Digital Day

Sessions

We’re excited to share our session lineup for Digital Day! Get ready for a day of in-depth learning about digital engagement and social media, all hosted by local experts.

Keynote

New Nostalgia: How Looking Back Drives Engagement Forward

Your agency’s most engaging content might already exist — it’s just sitting in your archives. This session explores New Nostalgia, the strategic use of historical content, throwback stories, and vintage visuals to drive authentic engagement and deepen community connections.

Just as Microsoft’s Windows brand sees engagement spikes when sharing retro technology posts, public agencies can tap into powerful emotional connections by showcasing their history. Whether it’s vintage photos of city construction projects, throwback employee spotlights, or then vs. now comparisons, nostalgic content consistently outperforms traditional messaging because it sparks genuine conversations and shared memories.

We’ll dive into why nostalgic content resonates so deeply — from the psychological comfort of familiarity to the authenticity that comes from real history rather than manufactured marketing moments. You’ll see real examples of how transit agencies, parks departments, and city governments have turned dusty archives into viral social content and meaningful community dialogue.

This isn’t about living in the past — it’s about using your organization’s authentic history as a bridge to connect with audiences in an increasingly impersonal digital world. You’ll learn practical strategies for identifying the golden content hiding in your files, adapting archival materials for modern platforms, and creating “then and now” narratives that showcase both heritage and progress.

The keynote session is for communicators who want to cut through social media noise, build authentic brand storytelling, or simply find fresh content ideas that don’t require starting from scratch.

Breakout Sessions

Each breakout session will last 45 minutes, and include approximately 30 minutes for content and 15 minutes for audience Q&A.

Building Stronger Communities

Chris Guizlo

Port of Seattle & Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

You don’t need a large budget to create an effective influencer program.

The Port of Seattle, a public agency, has successfully developed a program from the ground up, organized impactful events, and established strong relationships with influencers. We’ve discovered our unique approach and are eager to assist others in identifying and launching their programs.  

  • Learn how to start and manage an influencer program.
  • Get best practices for hosting influencer events.
  • Discover strategies for fostering relationships with local influencers.

From Clutter to Calendar: Organize Your Content Strategy

Angie Millar

City of Sammamish

Juggling social media, newsletters, web updates, event promotions, and last-minute requests? You’re not alone — and there’s a better way. Learn how to bring structure to your communications workload with simple, effective content planning tools.

This session will walk you through how to build and manage a content calendar that not only keeps your social media on track but also helps you stay ahead on all communications tasks. You’ll learn strategies to align messaging across platforms, plan with purpose, and reduce the stress of daily posting.

Even better — these tools can help your leadership team think more strategically about communications and better understand the scope of your work. Whether you’re a team of one or part of a larger department, this session will give you practical tips to stay organized, efficient, and empowered.

  • Build a smarter content calendar: Learn how to create a simple, flexible content calendar that helps you plan ahead, stay organized, and manage all your communications tasks—from social media to newsletters and beyond.
  • Streamline your workflow: Discover practical tools and strategies to juggle multiple responsibilities more efficiently, reduce last-minute scrambles, and bring clarity to your communications process.
  • Empower leadership through visibility: Use your planning tools to help leadership understand your workload and think more strategically about communications, allowing for better alignment and support across your organization.

Illuminating Local Voices: Public Storytelling in a News Desert

Thomas Rush & Naomi Fine

City of Issaquah

With more gaps in local journalism, government communicators have a unique opportunity — and responsibility — to become stewards of local stories. This session explores how public agencies can rise to that challenge by embracing local storytelling as a core part of their communication strategy.

See how the City of Issaquah decided to create their “Uniquely Issaquah” brand to spotlight human interest stories, community milestones, and unique local voices using digital-first and social-first approaches. You’ll learn how to make the most of your agency’s existing platforms and audiences, remain nimble to create the space for storytelling, and foster trust by ensuring that the lack of local journalism doesn’t mean the end of local recognition.

Whether you’re part of a small city team or a large department, this session will offer practical ways to highlight how storytelling isn’t just a creative add-on — it’s a powerful public service.

  • Capture stories of interest to your community.
  • Increase the quality of content your agency produces.
  • Provide a service that is increasingly missing.

