Happy 3rd Birthday, Reston 2020 Blog!

Three years ago last week, Reston Citizens Association's (RCA's) Reston 2020 Committee created a blog called Reston 20/20:  Citizens Envisioning Reston’s Future on Google’s blogger.  The goal was to keep the community informed and engaged in the then-new effort to renew Reston’s community master plan and other local planning and development efforts.  Since then, the more than 1,200 blog entries and nearly 300 documents posted on the blog have been visited by more than 150,000 times by readers, about one-quarter of them from abroad. The blog also features a calendar of Reston planning events and links to key local planning and other news sources. 

The blog has covered many topics related to various aspects of planning Reston’s development:  density and mix, open space and recreation, transportation (including traffic, tolls, and Metrorail), the environment, walkability, placemaking, and many others.  It has recorded RCA’s and Reston 2020’s participation in ongoing debates about tolls, jobs-housing balance, toll road forecasts, economic growth prospects, and more.  It has shared links to just about every source on Reston-related developments and issues, including local and national video, radio, and print media, studies by government agencies and contractors, and research by academics and think tanks on dozens of community planning topics.  And, maybe most importantly, it has become a repository for research performed by Reston citizen volunteers on the future course of Reston development in the areas around the coming Metrorail stations. 

A diversity of posts and documents have attracted attention and comments ranging from straightforward fact sheets on planned toll increases on the Dulles Toll Road to letters from Restonians on planning and toll road issues to commentaries on a variety of development issues.  The table below captures the most frequently viewed blog entries.

Most Viewed Blog Entries
Entry	Views
Dulles Toll Road Fact Sheet #1: Excessive Toll In... Mar 7, 2012	3,535
Letter: Inequity in Financing Metrorail Construct... Dec 8, 2011, 5 comments	561
Reston Master Plan Study Community Forum on Feb. 2... Feb 17, 2010	353
Commentary: Accenture’s Departure: Harbinger of ... Sep 20, 2011, 2 comments	280
RCA Reston 2020 Comment on Town Center Office Buil... Feb 23, 2012, 1 comment	220
Letter to MWAA re Eliminating PLA Preferences for ... Mar 2, 2012	201
MWAA Board Approves Underground Metrorail Station ... Apr 6, 2011	200

Documents on the blog or linked from the blog are stored in a Scribd.com, an online digital archive.  These are primarily items produced by RCA Reston 2020, but also include other key documents that may not be easily retrieved from their original source.   Although RCA’s analysis of the toll forecasts by Wilbur Smith Associates has be view more than 1,900 times, many of the Reston 2020 working group papers produced for  the Reston Task Force have been among the top reads on the blog.  Also in this list are the presentation by Ian Lockwood, AECOM, on urban street network design and the County’s urban parks policy.  Overall, archive statistics indicate the average read time for each document was nearly five minutes.

Most Read Documents in Reston 2020 Digital Archive
Document	Views
RCA Study--Wilbur Smith Traffic & Revenue Forecasts--012712	2,464
"Reston Transportation: Meeting the Needs of a 21st Century Planned Community," Transportation Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010	1,606
"A Strawman Proposal for the Wiehle Transit Metro Station Area," Bill Penniman with Residential, Urban Design, & Livability Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee	1,507
”Environmental Planning Principles for Reston,” Environmental Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee	1,291
"Parks, Recreation, & Public Facilities: Needs for a New Master Planned Reston," Parks, Recreation, & Public Facilities Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010	1,251
”Proposals for Parks in North Town Center,” Guy Rando & Kathy Kaplan, with Residential, Urban Design, & Livability Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010	1,208
Street Network Design Ian Lockwood Aecom	1,207
"Sunrise Valley Nature Park: A Suburban Wetlands Park," Environmental Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010	1,155
Fairfax County Urban Parks Framework	1,139
"Vision for Herndon-Monroe Station Area," Residential, Urban Design, & Livability Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 2010	1,036

 

Readers reach the blog in many ways, including outreach to potentially interested readers.  Reston 2020 has used Twitter and Facebook social media more than 1,000 times in the last two years to alert more than 200 followers/friends, virtually all local, about the latest blog postings and other Reston planning developments, including links to specific posts.  

