This morning, I drove from Boston to Cape Cod, alone with my thoughts except for Theo sleeping in the back seat.  Once we were out of the city and smoothly on the highway, I got to thinking about work, and things really started clicking.  I found myself reaching for my iPhone to record voice memos about once every minute.  I may have even cracked an important nut; we’ll see.

I can’t remember where, but I once heard the phrase the optimism of the traveler, and the idea has really stuck with me.  For me, this manifests itself in the fit of ideastorming I usually find myself in whenever I’m on a plane or train (and sometimes when I’m in a car).  Some of my most creative and productive times have been in these situations.  And it’s not just about volume of ideas — there’s a different sort of excitement and hopefulness that happens during these times.

So, what is it about traveling that produces such excitement?

Is it being away from the internet, and therefore being forced to digest some ideas and not just consume at will?  Or maybe it’s less about attention, and more about being in that middle place between destinations, where anything is possible? Whatever it is, it’s really great.  Of course, the hard part is putting those ideas into motion once you’re feet are back on the ground…

// Photo by Tjeerd on Flickr

I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project.  The front page of our website reads: “TOPP is a catalyst.  We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy.”  While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to people I’m usually met with blank stares.  I don’t mean to dig on TOPP — a lot of effort went into writing that tagline, and believe me, earlier versions were more abstract and less punchy.

Prior to this current version, we had a different tagline: “Virtual tools for real-world change.”  That’s what our t-shirts still say on them, and I don’t mind it.  It has a skyline above it, implying a connection with cities, which I like.

But still, I don’t think we have a compelling enough elevator pitch — a description that doesn’t take five minutes and a walk-through of our org chart to explain.

So recently, I’ve been trying out something new.  I’m experimenting with the following explanation:

(standard disclaimer)  “We’re a non-profit software company; yeah, it’s a bit strange, I know.”

“We build software that makes cities easier to use.  You know, like, making it easier to get around, to interface with your government, and to connect with your neighbors.”

This morning, I tried this on a friend at the gym, and I got an “Oh, cool!  You mean like public transportation?  My friend in Seattle was telling me about GPS on buses there — how come we don’t have that in NYC?”  Bingo.

So, I’m going to test this out a little more.  Making cities easier to use.  I like it.  I just updated my twitter description with that; we’ll see if anyone notices.

To get a little more specific, here are some of the questions I think we’re trying to answer that fall under this larger goal:

How can we make it easier to…

• get around? (ideally by foot, bike, or transit)
• interface with government? (who reps me? who supports me?  how can I help?  how can I be heard?)
• connect with neighbors? (who lives on my block?  what do we have in common?  how can we help each other?)
• be involved in shaping the future? (combining the two above: connecting with neighbors and interfacing with gov)

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a city easier to use, that lots of creative projects (many of them NYC-based startups) are already addressing:

How can we make it easier to…

• connect with friends? (Foursquare)
• help people & volunteer? (Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
• connect in real-time (Twitter)
• organize a team to make something happen, right now (Groundcrew)
• find people who want to do things I want to do (Meetup)
• and on and on…

Given all of these questions and more, it’s highly likely that Making cities easier to use is still too broad; but there’s no question that it’s easier to explain, which is a start.

And for those of you struggling with similar issues of tagline-choosing, see Seb‘s brand-spanking-new conjoint.py decision-making tool, which OpenGeo has been using recently during its own tagline discussion.

// Photo of crumpled city map by Emanuele Pizzolorusso via MoCo loco