Park Planning and Gamblin Motors on Patch Itinerary Thursday

Tonight, will be hosting a seminar detailing how local businesses can leverage free Internet platforms to promote themselves. Tyson Gamblin tells Patch the presentation will center around the Google platform, which lists businesses for free and after they are claimed by their respective owners, the owners can add photos, videos and find other ways to personalize the listing to ensure their business gets noticed when consumers are searching the Internet.

Gamblin told us it was something the local dealership wanted to do for the community after realizing that a lot of local entrepreneurs don't know about what options they have online that don't cost much -- if anything.

Funny thing to us was that it all sounded really familiar. And it should because Patch Places (enumclaw.patch.com/places) offers the same options to local businesses. We currently have more than 700 listings for various businesses around town and many have claimed their listings; but many have not. If you're a local business owner, have you claimed your listing? Click here for a video tutorial on how it works on Patch.

Gamblin has graciously allowed Patch to co-plug our product during their seminar tonight. We'll be seeing you there at 6:30 p.m. ().

But our visit will be short-lived as we're headed to City Hall at 7 p.m. to check out the presentation that the middle schoolers will be making to the city Park Board about their plans for developing Mahler Park. Patch visited the students' class last month to learn that this is no semester-long or even year-long project. () School administrators hope the students can take the planning project into the high school level and possibly involve younger students entering sixth grade as well.

The students were specializing in topics including stream and sediment flow, effects of precipitation on erosion, luminiscent properties of algae, the salmon ecosystem and the importance of water quality.

Hefty material for middle schoolers and very impressive. We're excited to check them out and if you want to come, the Park Board meets at 7 p.m. at City Hall.