Episode 12 – Tools for Modern Governance with Joseph Porcelli

In this episode of Oh, hi! Stories Podcast, I sit down with Joseph Porcelli, Head of Government and Crisis Response at Nextdoor, for a timely and candid conversation about trust, transparency, and the evolving role of neighborhood networks in civic life.

Joseph and I go way back—and so does our shared belief that connection builds stronger communities. We explore how the new Nextdoor app is helping cities deliver real-time alerts, support local journalism, and surface trusted recommendations with the help of AI.

But this isn’t just about tech. It’s about the humans behind the handles—and what it really takes to meet people where they are. We talk about what local government can learn from customer experience, how to use polls and inbox access to democratize feedback, and why explaining the “why” behind public decisions matters more than ever.

Joseph brings decades of insight from the front lines, from emergency evacuations to neighborhood debates, and reminds us that digital trust starts with real communication. If you care about public engagement, modern govtech, or helping residents feel seen, heard, and included, this episode’s for you.

Stay updated on Nextdoor's latest product updates and news at https://blog.nextdoor.com/

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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

Oh, hi! Stories Podcast - Joseph Porcelli
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Dana Berchman: [00:00:00] welcome. I'm so happy to have you as my guest. You know, I might be one of the number one fans of Nextdoor uh, in, in the,

In the world.

I would say I was trying to remember when we first crossed paths. I think it was about 11 years ago. Um.

Joseph Porcelli: Sounds about right. 

Dana Berchman: , When I was working in Gilbert and I remember meeting you and I remember discovering Nextdoor first of all, and thinking what in the world, why would more local governments and city organizations not be using this tool to engage with people when it's free?

You know, their verified residents, you can go directly into their inbox. I just thought it was the greatest thing ever, and I remember meeting you and here we are. Over a decade later, and you're still doing this great work and so happy to have you as my guest. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): Thanks for having me, neighbor. I really appreciate the invitation, and I'm honored to be on your podcast. 

Dana Berchman: I know we should jump right in and let our listeners know that if they don't know [00:01:00] Nextdoor or they think it's only a place where you complain about, a cat that you don't know or fireworks going off, that's really not the case. And especially now, I know you guys have just rolled out literally last week.

A new app and it has a quite a few new features. So talk to me a little bit about that. And then I'd love to back up and talk specifically about your journey with Nextdoor and what you've experienced over time and where you see this headed. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): Yeah we've made some really exciting enhancements to the platform. There's three components to it alerts. we've included news publishers now, and we also have. Faves powered by ai. So when you think about all the things that are happening in different communities and you think about government communicators, there's only so much capacity to put every little thing out. Um,

Dana berchman (2): Mm-hmm.

Joseph Porcelli (2): the other hand wants no what just happened? Why is that smoke billowing off in the distance? Is that a wildfire? Is it something else? I [00:02:00] don't know. And so alerts uses the power of technology to bring together weather alerts, power outage, information, safety updates from different sources, and share that into the newsfeed.

So if you want to know what's happening in your community you can turn to Nextdoor ~to hear,~ to see those alerts, to hear from your neighbors, and to get that factual authoritative information from public agencies as well, and so we've rounded out the content that's available just to make it more useful and more complete, and that's really exciting, especially having been here for a long time.

We've constantly listened to what neighbors and public agencies are looking for and how we can be helpful. And as a longtime employee, I'm really proud of this new release. I think it provides a great ecosystem of information to help make more informed decisions. And then playing into that. News publishers now there's over 3,500 publications on the platform. And journalists are professionals [00:03:00] whose job it is to tell stories and keep people informed. So it's another layer of information. And, maybe a city may not, have capacity to write something or may just be outside of their purview, but the local journalist is gonna tell that story. And it's just, i'll be honest, I stopped watching TV news years ago, local news. But on Nextdoor I see it like 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): I'm ~concerned,~ consuming more TV produced news and from different newspapers than I ever have. and what's really neat about this is we've done it in such a way that it works for Nextdoor, it works for neighbors, and it works for the publishers.

We drive traffic back to publisher's websites. It drives more engagement on Nextdoor. And I find I have a much better sense of what's going on, which I appreciate knowing because we're all really busy, right? And there's all these different demands on our time now in this app. I can find out, what's happening from lots of different perspectives. Then 

Dana berchman (2): Yeah. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): it comes to faves, we've got 14 years of data and we're using ai. So when I search, where's the best place to get a bagel? Wally's is gonna come up. And there's so many people that [00:04:00] have loved it over time. Proximity builds trust and. On next door, hearing from your neighbors really matters, right?

