Now that it is done, tell me what you you liked and what can be improved on.
Handouts, while many were busy scribbling notes, 10x more information could have been conveyed by passing out pre-prepared notes on the upcoming speakers. It could be as simple a a printed outline from their powerpoint presentation. We had several county commissioners there, why not a list of all the current county commissioners county by county? A name and number to each county road department? Obviously it all takes time to prepare but once the groundwork is laid future seminars will be that much easier.
Scenario Based Training: The info seemed well prepared on a speaker by speaker basis but there was little carry over on how this information could be bundled to actually allow the user to take on some projects. Come up with some realistic scenarios a ground level user is likely to encounter and use the information discussed to solve.
Example: Your driving up trail xyz and come up to the turn off for xxx trail and find a newly placed carsonite sigh stating 'no motorized vehicles'. What do you do?
From there document the steps the ground level user can take to find out why, who, when, where, etc. Start with the local land manager ie. BLM/FS. Move to the counties route inventory as discussed in the class, etc.
Spend some time detailing how individuals/clubs/groups/families can plan a service project, adopt a trail, form a cooperative agreement. Much time was spent detailing why strategic partnerships were important but little was done to detail how the audience could move forward on these matters.
Condense all of the political reps into one speaker. I feel that while they shared good information it wasn't several hours worth and we would have benefited far more by hearing more about the ways the CCOHV group has worked to document routes, make alternative plans, etc.
Overall it was an excellent showing for a first time event and can be refined and improved with future seminars.
On a side note I have to comment about Mike Swensons commentary at the seminar. He mentioned the 'rif' between himself (Usa-All) and the 4wd community based on his 'advice' that the public comment period is not the 'silver bullet' for fighting this stuff. Unless I'm totally off mark on this particular rif, it had nothing to do with us thinking we had a silver bullet rather that Usa-All wasn't even going to take aim at a target
Ie zero response to giant RMP's. The 4wd community did not start our approach at the comment period, we were there at the initial scoping 5-6 year earlier, in full force at the alternative scoping meetings and yeah I feel our users rocked the public comment period. Read the RMP decisions and when you see things like 'based on extensive public comment' as a reasoning factor for maintaining access, I call it a win. Granted these RMP's are all being contested by SUWA, but we fared out very well in the 6 RMP. Again, I might be off mark on this particular rif but that's the only one I'm intimate with.