Search engines, however, play a dominant role in connecting readers to the blog although local websites—notably Reston Patch, the Restonian, and Reston Paths.  The Fairfax County government is also among the leaders in using the blog as well; we expect simply to keep updated on new entries. 

Top Referring Websites
Entry	Referrals
www.google.com	10,219
reston.patch.com	1,446
www.restonian.org	812
www.bing.com	502
www.facebook.com	415
www.restonpaths.com	275
www.reston2020.blogspot.com	233
www.fairfaxcounty.gov	226
search.yahoo.com	178

The blog also offers an e-mail update service that gives readers a once-a-day look at the new without having to go to the blog.  Some have even subscribed to the blog, receiving each new post as it is published.  And “buttons” at the bottom of each post enable readers to share it with their friends through their preferred social media. 

The effort to keep Restonians apprised about developments in local planning and thinking about community design will continue at least as long as the Reston Task Force continues.  It has clearly proven to be an important source of information for people interested in Reston’s future.  We look forward to keeping the community and other informed.   

1,000 Posts and Counting . . .

This brief post is the 1,000th post on the Reston 20/20 blog.  These one thousand posts have been contributed in a roughly two and one-half year span--more than a post per day. 

As readers can see from the topical index in the right-hand column, the Reston 20/20 blog covers just about every conceivable topic related to the development of Reston.  It includes a variety of types of posts, including news articles from the media on Reston development topics, scholarly pieces on community planning, letters and columns on Reston-related development issues, and a number of original posts on the planning of Reston, including Metrorail.  It has become an excellent archive of issues affecting the course of Reston's development.

Besides these posts, we have created a digital archive in the right-hand column that provides links to the 26 research reports published by Reston 20/20 and its work groups.  These reports cover topics ranging from architecture to parks and open spaces to the environment and transportation, and many more.  They are a testament to the tremendous energy, creativity, insight, and  commitment of Reston's resident volunteers to this community.  No doubt more such papers will be published--and documented here--in the future.

The documents we have archived digitally have been accessed more than 100,000 times either through this blog, Google searches, or archive searches--and statistics indicate the average dwell time on each report is more than 8 minutes, which means the viewers are reading this material.  More than 40,000 people have visited the blog directly since its inception either directly, through Google searches, or through our friends at Reston Patch, the Restonian, and Reston Paths, among others.  To make the blog even more timely, we have complemented the postings here by issuing nearly 500 "tweets" on Twitter and brief posts on Facebook to let people know of new original content on the blog or breaking Reston planning developments.

We look forward to continuing to serve the Reston community with timely, thorough, and accurate information from all points of view about the multitudinous forces shaping Reston for years to come.  We all have an equity in making this model planned community all that it possibly can be for everyone forever. 

100,000 Reads!

We don't usually flaunt the audience for this blog, but every once in awhile we hit a major milestone of one kind or another.  In this case, the documents Reston 2020 has posted on scribd.com--its document archive or library--have been read 100,426 times as of this afternoon.  Sometime in the last week, we passed the 100,000 "reads" threshold.

Contributions by Reston 2020 (as opposed to the writing or presentations by others we often post) have been among the most popular "reads" by scribd users.  Here are the top half-dozen Reston 2020 original posts and the number of reads:

"Reston Transportation: Meeting the Needs of a 21st Century Planned Community," Transportation Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010 1,107 "A Strawman Proposal for the Wiehle Transit Metro Station Area," Bill Penniman with Residential, Urban Design, & Livability Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee 1,098 "Parks, Recreation, & Public Facilities: Needs for a New Master Planned Reston," Parks, Recreation, & Public Facilites Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010 1,052 Proposals for Parks in North Town Center, Guy Rando & Kathy Kaplan, with Residential, Urban Design, & Livability Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010    979 "Sunrise Valley Nature Park: A Suburban Wetlands Park," Environmental Work Group, RCA Reston 2020 Committee, June 1, 2010    Proposed Planning Principles for Reston Master Plan Special Study     880  913 Check out these items.  And thanks for all your support! Terry Maynard

Reston 2020 Blog Reaches 10,000 Visits, 18,000 Document Reads--and It's Still Growing!

Today saw the Reston 2020 blog record its 10,000^th visit, a total achieved in the less than nine months since a counter was attached to the blog.   Some 7,000 readers have visited the blog, and more than 2,000 people are repeat visitors.  