From Chaos to Content: Social Media Leadership when You’re Not in Charge

Leah Lukban & Ellis Johnson

Public Health – Seattle & King County

Have you ever had a creative social idea only to present it to your team and hear “I don’t get it”? In this session, two members of Public Health – Seattle & King County’s social media team will share ways to develop your “silly little videos” and unleash your team’s inner theater kid.

We’ll discuss practical strategies like content examples, scripts, and storyboards to help you manage up and move ideas forward. Learn how to let your guard down and get a little silly with your team to lead on social even if you’re not in charge.

  • Practical strategies for ‘managing up’ to move your creative ideas forward.
  • How letting your guard down and getting silly can make space for your team’s creativity.
  • Fun ways to engage staff who are not terminally online but do want to participate.

UW’s Playbook: High-Impact Social Media for Lean Teams

Steven Norris

University of Washington

In the past year, the University of Washington reimagined its social and digital strategy to focus on what truly matters: engagement. With a small, resource-limited team, we shifted from a volume-driven approach to one rooted in creating meaningful content for our audiences, measured by clear data and informed by real-world results.

The outcome? We went from ranking routinely ranking in the 120s among American universities in social engagement to consistently creating content that ranks among the top-performing in higher education nationwide.

This session will walk through the process of how we got there, the lessons we learned, and the strategies that communicators of any size team can apply immediately. We’ll show you some examples of high-performing content you can adapt to your own organization and the best places to focus your time for the biggest return.

  • How to audit your current digital presence and identify what’s really working.
  • Framework for an engagement-first strategy — and how it beats a “post everything” mentality
  • Tips for small teams to maximize impact with limited time and resources including what to measure (and what to stop worrying about).

This is Fine…Should You Keep Posting Even When Everything is on Fire?

Nathan MacDonald

City of Lynnwood

In the life of a communicator, some days are normal, other days you get a call from a reporter in Europe about a PR crisis involving one of your elected officials. (Oh…is that just me?)

All communicators know that the only constant is change and that one crisis, regardless of duration, creates noise and even hostility towards your agency, especially in the comments section. Which then begs the question: to post or not to post?

In this presentation, we will explore the pros and cons of posting during a crisis, discerning questions to ask yourself, and how to establish trust with your leadership to handle this challenge when minutes matter.

  • Adjust your communications strategy during a crisis.
  • Speak up and advocate when speaking with leadership.
  • Ask yourself the right questions to help you discern when and when not to post during a crisis.

Building Bite-Sized ADA Habits into Our Daily Work

PeiPei Sung

City of Seattle

Learn the top 5 accessibility actions that comms teams can promote for our partners to put into action immediately. Discover how to fold accessibility checks into everyday tasks, including alt text, reading order, page structure, appropriate links, and more. Explore quick demos of tools such as Microsoft Word’s accessibility checker.

  • Share these bite-size training sessions with your colleagues.
  • Learn steps to incorporate alt text, page structure, creating accessible hyperlinks, color testing, and more.
  • Leave with a selection of 7-minute training presentations to bring back to your own team

Language Access is Fundamental: An Introduction to Creating More Accessible Agencies and Content

Manuel Hernandez

City of Burien

Language access is an opportunity to better engage the community, provide services, and make our jobs easier as civil servants. Learn how to advocate, assess, and start building with tools to increase language access in small to mid-size local government agencies.

When we build out language access, everybody wins. This includes submitting applications, paying fees, emergency messaging, and arming our community with the tools to succeed. Think about how many people in your city or service area are currently not part of the conversation. Too often, communities with limited English proficiency are left out on the outskirts of information.

Manuel Hernandez will bring experience as a multilingual speaker growing up in an immigrant household where English was not the main language spoken. Manuel will also share experience from working as a bilingual social media manager for six years, and what it means to center community because nobody is truly voiceless. You just have to know where and when to listen.

This session will support your agency where they are at, whether well-resourced or not. Language access may begin small, but like a snowball sliding down a mountainside, it can carry immense force.

  • Advocate: Create strategies to obtain buy-in from leadership and colleagues.
  • Assess: Understanding concrete steps to start assessing current language access and crafting an assessment survey.
  • Start building: See examples of programs and strategies.