And having all that data available to quickly find something and you, you may have seen, Hey, where do I get this? Instead of having to ask all your neighbors, you've got it. You just do the searching. You've got all that information. So I think that's a better o overall user experience for folks. It's more efficient and you just get lots of trusted data that way. 

Dana berchman (2): Yeah, absolutely. I love it. There's so many things that you said that I, can really tack onto. One thing in particular is I remember when I started my time in Gilbert, Arizona as the Chief digital Officer. One of the main questions we were asking residents was, what do you wanna know more about?

And one of the key things they said was, I don't know where to find information about our local football team who want, did they were, did they, were they play well? Were they in the state championship? I don't know where to find this information. And a lot of times with the newspapers now, even behind paywalls, you can't.

Find that information [00:05:00] easily. People aren't getting newspapers in their driveway anymore. And so where does that information live? And I always talk about this, I think it's so key. It doesn't mean that people don't care. They don't, it's not that they don't want that information. They don't know where to find it.

~And so I've always argued, since I became,~ and I remember when you contacted me or we had the first interaction, you were like, you guys have more users on this platform than any large size city in the country. And I said. Yeah, because the average resident age, even though we had 250,000 people living there, the average resident age was 32, and I knew they were using Nextdoor.

I knew they were using the app. When you have people coming to you and commenting on Facebook, you don't know that they're verified residents. You don't know that they live in your community. But on Nextdoor you do. And so this was always a tool that we could use to customize information, at least from the city side, whether it was emergency or not.

And I'm also a big proponent of not engaging with your residents only when something goes wrong, which is another reason I love all of these examples you've just given, is positive ways that [00:06:00] residents and government can interact with each other and get information, and you give them a tool to do that. And you can customize it to certain areas of your city. And I just always, even when I talk to other cities now, I still tell them, you gotta use nextdoor. To get feedback too. If you wanna know what your residents think about something, not just one way information about ~push,~ pushing out alerts or road closures or whatever that might look like.

But if you wanna engage with them, you know they live there, you know how to get them easily. You can get an. A response from them over a weekend, for free. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): That's right. 

Dana berchman (2): is a free tool, and so I love this. I love how all of these integrations and the new changes that you guys are making, I think you're exactly right.

I think of the way that I use other apps, ~right? How I. ~You're consolidating this. When I go to a city, I wanna know food. Food. You hit me with the bagel. That's all I need to know. So you are figuring out how to do that, and I think you're also amplifying other people's messages, [00:07:00] which is something critical that Nextdoor does, right. They take either the city side message or the journalist now who's trying to tell a story and figuring out how to get that information into more people's hands. So I love it. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): That's right. One thing I'll add too from a Govtech perspective is we've just also announced that public agencies can see. These alerts that are going out from these different sources, so they can add context. Maybe the situation changes, maybe a journalist got something incorrect and they have the ability to see and also weigh in, which I think is really helpful.

So a. are getting more information and the ecosystem can participate, government PIOs, social media managers can see all those things that are going out and participate as well. And I think that's really critical and we've always heard from public agencies we'd really like to be able to see what other people are posting.

In our jurisdiction, if you're a town or the county post or maybe the 

Dana berchman (2): Mm-hmm.

Joseph Porcelli (2): Posts something and now you get that information, right? 

It [00:08:00] helps make more informed updates, communications helps keep everybody on the same page.

Dana berchman (2): Yeah. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): I always, I tell people, next door's an important tool in your toolbox to help you reach lots of residents in specific places. And now I'm adding and see what other agencies from within and outside your organization and other. ~You know, ~sources of information are publishing, so you have more of a complete 360 view now, so you can, in terms of that narrative, make sure the city's perspective is represented in an accurate way. 

Dana berchman (2): Yeah, I love that we use the platform all the time for our police department and. 

What was so funny is I remember putting content there early on, like video and we'd get 20,000 views on a video on Nextdoor, and our content did just as well on that platform as it did on others. And people were always.

Kind Of surprised by that. And again, back to that idea of pushing the information, but then also from a survey perspective, getting [00:09:00] feedback. We helped, we use Nextdoor to help name our city park. ~Um, went in, give, give me three, you know,~ you really want. To go where your residents are. I always say meet them where they are.

Go to their inbox.

