Rob Norman (President 1991-1992)

My focus for my term as OALA President included leading the OALA through an analysis and exercise to strategically evaluate all of the OALA’s programs, goals and objectives, with respect to our mandate.  Through this analysis and determination of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and gaps, we determined our challenges at that time stemmed primarily from two areas: budget restrictions and promotion of the profession.

From this analysis, as President, I concentrated on the challenges related to the promotion of the profession. Collectively, OALA Council undertook the engagement of a public relations firm to help create a promotional plan for the OALA.

This strategic planning for the promotion of the profession in Ontario led to the creation of a marketing committee within the OALA. I continued my work with the Marketing Committee, which led to the development of an advertisement promoting the OALA and the profession. This advertisement would be targeted to potential employers of landscape architects’ services.  The one page advertisement for publications was created with the help of ADCOM Advertising and Design. The OALA advertisement page was entitled, “Breaking New Ground”, and was placed in the spring 2000, Ontario Home Builder publication, read by developers and home builders. The colour advertisement contained three photographs of landscape architects’ award winning projects, illustrating a cross-section of our profession’s work. The text of the advertisement further explained the profession and the scope of the landscape architect’s expertise in planning and design. The footer of the advertisement provided contact information for a list of Landscape Architects in Ontario from the OALA office.

In my role as Past-President of the OALA, I represented the OALA on the CSLA Board of Governors at that time. With the assistance of, Sadler Public Relations and Communications, we produced promotional and public relations templates, such as a template for press releases. These templates provided promotional resource tools, which could be used by the CSLA, as well as its component organizations. In this role representing the OALA, I also produced some of the CSLA’s first policy papers.

Rob Norman, OALA, FCSLA