Hey Siri: Is This Real? AI Tools for Better Content Creation and False Information Detection

Bronlea Mishler (Camano Island Fire & Rescue) and Sarah Miller (Pierce College)

Love it or hate it, AI is part of the digital communications landscape. In this fast-paced session, you’ll learn how to leverage AI tools to improve your digital crisis communications.

Sarah and Bronlea will discuss the best practices behind emergency messages on social and show you how AI tools can speed up the process of crafting messages that resonate with your communities.

You’ll also learn how to use AI against AI — to identify false information or faked images and protect trust in your agency and your message. Best of all? The knowledge is free and so are many of the tools you’ll learn about. You’ll leave this session with high-impact, low-cost strategies to improve the reach and impact of your digital crisis communications efforts.

  • Learn how to effectively engineer AI prompts.
  • Leverage different AI tools to generate effective messages for all languages and reading comprehension levels.
  • Harness AI tools to identify and mitigate risks from false or fake images and messaging.

Bringing Parks to Life Through Live Video and Storytelling

Bridgette Larsen

City of Bellevue

Learn how government teams can use live video to build stronger connections with their communities. Attendees will cover planning and execution, accessibility, engaging with viewers in real time, and how to reuse content afterward. Dive into real-world examples to see what works and how to make live video feel approachable.

  • Use live video as a marketing tool: Learn how to promote upcoming broadcasts, write simple hooks that spark curiosity, and capture attention with clear titles and descriptions. You’ll also see how to measure success with engagement data so you can prove value to leadership.
  • Tell stories that stick: Practice structuring a live video around a clear beginning, middle, and end. You’ll learn how to frame a park program or public space as a story, spotlight people (staff, volunteers, community members) as the “characters,” and use visuals and dialogue to make the story feel authentic.
  • Get more out of your live content: Walk through how to clip highlights, create short recaps, and repurpose live video across newsletters, social channels, and websites. You’ll leave with a process for extending the shelf life of every broadcast so one live session becomes weeks of engaging content.

A Spoonful of Sugar… Helps the Road Closure Go Down

Rachel Terlep

Washington State Department of Transportation

It’s one thing to be fun on social media when you’re sharing good news. But what happens when the message isn’t fun at all, like telling Seattleites that their busiest highway will be fully closed in the middle of the summer?

This session dives into the challenge of delivering unpopular news in ways that still capture attention, maintain trust and (if possible) keep spirits high. We’ll explore proven strategies and tactics to balance transparency, accuracy, and tone when the stakes are high, and frustrations are inevitable.

We’ll look at real-world examples of how social media managers can communicate detours, delays, and difficult updates effectively and earnestly. We’ll also examine when to be playful, when to play it straight, and how to recognize the difference.

  • Discover engagement tactics for framing tough updates so your audience pays attention, understands the impact, and takes action.
  • Learn how to build trust through consistency with timely updates, responsive engagement, and transparent messaging.
  • Learn how to use judgment to decide when playfulness can lighten the mood and when a more straightforward tone is more appropriate.

Meaningful Metrics: Analyzing Data to Inform Strategy

Mary Watkins

Washington State Department of Ecology

Metrics can be daunting for any social media professional. What do the graphs mean? What are impressions? Why should I care? Join Mary Watkins as she shares a peek behind the curtain. Learn helpful tools to showcase your social media growth (and opportunities for strategy adjustment) with colleagues and leadership in a palatable and engaging way.

  • Learn how to analyze complex social media metrics to measure the success of social media campaigns and accounts.
  • Develop impactful key takeaways by analyzing patterns in social media metrics.
  • Explore strategies to share social media metrics with your leadership and colleagues.

TL;DR – Why Plain Language Wins

Brian Hardison & Nona Raybern

City of Seattle

Tired of confusing, jargon-filled communication that leaves everyone scratching their heads? Join this lively session to see why simple always beats complicated. Plain language doesn’t just make your writing clearer; it creates content your community actually understands. (Bonus points for engagement!)

