Joining Us - Overview
Thank you for showing interest in joining us. Planning Tank is run by students, professionals and volunteers who contribute to the advancement and betterment of Planning Education. Planning Tank is “Student Centered, Change Oriented”, Our platform is built around the students while keeping in mind their diverse needs. We encourage and enable students to share their thoughts, build credibility and their voice be heard. Based on the feedback received for about a decade now, we have worked on various areas and challenges which are faced by students, professionals and change makers. These range from academic challenges to extracurricular to internship needs to job requirements. We have touched upon each aspect and try our best to help them at every stage so that they have more time to focus on what actually matters!
Contribution from our readers is what keeps us motivated and going. It would be really helpful if you could provide us with some ideas about what activities you can help us with, since we are working on multiple aspects.
Broad categories/ heads include the following:
Content Writing - Article (Formal/ Informal), Newsletter, Article Rewriting,
Design & Graphics - Social Media, e-books, promotional materials etc.
Videos - A normal video, explainer videos, whiteboard videos etc.
Quiz - Share ideas and help us develop quizzes which are both informative and amusing.
Discussion Forum - Help us answer the most common questions about the field.
Small e-books - Research & Publications
Outreach/ Marketing & Copywriting - The right marketing is long pending and forgotten in the field. There is a gigantic gap between the education sector and the corporate world. We wish to use the most effective and innovative marketing strategies to increase awareness about the profession among the masses.
Social Media - Promotion & post creation
Course Building - Course materials developed for planners under one roof! We are working on building Planning Tank Academy just like Udemy or Coursera, but exclusively for planners.
Infographics/ Memes - Harnessing the power of visual content for more effective information sharing.
Data compilation/ structuring/ documentation - Due to the large number of tasks and never ending ideas, sorting, categorizing and documenting all the ideas and workflows is an important activity for us. Keeping things organized will result in higher efficiency and boost overall productivity.
We are always open to new ideas, suggestions and feedback. Some heads mentioned above are provided with brief information below:
Awareness through article/ literature for students and as well as public
Information on how to become a member of the Planning authority/ organization in a particular country (this is long pending) such as RTPI, APA, ITPI, NITP etc.
Helping each other through Facebook group & Discussion Forum (currently not being used by many) and our recently started Newsletter - Planning Times™
Admission tips and information about scholarships in various countries
Dedicated Job Portal
Any possible ways of generating funds and revenue or collaborations such as direct ads from companies/ colleges/ universities with a major focus on Urban Planning since our platform is run by students and volunteers who contribute in individual capacity.
Tutorials/ Guides/ Tips & Tricks on most common problems encountered while working with the software
A list with brief info about:
Most widely used desktop software/ applications
Mobile apps
Free and open source software/apps/ tools
Urban Planning books
Top/ most frequented websites which deals directly with Urban Planning or provide access to journals/ research papers
Sources of different type of data
Blog articles which include expert opinions on the ongoing advancement and issues related to Planning.
Application and extension of Urban Planning into GIS, Data, Academic Writing & Environment
Organizing and listing the relevant articles from the website into easy to understand and read categories. We now have close to 1000 articles, which makes it really difficult for people to find the relevant content. Thus, we started with what we call "study units", listed below:
Any other ideas and suggestions which is easy to implement and can be executed in a short time
Sharing your views about Architecture, Planning & how does these two go together?
Answering/ explaining Urban Planning to Architects or to people from a non-planning background.
Helping non-planning background students (from diverse backgrounds like architecture, civil, geography, sociology, law, etc.) understand more about planning.
Helping us with small e-books like how to get admission to XYZ college, review about a course from a particular college and other similar 4-5 page e-books
What next, how to proceed?
Kinldy provide us with the following Information, it will help us plan things in a better and phased manner:
What are your existing commitments/ involvements with other platforms, if any.
Do you run/ manage any blogs or if you have any prior experience of writing for websites (especially WordPress based)?
Do you have any experience/ information about SEO (search engine optimization) and keywords?
Your CV/ Resume, Academic Profile/ work experience/ portfolio etc.
A rough estimate of the time you would be able to dedicate towards Planning Tank on a weekly/ monthly basis
Preferred time (morning, afternoon, evening, weekends etc.) during which you will be available for discussions with our team, working hours will remain flexible as communicated earlier.
Your areas of expertise/ interest areas on which you wish to contribute.
Your expectations from us and any questions which you might have and would like us to answer?
Note: 1 Please submit content which is unique & you have permission to publish. We do check the contributions for plagiarism before publishing, but at times it might be missed. If content is found to be copied, then we are required to delete it.
Note 2: Submissions once published are not deleted. So, if you plan to get your work published on other platforms too, then kindly inform them about its availability of Planning Tank and, similarly, if you want to republish your previously published work on Planning Tank, let us know details about it.