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https://www.placespeak.com/

Place Speak

PlaceSpeak is a location-based citizen engagement platform that authenticates the online public participation process through digital credentials and privacy-by-design to build trust.

Active
Since 2010
New City Ventures, Attn: PlaceSpeak, 1005 Cypress Street, Vancouver, BC, V6J 3K5, CANADA
Open source: No (N/A)
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PlaceSpeak began in 2011 as a research project supported by the National Research Council of Canada IRAP. Subsequently, it became the subject of the Founder's PhD thesis in Applied Innovation at the University of British Columbia. Initially, it was developed to solve the problem of how to consult with people online geospatially. It uniquely combines online proof of residency and Privacy-by-design in its data architecture, enabling evidence-based decision-making. Its initial use was at the local government level, where land-use change involved citizen engagement. Once participants were authenticated, it enabled a citizen-centric model, where users could be notified of an participate in future consultations. This led to the development of a Civic Network approach. Its impact has been in building trust in the online engagement process, and as a deterrent to trolls, bots and other forms of online manipulation. In 2021, PlaceSpeak was certified as a BCorp and in 2022 was recognized in the top 5% Globally in the Governance category in recognition of its mission to 'make democracy real online'.

Evidence of this project's impact

PlaceSpeak has achieved another significant milestone: over 1,250 active neighbourhoods in 15 cities across Canada. This means that over 60% of PlaceSpeak users have Neighbourhoods available in their community. (Source) — 2024-12

Resources

Founder(s)

Colleen Hardwick

Org. type
For-profit business / social enterprise / B Corp
Project type
Tool or platform
Country
Canada 🇨🇦
Founded
2010
Language(s)
English
Employees
8
Pricing
Not public
Features
Webpage builder or CMS, Events, Growth marketing tools, Resource library
Tech stack
BuiltWith report →
Categories
Civic forums, Communicating with the government, Digital participation platforms, Engagement tech, E-voting and I-voting, Govtech, Group decision making, Ideation, Online forums, Participatory democracy, The Tech, Voting and elections
Tags
place-based
Added
2021-06-22
Last modified
2026-08-14T17:25:14.000Z

Additional details

Tech stack
SyntaxHighlighter, Less, Open Graph, HubSpot Analytics, Google Analytics, reCAPTCHA, Google Font API, Font Awesome, Cloudflare, jQuery CDN, Google Hosted Libraries, cdnjs, Marketo, HubSpot, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot Chat, jQuery UI, XRegExp, lit-html , lit-element, Isotope, prettyPhoto, scrollreveal, Modernizr, Lodash, jQuery, New Relic, AngularJS, Nginx, Auxilia, YouTube, Vimeo, Django, Varnish, Bootstrap, Leaflet, Google Maps, Facebook Login, Python, Shopify, Livefyre
Integrates with
Facebook, NationBuilder, Google Analytics
Formats
place-based
Institutions using the platform
25 **1. Municipal Governments:** - **City of Calgary, Alberta**: Engaged residents in the redevelopment plan for Stanley Park, gathering input on proposed changes and improvements. - **Corporation of Delta, British Columbia**: Conducted consultations for the North Delta Area Plan, focusing on long-term community growth and development. **2. Regional Planning Authorities:** - **Orange County, North Carolina**: Sought public input on the "Our Home for Life" Community Sustainability Plan to guide future county development. **3. Educational Institutions:** - **Surrey School District, British Columbia**: Utilized PlaceSpeak to engage parents and community members regarding proposed school boundary changes, ensuring feedback from affected families. **4. Community Organizations:** - **Save BC Film Campaign**: Mobilized public support and discussion around the film industry's contributions to British Columbia's economy and culture.
How AI is used
PlaceSpeak utilizes AI to process extensive qualitative and quantitative feedback from engagement tools, enabling real-time generation of reports and insights. Also, PlaceSpeak developed the SentiMap feature that employs text-based sentiment analysis to visualize participants' sentiments in discussion comments along a five-point scale, ranging from very positive to very negative. This geospatial view provides a quick snapshot of trends and differences in public opinion across geographical areas, allowing for more nuanced analysis and policy-making.
Content moderation policy
https://www.placespeak.com/en/terms/moderation/
Number of end users
Unclear
Number of integrations
6
GitHub contributors
2
Metrics of success
PlaceSpeak has achieved another significant milestone: over 1,250 active neighbourhoods in 15 cities across Canada. This means that over 60% of PlaceSpeak users have Neighbourhoods available in their community.
Geographic focus
Canada 🇨🇦, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 🇬🇧, Australia 🇦🇺, United States of America 🇺🇸
Geographic focus — country
Canada 🇨🇦, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 🇬🇧, Australia 🇦🇺, United States of America 🇺🇸
Pricing
Not public
Pricing — license model
Subscription based license.
Pricing — government / nonprofit discount
No
Support included
Yes. We include support services in our license subscription.
Demo
https://www.placespeak.com/en/orgsignup/?plan=demo&source=b2b
Documentation & learning
<https://www.placespeak.com/connect/documentation/> <https://placespeak.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/USER/overview?homepageId=14352458>
Support resources
<https://www.placespeak.com/faq/#>
Accessibility certification
Yes

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