Joseph Porcelli (2): right.

Dana berchman (2): best way, unless you're gonna wait for them to come to You and sign up for your city newsletter, is to go to them in your, their inbox through Nextdoor, right? And I used to always really encourage. Other people I talked to, but we used it and I can't tell you how many times we would need information quickly, like feedback on something.

We've gotten feedback on an issue related to scooters, to over a weekend using Nextdoor to give a data story back to inform our mayor and council on a policy decision that they were about to make and what they thought the residents wanted. Was not what the feedback said on Nextdoor that we got.

And I remember I said, can you just give me a long weekend and I can quickly and easily use Nextdoor and our, and put it out on other social media channels as well.

Joseph Porcelli (2): Of

Dana berchman (2): But back to this idea that ~and I think~ from a resident's perspective, [00:10:00] they're trusting that source too. And so they're more likely to engage with it and actually take the time to answer a survey or answer a few questions.

And cities, this is what. If any people are, listen, they need to understand, you just said it, people are busy and they're not gonna take the time. They want to give you that feedback. They want this information, they wanna engage in their neighborhoods. They want to be active.

Joseph Porcelli (2): them two days notice and ask 'em to show up at 7:00 PM weigh in on something they don't fully understand. But you've got

Dana berchman (2): Right?

Joseph Porcelli (2): I, you know.

Dana berchman (2): Right.

Joseph Porcelli (2): When you talk about what we call polls on the platform, in a way they democratize engagement. 'cause there's always those loudest voices at the community meetings, right?

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): be a diligent facilitator, you gotta have your time cop your tangent table. Everybody's got a chance to give input. But here it's a, I think it's a less. Let's be honest, nobody in the history of time has ever woken up and nudged their partner and be like, guess what, boo.

I get to go to a community meeting tonight. That's just not the case.

Dana berchman (2): Amen. Trust me, I had to go to them for 12 [00:11:00] years and it was, you know, not my by choice. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): From my time years ago working for Boston Police I often joke that I'm a recovering community building. I have post community meeting stress disorder, 

Dana berchman (2): Yes, 

Joseph Porcelli (2): but I think the 

Dana berchman (2): me too.

Joseph Porcelli (2): And coming back to my point here. It's easy and comfortable to give input and to weigh in here. And when you post a poll and you get, there's aggregate do you support this? Do you not support this? Or how would you like to, which name would you like to use for our park?

Like the example you gave, you can get, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred, 200, 300 input points and people can comment on that and you can, I think it, bringing engagement to people where they are, whether it's in their inbox on the app, or how, on the web, however they wanna use the platform, just democratizes that.

I think it makes it accessible and it's another important data point beyond those loudest voices. 

Dana berchman (2): Absolutely. I remember. To when we first started using [00:12:00] it from a polling perspective. There was a lot of pushback internally in the city about we use a national citizen survey and it's statistically valid and we spend, hundreds of thousands of dollars to, 

Joseph Porcelli (2): right. 

Dana berchman (2): and how do you conduct this survey?

Oh, well, by mail-in, by phone and, oh, that's it. And how many people answer this survey? Oh our sample size is like 250. I'm like 250 people out of. 250,000. I could get thousands of people to answer a poll over a weekend using Nextdoor. And although it might not be as statistically valid, I can guarantee you it's more closer to the average age, the resident that again, isn't likely to probably check their mail and fill out a full length long, long survey.

Um. Exactly. And so I'm not quite sure, again, to my point, why, more people don't, and some of it is that getting rid of the old ways of always, we've always done it this way, we've always surveyed this way. Really thinking of a, as this, ~of a tool,~ an [00:13:00] informational tool like you said,

Joseph Porcelli (2): Mm-hmm.

Dana berchman (2): this trust building, relationship building tool

Joseph Porcelli (2): Mm-hmm.

Dana berchman (2): Two-way. Conversations we asked, we heard you, and here's What we did about it. I'm always talking about that. Go back and then tell them. Don't just survey them, then go back on nextdoor and tell them what you did. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): What decision was made? How was this input weighed? What else was considered? That's really about building trust, right? People don't trust the process. We look at the Edelman Trust barometer for government. It's not doing so hot right now. 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): the more you explain the process, the more you. people there's a strategy I think about and it's respect people's intellect and care out loud. Two strategies, right? Respect people's intellect. Tell them what's happening, ~right?~ Tell them what the process looks like and how things are gonna be weighed as we, we spoke about. And then carrying out loud is closing that loop.