Whether you’re writing updates, alerts, or any content that matters, plain language is your secret weapon for better public engagement. Perfect for communications pros and project managers who are ready to stop losing their audience after the first sentence. What you’ll gain:

  • Practical tips to connect with your audience and keep them reading.
  • Proof that clear writing saves time, reduces errors, and improves compliance.
  • Real-world examples of how plain language transforms government content into effortless reads.

Beyond Top 5: Choosing and Targeting Multicultural Audiences

Sian Wu

University of Washington and Resource Media

When choosing multicultural audiences for campaigns, people often choose the ‘top 5’ most common languages other than English. But a lot more should be and can be considered to make for a successful digital multicultural campaign. Hear from Sian Wu, instructor of multicultural marketing at UW CommLead, and managing director of Resource Media, a nonprofit creative change agency based in Seattle. You’ll learn how to consider local media outlets, internal staff capacity and social media channels to develop custom multicultural audience targeting for each campaign. Learn how transcreation and culturally responsive design can improve the engagement and effectiveness of your future campaigns. In this session Sian will talk through real-world examples of how she was able to accommodate for a variety of different cultures and abilities in her work with Public Health, Seattle & King County for their COVID campaigns, as well as working with digital influencers in campaigns to reach young people to sway behavior.

Content & Creator Showcase

In the Content & Creator Showcase, presenters will speak about their topics and takeaways for 15 minutes each.

No Intern? No Problem. Creative Systems for Great Government Content Ideas

Marie Tweedy

King County

You don’t need a content team or an intern to keep your government account creative, you need a system. This session will walk you through a repeatable, realistic process to find inspiration, track trends, organize ideas, and bring them to life for your agency’s digital channels. You’ll leave with a content idea-tracking template, a plug-and-play post checklist, and a better way to turn your Saved folder into real content. We’ll cover:

  • How to build your own trend radar (even if you’re not on TikTok all day) and where to look for fresh inspiration and content that will spark creative risks.
  • Systems for saving and organizing content ideas (without adding more chaos to your inbox).
  • What goes into a short-form video script — and how to write one that makes sense to your boss.
  • How to pitch a trend or meme with confidence and structure.

Drawn to the Hand Drawn: How Digital Comics Make Public Information Emotional and Relatable

Meredith Li-Vollmer

Public Health – Seattle & King County

Digital comics can harness visual storytelling to make public information relatable, eye-catching and compelling. By placing people at the center of illustrated narratives, comics can tackle complex issues, humanize wonky topics, and build empathy for people or even agencies confronting difficult circumstances. Public Health – Seattle & King County has developed a wide range of digital comics for public information, including guidance on what to do if a rat is in your toilet, interviews with long COVID patients, and stories about gun violence prevention efforts, co-created with community partners. Consistently, we’ve found that digital comics posted on our blog and social media get high levels of engagement and are among our most shared content. This session will explain how to use comics to tap into the emotional aspects of our programs and initiatives to develop digital content that resonates and captures attention.

  • The comics medium has unique characteristics that can carry a density of information in an economical, accessible, and entertaining way.
  • Comics are an effective way to tell personal stories that carry emotional weight, and they can make our social media content more relatable and engaging.
  • Visual storytelling in comics can make public information easier to digest and understand, especially for residents with lower literacy in English.

The Meme-ification of Infrastructure: Turning Boring-but-Important Topics into Clickable Content

Lillianna DeLeon

King County

How do you get the public to care about public infrastructure? This talk will explore how to use creative hooks, visuals, and pop culture references to spark interest around overlooked but essential government projects. Attendees will walk away with ideas for punchy copy, social-first visuals, and tactics to boost reach, all without compromising accuracy or professionalism.

  • How to craft engaging content for “boring” topics: Attendees will learn approaches to make routine or technical government projects (like paving or culvert work) more relatable and engaging through clever copywriting and visual storytelling.
  • Using pop culture and memes to increase reach (responsibly): Discover how to thoughtfully integrate humor, memes, and timely cultural references to capture attention while maintaining professionalism and public trust.
  • Strategies and tools for maximizing social media impact: Walk away with actionable ideas for social-first visuals, audience-centric messaging, and simple tactics to expand organic reach without sacrificing accuracy or clarity.