Some notes from the afternoon of the workshop on municipal communications I am chairing  . . .

Patricia MacDonell from the City of Toronto outlined the basis on which the city makes decisions about the languages in which it provides communications services. As one of North America's most multi-lingual cities, Toronto faces quite the challenge. But rather than rely on a blanket policy specifiying core languages, the city looks at various aspects of a program for language selection: census demographics, needs of the particular community, geography or neighbourhood, and type of information being communicated (for example, health information is offered in more languages than, say, by-laws). It is a flexible and apparently workable approach.

This from Alan Chumley (a blogger) at Cormex Research on public relations and measurement: Forget about talking about ROI in public relations. Even the most sophisticated research models can't prove a correlation. Better to take a look at such measures as 'return on expectations' or 'return on target audience influence.' (And thanks to Alan for introducing Hill & Knowlton's work on influencer network analysis . . . completely umprompted.)

And a final word from Catherine Clement who is leading the communications team at the City of Vancouver in preparation for the 2010 Olympic Games: "We are already exhausted, and we still have three years to go!"