Statcounter.com, the counter used by the Reston 2020 blog, provides a wide variety of information about the who, how, and where of visits to the blog, but unfortunately only provides free data tracking for about two weeks worth of data.  Nonetheless, it is suggestive of the interest in the work of Reston 2020 and the Reston Task Force.  For example, in this brief time period:

·         The most popular blog posts have been the Wiehle Committee’s interim report to the Task Force, the letter from Marion Stillson—RCA President—to MWAA regarding the Dulles Corridor, and Terry Maynard’s commentary on the Reston Town Center draft report.  

·         The most frequent identifiable institutional visits continue to be from the Fairfax County general computing center, Fairfax County schools, and the US House of Representatives. 

·         More than one-fifth (22%) of all the recent visits have originated from Reston, and another 26% come from Herndon and Great Falls. 

o       Over 80% of all visits come from the metro DC area, possibly reflecting both Restonians accessing the site from work and the interest of other area communities in what’s happening in Reston. 

o       There continue to be occasional visits from foreign countries, led by South Africa, Finland, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and India. 

·         “Reston 2020” is by far the most used search term to reach the blog, outnumbering searches on the Reston Task Force by more than 4-to-1.  Other recent search terms have focused on specific topics, likely Wiehle, Polo Fields, Metrorail Phase II, and so on.

·         Most people enter the blog through its home address, but the second-most frequent entry point recently has been the Wiehle Committee’s interim report.  There are three ways to enter the blog at a specific post: 

o       Links provided by another blog or e-mail.  The most frequent access to the Wiehle report appears to have come from links to the Restonian, a popular and humorous local blog.

o       A second way is by clicking from the results of a specific search term, such as “Wiehle.”

o       The final way is through the Reston 2020’s Twitter account.  Reston 2020 has posted over 120 “tweets” since launching in early summer, almost all linked to a new post on the blog.  The Reston 2020 Twitter account has 40 “followers” now—people who receive each “tweet”—including the local news media, a few Reston organizations, and numerous individuals. 

Much of what has been posted on the Reston 2020 blog are “embedded” documents—reports, proposals, graphics, commentaries, and the like—that are stored in their original format on www.scribd.com and copied as is into the Reston 2020 blog.  Scribd is a digital archive of documents of all types—from cookbooks to constitutions—stored by people who wish to share them with the blogosphere. 

The results for Reston 2020’s documents are astounding:  The 180 documents Reston 2020 has embedded in the blog have been “read” (accessed) more than 18,000 times since the blog’s launch in December 2009.  That’s an average of 100 reads per document. 

·         433 reads occurred on its busiest day, June 8, 2010, the day Reston 2020 posted its series of reports for the community readership.

·         The average daily readership trend line has climbed six-fold as more documents have been added. 

o       In January 2010, 16.0 readers per day accessed the few Reston 2020 documents on Scribd. 

o       In September 2010, that average jumped to 96.6 reads per day. 

o       These documents are being read at the rate of 69 reads per day over the course of the blog’s lifetime.

·         The most read documents on Scribd are those produced by Reston 2020’s several Working Groups, including:

o       A Strawman Proposal for the Wiehle Transit Metro Station Area, RUDL Working Group (491 reads)

o       Vision for the Herndon-Monroe Station Area, RUDL WG (434 reads)

o       Parks, Recreation, and Public Facilities:  Needs for a New Master Planned Reston, PRPF WG (418 reads)

o       Proposals for Parks in North Town Center, Rando/Kaplan, RUDL WG (368 reads)

o       Introduction to the Reston 2020 Committee Work Group Effort (321 reads)

Not too far behind are the reports from the other Reston 2020 working groups. 

• These documents have been downloaded, that is, physically copied to an individual computer, 179 times from Scribd. 
• Over twenty percent of these downloads occurred in the three weeks following the publication of the Reston 2020 work group reports.
• There have also been a few downloads of items posted directly in the blog, that is, they are not embedded there via Scribd.  Virtually all of these have been images, led by images of the Comstock Wiehle Avenue development posted months ago.  