Hey, just wanna thank you all for giving input. We use your input plus these other sources and here's the decision we made and here's why. If you have questions about that, let me know. You repeat that process, people are like, oh my gosh. Wow, that felt respectful. [00:14:00] Like I don't feel like I was just strong armed.

Which I think a lot of people feel. They also, there's apathy from past experiences that weren't so great. So, you know, it's really about how you use the platform and the spirit of it. And what I see is, people, communicators that think of Nextdoor as a customer service engagement platform, not so much a public affairs air game platform. People wanna know like. Why wasn't my trash picked up? If you're gonna block my road, I wanna know that I can't get down it so I can plan around that. Being those sort of thoughtful about things that people care about, interruptions, disruptions, construction, things that are impact their health or their wellbeing, that kind of stuff, taxes, all those kinds of things with thoughtful, timely targeted, geo-targeted communications.

You can be really successful on next door. 

Dana berchman (2): I love that ~I. W ~we use this tool, and this is another great point that you're making. You don't have to flood all of your social media channels with a road project that's impacting one [00:15:00] small particular area in your city.

Joseph Porcelli (2): Yep. 

Dana berchman (2): You Can talk directly, like you said, geotarget, that neighborhood, that area with the information that's customized, it impacts them. We had. A major road closure project, and we have a major parade every year, and we would go into those specific neighborhoods and target those with messaging around the closures in their area. But not everyone that follows us on Instagram and Facebook is gonna care about something that's, ~s ~specific to that neighborhood.

I can, think of another example. We had some flooding here, and I think that cities should think about this a lot with, natural disasters or emergency situations where we needed to tell people where to pick up sandbags. We had to go into these neighborhoods and target them specifically because not everyone's going to the same place.

What better tool to do that than using Nextdoor? So I'm a huge proponent in that, in using it that way. ~So what are I. ~

Joseph Porcelli (2): ~I was just gonna say,~ can we go a little tactical there for a second 

Dana berchman (2): Yeah. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): some things I think that's really important that people need to know. First of all we have an alert feature and our alert feature [00:16:00] isn't, is. Super powerful. There are four different post types alerts are one of 'em.

So there's a regular post, an alert event, and a poll. We've talked about the polls so far and we've talked about regular posts. An alert bypasses our algorithm, it puts that post at the very top of the feed. So public agency alerts, it creates a push notification on our app. It sends out an immediate email. So if you've got a piece of information your community needs to know right now, whether it's the entire city or an evacuation zone or a flood zone, whatever it is, a particular neighborhood, you're gonna want to use that alert post type. And then secondly. I would love to see more of more cities give us their evacuation zones, their flood zones, whatever that is, especially after, what we saw happen in LA this year, that's crucial. so people need to know that they live in an evacuation zone, which zone it is. They need to know where to go and you're gonna want to get ahead of that. So you're, [00:17:00] we've talked about geotargeting on Nextdoor, and we've referenced targeting specific neighborhoods, but these custom areas. Evacuation flood zones, e PZ zones, if they have a nuclear facility in the jurisdiction are all really super powerful tools. ~Um,~ especially, you know, we, we think about the increase in severity and volume of disasters right now, you gotta protect your community. You gotta protect the economy. You gotta protect life and property. And leveraging those custom areas and alerts on Nextdoor are really crucial. And then also coming back to the ability to see underneath where the post types are, it, it defaults to posts from my agency. You have four other post types. I'll give you a link to include that goes into detail so people can read on this. But you can also now use Nextdoor for that situational awareness from, what's being posted on the platform, what are journalists talking about it. So you're getting the information out there and you also have. More visual into what's actually being communicated can be really powerful during a crisis. 

Dana berchman (2): I love [00:18:00] that. That's amazing. 

You mentioned government trust, obviously being at an all time low right now, which is why I think that tools like this and the work, city work is so important and. Defining for residents why their local government is so essential to their lives is so critical. Tell me what those conversations are on the nextdoor side as you're serving people, understanding that you're trying to encourage cities to use your platform more, but knowing, ~um,~ that they're running up against this level of distress that they've never seen before from residents and citizens.

How do you navigate that and what are those conversations you have on your side? 

