, but I can't picture getting
a group of 10 or 12 people together that voluntarily want to talk about the Department of Justice

(20:13):
accessibility rulings.
Correct.
I mean, number one, let's face it, it's not the sexiest of topics.
But also, I mean, that's not something that comes first to mind.
Right.
And I think it's not because people don't recognize the value.
I mean, they obviously do.
You know, accessibility is important.
It's more about like who wants to go through a 50 page legal ruling?

(20:35):
No, I would rather just have somebody else tell me like, hey, we already looked through
this and here's what you need to know.
Yeah.
Like digest it for me.
And if I'm a member of NAGW, no plug intended here, then that's already happening.
Exactly.
And that's what that's what we're doing with coming up with a plan of how to share this

(20:56):
with the rest of the membership.
So it's not just for our working group.
It's for the other couple hundred members so that they can see, oh, here's the working
group set this up for me.
Okay, great.
I can go into the NAGW site and I can pull all these resources that I need in order to
become compliant or to at least to help people on the road to compliance.

(21:18):
Right.
Yeah.
And so I really like that because it's collaboration with a purpose.
It's not just we're a group of people that like to talk to each other and we're all highly
motivated.
It's we've got a goal.
Let's get together.
Let's get this thing done.
And then let's make sure that there's impact that's made after the fact.
It's collaboration for the purpose of engagement to make things better.

(21:41):
It's not just a working group and a subcommittee.
And, you know, I know how you politicians are.
You like your subcommittees all the time.
But you know, yes, it's not that you're really doing these things for a purpose, which I
think also kind of brings up not to kind of circle back to something we already talked
about, but the conference that you have, regardless of whether or not you're doing those in person,

(22:05):
you still had the Pinnacle Awards.
Right.
Which I think are extremely valuable.
I mean, yes, everybody likes to get an award if they're really good at something, but it's
a recognition for a purpose.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
No, the Pinnacle Awards are definitely one of the cornerstone pieces of the organization,

(22:27):
too.
You're recognized by those people that are your peers in this industry.
Not based on popularity.
It's based on merit and the quality of the work that's happening and how well it's leading
the way in terms of thought leadership.
I just I want to make sure that that's very clear.
It's not just, oh, I really like Jennifer because she's awesome, you know, and I want

(22:49):
her to get the Pinnacle Award.
It's...
Well, I'm sure there's a little bit of that because...
Right.
...they get it.
But...
Right.
No, all kidding aside, I think that, yes, the hard work that these folks put in, like
I said earlier, with the drive to engage with our communities is so evident in the products

(23:13):
that are showcased in the Pinnacle Awards, whether it's a city website or a site that
helps domestic abuse survivors.
So the Pinnacle Awards are recognizing the best of the web and digital spaces within
our membership and also non-members as well.

(23:36):
They can apply.
And what it really does is highlight the impact that people are making on their communities.
You can have a standard cookie cutter government website built with a standard cookie cutter
CMS.
But what I think our membership does, and it's proven within the entries year after

(23:58):
year is that they're showing that, okay, I can build this site, but look at the impact that
it's making because of the different components of engagement that they're learning within
NAGW and then extending that out into their work, which then extends out into the communities
that they serve.

(24:19):
They're leading an effort to make things better.
And from personal experience, I recently went through a website redesign process for our
city, and it wasn't just about, okay, we need a new design and maybe some new colors and
that sort of thing.
And maybe we'll reorganize some content and clearly clean things up.

(24:41):
But it was, how can I make this easier for people to understand?
How can I make it better for residents, for businesses, for somebody who wants to move
to our city or maybe move their business there?
I'm trying to think of everybody in all different kinds of audiences.

(25:04):
And that's what we do within our membership, right?
We're thinking of everybody.
How can we best serve everyone?
And I think by doing that, we extend it out into our membership as well.
If we collaborate together, how can you collaborate with your communities?
It's not just, okay, I'm just a member of an organization, so I can slap this on my resume.

(25:28):
They willingly engage and collaborate with each other all the time, not just for self-enrichment,
but not even just for problem solving, because they see the value in what we do and how we
do it.
And then they extend that out into their work, which then goes out into the community.
That was Jennifer Chapman, the president of the National Association of Government Webmasters,

(25:52):
or NAGW, sharing how she fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing across her member community.
To learn more about NAGW, visit nagw.org.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a colleague.
And don't forget to check out the other podcasts from Esri, including "Field Notes" and "Reinventing
Planning".

(26:15):
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