VIDEO: Testimonial from the Mayor and Eco Dev Director of Torrington, CT
A sincere “thank you” to Mayor Ryan Bingham and Economic Development Director Rose Ponte of Torrington for taking the time to describe their experience with CivicLift!
Transcript:
Mayor Bingham
The same old boring websites were just not going to cut it. We wanted to do something fresh, neat, clean to drive people to look at what's happening in our hometown.
Rose Ponte
If people wanted to know where something was happening, they could go there but then if they also needed to know about real estate they could also go to the same site, or if they wanted to be able to find out what good restaurants there are to go to. So, we needed it to be very multi-dimensional so a wide variety of people could and would use it. I think you did an excellent job of addressing that. Not only was it crisp and fresh and it made people want to go to it, but you made a buzz around it.
One thing we didn't expect, at least I didn't, was the benefit to the community because all of a sudden we had a platform that was free, easy to use, and we had a lot of startup downtown businesses that didn't have an ability to pose from themselves - and now they did. So that and that buzz that you created wheterh it was through blogs or putting something interesting up there, by allowing people to post their own submissions - all of that gave you that domino effect when more and more people started going to the site and using it. So it really accomplished what we wanted.
Mayor Bingham
We really wanted sustainability so not just putting something out there that we created and having it sit there until we created something else. We wanted to be able to create a model that sustained itself.
We used to have the old bulletin boards in front of town halls, and you would stick up "We are having a pasta supper at the lion's club tonight". Now you have it online because people are more geared to find things online.
Rose Ponte
It allows you to connect to an area that you have no connection with - you may be just a visitor.
I think we are all human beings, we all want to be connected to one another and we all want to find out what is going on so that we can be a part of it, and [CivicLift] is that connector.