Joseph Porcelli (2): I think it's about playing the long game. It's about explaining the process. It's about involving people. Taking the time to explain we've touched on this already, like why did we get to this decision? What information was communicated? What is our role? What is the state's role? What is federal role? People generally don't understand that, 

We I wanna relate this to like a community [00:19:00] meeting. lot of folks are always trying to get people to community meetings, but the number of people who can go. fairly limited. People don't want to go. They may have a second job. They may have, something, a commitment with their kids or their family or 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): I don't know.

Maybe they're 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): at that point, and that's their weekly running time and nobody cuts 

Dana berchman (2): dinner. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): know. 

Dana berchman (2): Yeah. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): Yeah. There you go. So I think it's a, I think it's. It's about getting ahead of investing in explaining, let's talk about when we fill out a pothole we've got capacity to fill out.

I'm just gonna make this up. A thousand potholes a year, right? We've got a certain budget for this. And just taking the time, again, respecting people's inte elect right out loud explaining why closing that loop. I also, frankly, think. To go a little deeper here. A lot of PIOs and government communicators have been very focused on the brand, the visual aspect of the brand. The colors, the grammar, the this and the that. [00:20:00] But at the end of the day, it's not how it looks. It's how people feel. Do they felt heard? They understand like if I submit, like a pothole, if I just call a number, I have no way of that, was it ever closed?

So I think there's some like good technology tools out there and apps that help build that trust by closing that loop and explaining where it is. It's think of it as your Amazon practice, your Amazon purchase. I can see it's en 

Dana berchman (2): I. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): I can see it's delayed. I don't like that it's delayed, but at least they told me.

I'm not wondering where that thing is. So I think the same kind of applies for government and government communication. I mentioned this before, the customer service aspect, ~I,~ I think we're leaning too heavily on the public affairs side and not enough on the customer service and our digital and our social communications. And I think that's across the board. And it's hard because there's pressures from city managers, council members, all that stuff to look good. But is it good? Is it working? Is there a breakdown? Great. Acknowledge it. And I get that's complicated like this. I could, if you're just tuning in, you'd be like, wow, this guy's [00:21:00] naive. True. Like true, not that I'm naive, but true that like it's a reality they have to deal with. But that's where getting ahead of it, explaining, closing that loop really comes into play and I think is valuable. 

Dana berchman (2): I could not agree with you more, and I think it is ~so true and so critical. I'm reminded of a logo project that I got stuck with for our hundredth year birthday, and I kept saying it's a logo. This is not about a logo and. Another piece that you mentioned that I think is so interesting and critical and ~so true about branding, right. You can have the greatest brand, you can have the greatest logo. If you don't understand who your residents are and what they want from you, or how to communicate with them or message appropriately, meet them where they are it's doesn't matter. And the truth is, like you said, what people care about is that they're, toilets flush, their trash gets picked up, they know where to pay their utility bill. And some of those services are, very thankless and I think people don't realize that's your government at work for you. And so it's important that we remind people of that. But you made another point that I think is so interesting and critical.

One of the things that we did in Gilbert that's very different than other cities is. I brought the 3 1 1 system [00:22:00] underneath me. And all of those touch points, like our open data portal, the website, managing social media, and all of that together, because all of those were insights that collectively could help me to better understand the resident. And a lot of times these projects get lost in IT departments in cities or the larger the city gets the most. Siloed. These things get and I think That's a real problem if you don't know, like you said, the number of potholes, the streetlight outages that are coming through your 3 1 1 system, and that, that's the number one concern of your residents.

And also taking that data to go through your budget process and request the staff that you need to service those amount of problems and you aren't thinking that way ~then. Then,~ and I think most cities aren't, unfortunately. And I love that you made this point specifically because ~when~ back to the 3 1 1 example, when something goes wrong, people use 3 1 1 non-emergency to report an issue. And we were trying to get people to positively engage with us. So we did a holiday lights map [00:23:00] where you could tag yourself on the system, and we gave out prizes at the end of the week. So you can think about, ~yeah,~ using these tools in a positive way to engage people, build that relationship. And then when the crisis comes, like you talked about, and that alert, they're there.

They're already there, right. They trust you, they know who you are, and it just makes. Your life so much easier. And everyone's life's so easy to communicate, but you make a great point. And I think that so many cities are still, like you said, focused on the wrong things also aren't correctly designed to understand true resident and civic external engagement, and how that should all be coordinated together to truly give you the sense of what your residents really want. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): ~There's~ there's this great sort of, it's used as a business framework, but it's called job theory. Job theory basically says that. Organizations or businesses that help people make progress towards the problems they wanna [00:24:00] solve are the ones that do better, right? Hey, buy this thing that's, you just want me to buy your thing. But hey, if you buy this thing, Joseph, you can paint the edge of your trim much better, which means there'll be less splattering and less cursing on your part, and then your family will be happy. a problem I need to solve. ~I~ 

Dana berchman (2): Yes. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): ~thing is, but it's a.~ It's a difference in how you're communicating and why, and that's, focused on the customer experience.