Taken together, the Reston 2020 blog, Scribd, and Twitter are enabling Restonians and others with an interest in urban planning to gain a thorough understanding of ongoing activities, their implications, and the course of the Reston planning effort.  It is exciting that this effort is garnering such a broad and growing audience.  By keeping informed, Restonians are making a difference in their community’s future. 

Terry Maynard
Administrator

Reston 2020 Blog: 1,000 Unique Visitors--and Counting

Today, the Reston 2020 blog passed the 1,000 mark in terms of unique visitors. That's 1,000 different people--"first-time visitors" based on an internet "cookie"--who have visited the blog in the four weeks since we began counting these things. (The blog actually launched in late December.)

The rapid growth in blog readership is a testament to the importance the people of Reston attach to the ongoing Reston Master Plan Special Study. Its recommendations will affect the lives of the more than 60,000 people who live here now and the more than 100,000 who are likely to live here decades from now under a new plan to guide Reston's development.

For those who are not familiar with this blog, it attempts to post all information publicly available--and occasionally not publicly available--about the Reston planning effort, a one-stop shopping site for information on Reston development. This includes related issues such as the Tysons Corner planning effort and possible County changes in bus or bicycle policy. And it is open to all points of view as attested to its posting of some critical letters written by Robert E. Simon, our founder, for the local newspapers.

We will endeavor to keep this blog as complete and diverse a discussion of Reston development as possible. If you have information that you think bears on Reston's future development, please send it to me at terrmayn@msn.com. With your permission, we will post it for all Restonians to see.

...and thank you all for caring about Reston.

Terry Maynard
Reston 2020
Blog Administrator

Restonian Blog Picks Up on Reston 2020 Efforts to Address Key Planning Issues

In his own inimitable style, Restonian at the Restonian blog points out some of the issues the Reston 2020 Committee is wrestling with and its outreach for citizen participation in Commmunity Working Groups to address key Reston planning issues.

Here's how he starts:

What, with the snow and the snow and the snow and the digging out from the snow, it's been a while since we've touched on the Reston Master Plan. As long speculated, the official and succinctly named Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force has opted not to formally incorporate the community work groups proposed by Reston 2020. So it will trudge onward....:

As another late, great blogger, er, journalist used to say, "And now for the rest of the story...Page 2" Read the Restonian's full remarks here.

Link to RA's "Planning for the Future" Blog

Reston Association Board member Paul Thomas and member of the Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force has created a blog on the RA website to:

--let the RA community know about what is happening with the Task Force

--create a dialogue so that the RA Board of Directors can hear your ideas about the planning process and what our community should become.

To reach the blog, click on the title or here. I have also added the link to the "Key Reston Citizens Group Links" in the sidebar.

Reston 2020 is Tweeting!

The Reston 2020 Committee is now using Twitter.com to provide timely updates on events and links to its blog entries and other web links.

Here is the link to the Reston 2020 site: http://twitter.com/reston2020

If you are not already a Twitter member, you can create a free account and log on for the timely delivery of Reston planning information to you.

Terry Maynard
Reston 2020
Blog Administrator

RA Seeks Community Input Using Blog, Reston Observer, February 5, 2010

Reston Association has launched a new Web page and a blog designed to keep the community updated on the Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force.

The blog Planning for the Future is written by Director Paul Thomas, RA's representative to the task force. The blog was created to give the community a method for communicating directly with Thomas. His plan is to update Planning for the Future after task force meetings, which are the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. Thomas is encouraging those in the community to comment, ask questions and share ideas through his online column.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Anonymous Posting Now Allowed

Having received feedback that a number of readers are having trouble posting comments on the Reston2020 blog, I have changed the permission settings to allow fully open, even "anonymous" posts. Registering somewhere is no longer required.

This decision carries a risk that a small number of people will choose to abuse the opportunity by posting irrelevant or, worse, indecent comments. It happens routinely on blogs. We don't want those. We do want any contributions that advance the discussion, no matter what the point of view.

To reduce the risk of inappropriate comments, I will "moderate" the discussion. This means I will see the comments before they are posted. That may lead to a delay of as much as a few hours for which I apologize in advance. I assure you, however, I will NOT make any decisions based on the point of view, just whether the comment is relevant, constructive, and decent.

