You absolutely do not want to miss these two exciting sessions at PIE 2023!
First, check out the Park Tank, the Shark Tank style session that will be PIE’s version of a parking reality show (a mash-up of several popular television programs). Join us for this unique event. A group of start-up vendors will be invited to present their parking solutions to you and a team of parking experts. Let’s see if they will turn their chairs. The vendors are vying for a six-month mentorship with their parking expert along with the opportunity to showcase their parking solution to the PIE audience.
The start-up vendor presentation order will be randomly selected, and the order will not be known in advance. Vendors will have no more than four minutes to pitch their solutions. The experts will only hear the pitch (no slide decks). Follow-up questions can be asked by the experts, just like on Shark Tank. Each parking expert will have the chance to turn their chair if they like what they hear before the pitch or Q&A is over! Just like on the television program The Voice (but without Blake Shelton), if more than one parking expert turns their chair, the vendor will have the option to select their expert. Each expert will have the opportunity to only select one vendor which means the four-minute pitch and question responses will need to knock it out of the park.
Don’t miss this fun way to learn about new parking solutions and hear the questions that you may want to consider when evaluating your vendor options.
Tuesday at 10:00am
Be sure to attend this year’s presentation from the Dixon Resources Unlimited team. The team is returning with another informative and entertaining session. Join the MythBusters team as they debunk the parking industry’s biggest myths! Whether you are new to the industry or a seasoned professional, you may be surprised to learn some shocking truths behind common parking theories. Often times there is more than meets the eye, so it is important that we look at beliefs with a critical eye. The industry is evolving quickly, and some longstanding beliefs are being challenged or disproven as agencies discover surprising results and face unintended consequences. As parking industry professionals, it is our duty to cross-examine ideas and combat the industry’s most prevalent fallacies.
This session will prepare you to address misconceptions that your constituents may have. The session will illuminate the common myths, clarify the reality, and offer specific strategies to combat them. Next time you are faced with a myth, you will be armed with the facts and tactics to help put it to rest.
Parking data can be extremely valuable for demonstrating the discrepancy between perception and reality, and the session will address how to develop a data collection plan to address the need. The session will also propose effective community outreach strategies to address the myths while building trust.
This comprehensive session will address a range of topics including paid parking, compliance, sustainability, parking minimums, and more. During this interactive presentation, the MythBusters team will evaluate a variety of case studies to break down the various misconceptions and expose the truth.
The presentation will include sales tax data to demonstrate how paid parking benefitted a community that previously believed that paid parking would wipe out customer demand – spoiler alert: it didn’t! The team will also examine revenue projections to demonstrate that paid parking isn’t usually a “money grab” like constituents may fear.
Importantly, the presentation will emphasize ways to address myths about parking enforcement (or better stated as parking “compliance”) since compliance is an essential element of a parking operation. It may seem counterintuitive, but issuing more citations does not actually mean that compliance operations are improving. Understanding the reality behind these common misconceptions will prepare you to nip them in the bud.
In this session, audience members will be challenged to think of additional ways to effectively communicate to the public that the beliefs they hold about parking may not always be reality. This will be a chance to brainstorm with your colleagues about how to implement myth-busting skills in your agency.
This session will prepare you to get ahead of parking myths and send a clear message about parking management strategies. It can be difficult to break through long-held beliefs in a community regarding parking, but this session will equip you with the leadership skills necessary to effectively challenge myths that communities may hold.
Wednesday at 11:00am
See you at PIE!
Julie Dixon is CEO of Dixon Resources Unlimited. She can be reached at julie@dixonresourcesumlimited.com
