Industries

Who we work with.

Six audiences. One discipline: making places understood, experienced and chosen.

Whoever you answer to — a board, a council, a membership or a community — the work starts the same way.

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The common condition

Six mandates. The same hard part.

A BIA and a municipality are not in the same business. But everyone on this page is trying to change how a place is understood without owning most of what shapes it — and has to persuade before they can act.

Influence without authority

The businesses, landowners, residents and partners who determine whether anything happens do not report to you.

Public accountability

Decisions get made in minutes that are published, defended at a meeting, and read by people with a different mandate.

Progress on a public clock

Terms end, boards turn over and budgets renew annually. Work that only pays off in year five has to show something in year one.

The method does not change between them. What changes is who has to agree, and when.

Who we work with

Find the mandate closest to yours.

Each page below is written for one kind of organization — the pressures it works under, and the version of this work that fits it.

BIAs & districts

Business Improvement Areas

"Our members want to know what the levy is actually buying them."

Open → Culture & venues

Cultural Districts

"We have twelve organizations and twelve separate calendars."

Open → DMOs & visitor economy

Tourism Organizations

"People pass through. We need them to stay a night."

Open → Councils & administration

Municipalities

"Council adopted the plan. Nothing has moved since."

Open → EDOs & investment

Economic Development

"Our pitch sounds like everyone else's pitch."

Open → Leagues & non-profits

Community Organizations

"The same nine people do everything. We need more of them."

Open →
How the work adapts

Same method. Different room.

These are not six methodologies. It is one system, run six ways — because what decides whether a strategy survives is rarely the strategy, and usually the approval path it has to cross.

Constant in all six
ThinkThe position is decided before anything is designed or booked.
MakeEverything produced traces back to that decision.
DoRecommendations are sequenced, owned and costed so they can be approved.
Senior throughoutThe person in the first meeting is the person doing the work.
Different every time
Who has to agreeA board, a council, a membership, a funder — or all four in sequence.
The paceCommittee dates and agenda deadlines set the schedule, not the work.
The evidence barWhat convinces a members' AGM is not what survives a council report.
What "success" is calledFoot traffic, occupancy, overnight stays, participation, investment enquiries.
How public the process isSome of this work happens in a boardroom. Some of it happens in the minutes.
Not on the list?

Plenty of places don't fit a category.

Festivals, chambers, library boards, First Nations, regional partnerships — organizations doing this work without a tidy label. If none of the six above describes you, say so in the first line and we'll take it from there.

Tell us about your organization
53.5461° N · 113.4938° W — Edmonton · Alberta · Canada