Again, I welcome full article contributions on the many matters surrounding Reston planning. Please send them to me at terrmayn@msn.com and I will post them with only the same constraints as on comments--relevant, constructive, and decent.

Please join the dialogue.

Terry Maynard
Blog Administrator

Meeting: Reston 2020 Committee, Brown's Chapel, 7 PM, Monday, January 18, 2010,

The next meeting of the Reston 2020 Committee will be at 7PM, Monday, January 18, 2010, at Brown's Chapel. The meeting agenda includes:

1. Review of draft Reston Planning Principles paper.

2. Review draft presentation to the Task Force by R2020 Co-Chair Dick Stilson.

3. Discuss next steps on Community Work Groups.

4. Discuss broader role for Committee blog.

News: RCA Committee Provides Reston Master Plan Updates, Reston Observer, January 15, 2010

By Leslie Perales
Observer Staff Writer

The Reston 2020 Committee, created by the Reston Citizens' Association, announced the launch of its blog, an online journal, to keep the community updated on the Reston Master Plan process.

The committee, which partners with Reston Association and the Association of Reston Clusters and Homeowners, launched the blog "Reston 2020: Citizens Shaping Reston's Future" in December at reston2020.blogspot.com. . . .

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Correction: This article includes information from the blog launch press release sent to the Observer stating that the Reston 2020 committee "partners" with RA and ARCH. This error was made in the original Reston 2020 Committee release, not at the newspaper. A correction issued to the newspaper after the press deadline indicates that the Reston 2020 Committee is "working with other Reston civic organizations and leaders."

Minutes: Reston 2020 Committee Public Meeting, January 7, 2010

The RCA 2020 Committee, chaired by Dick Stillson, met on Thursday, January 7, 2010 at RCC Lake Anne. In attendance were Dick Stillson, Chair, Cindy Smethers, D.D. Rogers, Dan McGuire, Dave Edwards, Diane Blust, Guy Rando, John Lovaas, Kathy Kaplan, Marion Stillson, Rob Whitfield, Tammy Petrine, Terry Maynard, Mike Corrigan, Paul Thomas, Jerry Volloy, Terri Phillips, Herb Basik, and C.J. Basik.

The first order of business was a discussion of the committee’s proposal for Community Advisory Groups to be put before the Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force (RMPSSTF). The county and task force preferred the term “working group” rather than “advisory group” and the name was changed in the proposal. Paul Thomas confirmed that the RA Board of Directors had tasked the various RA Advisory Committees to generate recommendations to the Task Force in the topics of the individual committees. The committee reviewed the draft document on working groups and decided to reduce the original eight groups to five: 1) transportation, 2) infrastructure and implementation, 3) environment, 4) parks, recreation and public facilities, and 5) urban design. All agreed that the pertinent RA advisory groups and the Land Use College participants would be logical organizations from which to begin to draw members and/or leaders for the working groups. After a wide ranging discussion on the /working groups, a subcommittee was formed consisting of Dick Stillson, Mike Corrigan, Dave Edwards and Terry Maynard to draft a paper on proposed working groups for presentation to the RMPSSTF at the January 12, 2010 meeting.

Secondly, the committee discussed the planning principles to be drafted and presented to the RMPSSTF. There was general agreement that the principles to be proposed by the committee would be based on Bob Simon’s original principles for Reston, but that they would need to be updated for the 21st century and spelled out in a bit more detail. Committee members were reminded that several documents with suggested principles language had been circulated to the membership: papers from John Lovaas, Dick Rogers and Terry Maynard, along with the ARCH statement of principles circulated by Jerry Volloy. John Lovaas, Dick Rogers and Herb Basik agreed to form a subcommittee to draft the new principles document.

Terry Maynard handed out copies of the draft Reston 2020 Blog and asked for comments, corrections and input. After a brief discussion of other methods of group communication/opinion gathering, the committee agreed the proposed blog would best fit our needs. There was general agreement we wanted the blog to be open to all members of the community and that we wanted individuals to be able to post comments to the blog. Committee members should communicate directly with Terry regarding input for the blog.

Terri Phillips raised the use of Twitter as a mechanism to spread the word about the work of Reston 2020 and the RMPSSTF. She will investigate this issue and report back to the committee.

The date and time of the next meeting will be announced via email, the committee blog, and the county website.