And I think that's really, just to come back to your original question, if we wanna increase 

Trust, we have to focus on the experience. And we gotta, again, slow down, explain the process, and close the loop. 

Dana berchman (2): Yes. When I started in Gilbert, again, I've said this over and over again, but the resident, average resident age was, 32, 33 years old, and they weren't even accepting credit card payment and this is why in ~so many ways, our voting systems are, ~so many ways that we interact with government still are so behind and so archaic, and so lean on those govtech [00:25:00] tools. Like nextdoor to help you come into the modern world. And government agencies should be doing that and understanding that's what people care about. That's where people are living their lives and take advantage of those opportunities, especially the free ones like Nextdoor, that are giving you that chance to do just that and build the trust and build the relationship. I think that it really is so critical. You mentioned, we didn't get a chance to talk about it in, in a ton of detail, but ai, the new AI feature and the new AI tool, because I think this is another area where cities are already falling behind in, not understanding. It's it's a change of our life.

It's a cultural change. It's not like a position, it's not a person. It's a behavioral change. And so using tools and features like yours on Nextdoor also can help people to understand how we can carry that into the way we serve residents through government. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): Yeah, ~we need a whole nother podcast for that.~ I think, when we think about like operational [00:26:00] efficiency and we think about surfacing helpful information at that point of request or interest is a whole slew of opportunities. And obviously we're doing that with neighborhood faves on the platform, there's different AI chat box which can deflect. The reality is funding is not necessarily increasing for cities at the moment, right? 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): to, we do need to lean into automation. We do need to lean into, frankly, to ai. But you can deflect some of those things that can be really easily answered. And I think that's one direction. o the other thing too is I hope we see in the near future in a way we're already talking about it. You with the 3 1 1 information. I have a slide on my best practices deck, like I hear, what should I communicate on next door? And that can be a really scary point. A lot of organizations like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be able to reach a whole bunch of people.

They could be really mad at us. They might be. I think if you look at your 3 1 1 data, you look at your top visited websites, you look at what are the most questions being answered by my AI chat bot, right? Like 

Dana berchman (2): Yep. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): [00:27:00] those things. If you get a sense like, Hey, we really need to deal with, traffic at this one intersection. Go do something about that. Hey, we got some information that this was really important to you guys. Here's our plan. Here's what we're gonna do. Here's by when we're gonna do it. By the way, we'll give you an update in a couple weeks as we make progress on this. If there's any questions or we miss something, let me know.

Again, that kind of. will build trust. I get that. That can be risky, but imagine a future where. We can apply AI for all the themes and principles we've talked about, right? Know what that's gonna look like yet, but I think those are really important questions. Like how could that help? How could that make people more informed? How could that help public meeting be more productive? And we're not having to cover the one-on-one stuff all the time.

Dana berchman (2): ~Yep. ~

Joseph Porcelli (2): ~a registration system where you go and you're like, Hey, I'm registering for this webinar. Hey, we saw that you registered for this webinar.~

~Here's a bunch of things you might wanna know. Here's questions that your neighbors have asked. And, here's what's getting I'm literally just making this up right now. But we, ~

Dana berchman (2): ~Yeah. ~

Joseph Porcelli (2): we can help people, if we can respect their intellect right, and we can care out loud through AI and help. people up so they understand and we think about like part participatory democracy. If we can help people participate in a more productive way, that could also increase trust, right? I don't 

Dana berchman (2): Abs. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): [00:28:00] yet, but I hope it does soon. 

Dana berchman (2): Absolutely, and I think you're exactly right. You will find themes if you can pull all of these pieces together. I know that the city of Denver launched a chatbot and the number one and two issues that came through were people looking for housing and looking for food. And so I would argue that. Even your most vulnerable populations, and I've talked about this before, have the ability to use technology And you can't make excuses anymore that, oh, they're, we're gonna leave people out or leave people behind.

No, you have, we have to be thinking this way, and it's true the commonalities that you'll see. The things that come, that are top of the poll, the three top searched items on your website, the three number one themes on social media, the three most reported issues on 3 1 1. Those will all align.

