## 1. Introduction

In May 2016, the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture held a meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado to bring together forest planning team members to share experiences and lessons learned during plan revisions under the 2012 planning rule. The meeting participants included planning team members from early adopter and other forests beginning the plan revision process, regional and national planning staff, and members of the National Advisory Committee on Implementation of the Planning Rule (FACA committee). This provided a forum to share lessons learned, innovations, and emergent challenges that planning team members are experiencing across the National Forest System, and establish network connections among planning staff. This meeting also was designed to identify opportunities to support learning throughout the organization in order to make planning processes across the agency more effective and efficient. In summary, the specific objectives of this meeting were to:

- • a forum for forest planners to come together in person to dialogue, share lessons • a forum for forest planners to come together in person to dialogue, share lessons learned, problem solve, and improve their knowledge networks within the organization;
- • challenges and successes thus far in the process of revising forest plans; • challenges and successes thus far in the process of revising forest plans;
- • topic areas amenable to synthesis of best practices and begin this synthesis; and • topic areas amenable to synthesis of best practices and begin this synthesis; and
- • knowledge gained so far in forms that can be easily shared. • knowledge gained so far in forms that can be easily shared.

The Forest Service Ecosystem Management Coordination (EMC) staff partnered with Colorado State University (CSU) to help plan and facilitate this meeting. CSU students took detailed notes and developed summaries of meeting content throughout each session in order to capture emergent themes, challenges, innovations, lessons learned, and best practices regarding plan revision. We have compiled this report based on these meeting notes. We also recorded short videos interviewing staff about important topics, lessons learned, and innovations; these have been provided to EMC. In addition, we will be conducting a series of interviews with planners in Summer 2016 to investigate these topics in greater depth, and we will compile a second report based on these interviews.

The meeting included a mix of presentations, panel discussions, small group breakout sessions, and large group dialogue. This report is organized to roughly follow the meeting agenda (see Appendix A), provides a brief introduction to key topics, and captures key themes and details from presentations and discussions. Relatively more time is spent on topics that were covered in greater depth at the meeting, such as public engagement and assessment, which is attributable to where most forests were in the revision process.

Further information discussed at this meeting can be found on the Lessons Learned Event Library within the Early Adopters SharePoint site: https://ems-team.usda.gov/sites/fs-emc- plngrule2012/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx#InplviewHash35bb0e58-7903-4ba3-9181- c36e7dd5307b=.