Planning Meetings Tonight & Tomorrow for Members of Dallas Urbanists STLC
Wednesday 6:30PM we'll discuss Social Media Strategy. Thursday 6PM we'll brainstorm ideas for the annual Week Without Driving Challenge. RSVP and signup as member to join our members-only events.
These meetings will take place on our members-only Discord server. To join our Discord server:
Become a member, if you haven’t already.
RSVP to either the Social Media Strategy Meeting or the Week Without Driving Planning Meeting.
Watch out for email or message from us with a Discord invite link.
Can’t make it either of these meetings and/or want to get involved with our movement another way? After signing up as a member, use this Calendly link to schedule a one-on-one conversation!
Continue reading to see what we’ll discuss in each meeting.
Social Media Strategy Meeting
Wednesday, June 25th 6:30 PM via Discord Meeting Room Channel
A couple weeks ago I attended the Strong Towns National Gathering and I attended the sessions on "Not Just Noise: Using Social to Move People" and "Building Strong Towns Awareness Through Digital Media." I’m really excited to put what I learned into practice with our Strong Towns Local Conversation here in Dallas, and I’ll need all the help I can get! Here’s a general outline of what we’ll discuss during the call:
Overview of Dallas Urbanists’ social media channels
Assign volunteer managers for each social media platform
Strategy and ideas for posting content on each channel
Strategy and ideas for engaging with comments and direct messages
Strategy and ideas for interacting with elected officials on social media
Strategy and ideas for growing our audience
Although I’ve come back with a lot of ideas from the national gathering, this won’t be a one-way conversation. Please feel free to share your ideas or feedback either during the meeting, in this email thread, or as a comment on the meeting slides.
THIS MEETING IS FOR YOU IF
AND you want to volunteer;
AND you're either: skilled at making graphics for social media;
OR skilled at editing videos for social media;
OR skilled at writing engaging headlines and captions for social media;
OR have experience growing audience on any social platform (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.);
OR have just enough knowledge on how to use a social platform to know how to upload content, read comments, and reply to messages.
Week Without Driving Planning Meeting
Thursday, June 26th 6:00 PM via Discord Meeting Room Channel
Week Without Driving is an annual challenge that invites people who typically drive—especially elected officials, planners, and community leaders—to go a week without driving in order to better understand and address the barriers nondrivers face. In 2024, over 520 groups in all 50 states and D.C participated in the annual challenge.
When someone decides to take on the challenge, they follow six basic steps:
Choose your goal. You can choose to avoid driving altogether, or something more feasible for your circumstances (more on this later).
Sign up for the challenge, either on the official WWD website or on a participating organization's (i.e. Dallas Urbanists STLC) website.
Research, plan, and prepare. Oftentimes, people who drive everywhere simply don't know how to get anywhere without car. To succeed at the challenge, participants will need to learn (e.g. how to buy a bus pass), plan (e.g. commute routes & schedules), and prepare (e.g. buy/borrow a bicycle) well in advance.
Follow-through on your goal from September 29 – October 5, 2025.
Document your experience by taking plenty of notes, photos, and videos along the way. As you do, think about what works, what fails, and how it could be improved.
Tell someone. Post on social media, email your city council member, or start conversations with friends, family, and colleagues about what you learned from this challenge.
The most important part of this challenge is the story you tell others about your experience. It's in this regard that the Week Without Driving challenge aligns with our mission as Dallas Urbanists to "foster informed and empathetic conversations about walkability, transportation, and housing in Dallas neighborhoods."
WHY HAVE THIS PLANNING MEETING?
As a host organization for the WWD challenge, not only do we want to get more people to participate, we also want to help set people up for success. That means doing what we can to enable and support participants through each of the six basic steps outlined above.
Although the challenge starts in 3 months, we need to start posting promotional and educational material in 2 months. In order to do that, we need to start creating and editing content in 1 month. In order to do that, we need to start planning now.
This planning meeting is for anyone who is either…
Thinking about participating in WWD for the first time, and wants to learn how to have a successful experience; or…
Has participated in WWD before and wants to enhance their participation this year; or…
Wants to boost the number of participants this year by helping with promotion content and activities; or…
Wants to set participants up for success by helping produce educational content; or…
Wants to tell compelling stories by helping participants document their experience and share their stories; …
You don't know yet how you can help, you just know what you want to get involved with Week Without Driving in some way.