I guarantee it. I've been there, I've done this work. And it's really powerful when it does because that is the data that you have and the story you tell, and it gives you focus. It gives you. Purpose. It gives you the [00:29:00] why of here's the things our residents care about, and I know I'm serving them and I've heard from them in all these different ways. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): And you'll begin to build that trust and overcome that apathy. When you do that, 

About repeating that and baking it into your operations.

Dana berchman (2): Quickly tell me what's next. Now we've just launched this app, which is amazing. I hope our listeners will go and check it out. But what do you see, coming next as far as the platform goes? 

Joseph Porcelli (2): ~I'm. I'm so focused on getting this launched. I haven't had the luxury of going there with the product team yet. But I, ~I think a couple themes that are top of mind for me that I think we need to start thinking about more as a body of communicators and neighbors is my role, I'm our basically government and crisis response lead. How. A couple top of mind questions are, what else can we do for each other as neighbors? That's actually been a guiding question my entire career. ~And so I would, I am.~ I wanna live in a future where, everybody in their neighborhood knows who on their street's gonna need help evacuating

Dana berchman (2): Hm.

Joseph Porcelli (2): going to need some sort of help, right? And everybody on the street knows how they can contribute one way or another to each other. because that connectivity [00:30:00] makes everything work, right? We need to know who each other. And we need to know how to communicate with each other. And so I look to a future where, that really just becomes a norm. And like I've had this concept I've been thinking about for a couple years, and I call it our perimeter of care. And I really hope you know, the perimeter of care. past the one house we know, and down a block or two, we're gonna need concentric circles of care as we deal with more frequent, more intense, more destructive, more costly crises. I also think as the larger theme here of ai, there's a whole bunch of things that AI can do. If we think about messaging from government, it tends to be pretty general and broad. So it's digestible and accessible to lots of folks. But the circumstances, people come problems to solve or progress they're trying to make.

Sometimes that messaging doesn't result or doesn't resonate with folks there isn't actionable, right? So I'd love to be able to see, A future where [00:31:00] AI is helping people. Like it prompts a couple questions like, Hey, I hear, I understand you're trying to prepare for this hurricane. And I'm not speaking generally about to any specific platform here, but like 

Dana berchman (2): Sure. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): Type in your address real quick so I can. Give you a quick sense of here, what are the hazards and what's likely to happen? Great. Here's a couple things that I would prioritize, because if we look at some of the messaging right now, it's secure your roof. Yeah, sure. Let me, lemme just go buy $40,000 in lumber and make my ~roof strong,~ roof stronger, whatever.

Some of that doesn't make sense. But I'd love to see AI help people understand like what are the most important things they can do to prepare And also I think sometimes it's. I wouldn't say sometimes the majority of people, based on what I've observed, it can be scary and hard to go knock on your neighbor's door. Like I've done some 

Dana berchman (2): I've done. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): with some public agencies encouraging people to ask for help, right? To say, Hey, I need help evacuating, or I'm willing. Now there's a small percentage of people that will always do that, but how can we facilitate some of [00:32:00] those kind of. Relationships neighborhood level, right?

Again, I'm, this is, I'm just gonna, I'm speaking off the top of my head here. This isn't on our product roadmap. I wanna be very thoughtful about that. But, I think, I believe everybody has something to contribute and everybody needs something at different points in time and I would love to see our platform and other platforms really help facilitate that and bring neighbors together and help them understand what they can do and how they can help each other. And what 

Dana berchman (2): I love that. 

Yes. And how they can help make their local government better. How they can get more involved in it. I love that idea and I love this whole discussion. A concept of customer experience that you and I both think, is critically important to all of this work. And I hope that people on the city side will hear that loud and clear, because I think too often like I said, things get done because they've always done it. Not with the resident in mind first, and so I hope people will think about using tools like Nextdoor and others. If you haven't started, you can start. It's easy and [00:33:00] it's not costly and you can start small and you can start today, like you said to meet your neighbors and. Together, we can all make our neighborhoods better. So I, I appreciate you taking the time and for your support and being a great neighbor for the past decade or so that we've been able to keep in touch and follow each other's work. So I, I really appreciate having you. 

Joseph Porcelli (2): My gosh. Thanks for having me, and thanks for all the work you do, convening and raising the bar for everybody. 

Dana berchman (2): Thank you. Thanks so much.