Ghost of Midnight » Community Management

How best to heat your old home? Ask the neighbors…

Michael — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:43:04 +0000

#VT – Stephanie posted this to her Cambridge neighbors via Front Porch Forum a couple days ago…

So, I doubt if we are the ONLY household having issues with using fuel oil. It has gotten to be outrageously expensive to heat with… What are other/cheaper options? Do you know if Jeffersonville has Natural gas? Is switching to propane any better? Just wondered what other old homes are using these days to cut heating cost. Thank goodness for our fireplace insert! Using 100 gallons every week and a half is killing us. Thanks for ANY info!

And now today she adds…

Wow! Thank you to everyone with different opinions for heating alternatives! I was bombarded with so many emails I couldn’t keep up. I see many of you have pellet stoves and rave about them… that is wonderful. I am going to heed the advice to check the age and function of our current furnace, and definitely find out about the home energy audit. It has been a long time since new insulation has been done also… so I suppose were in for a costly chore, but worth it in the long run. Thanks again everyone you were very helpful!

Ask a question, get an answer… that’s the way it is with FPF. Or, in Stephanie’s case, get LOTS of answers. And get to know some neighbors a bit better along the way. The Cambridge FPF covers all 1,500 households in that town and has 840 members. And it’s finally getting cold this winter!

FPF Community Calendar Now Available for e-Vermont Towns

Michael — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:08:20 +0000

#VT - Front Porch Forum recently launched an online community calendar available in two dozen of the Vermont towns where we already provide our core service. In addition to visiting the calendar on FPF’s website, folks can also clip the widget and place the FPF community calendar on their own website or blog. Details here.

We’re grateful to our partner on this new feature, e-Vermont.

How many people use FPF in Burlington?

Michael — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:44:11 +0000

#BTV #VT – More than 9,600 members are active in Front Porch Forum now in Burlington, out of the 16,000 households that comprise the city. In 2011, they shared 26,000 postings with their nearby neighbors via FPF. Amazingly, HALF of FPF members spoke up and contributed to their FPF neighborhood conversations. In one survey, 93% reported feeling “more civically engaged since joining FPF.” About 100 elected and appointed public officials participate too.

FPF is expanding beyond Burlington… we now serve one-third of Vermont. More than 32,000 members participate in rural areas, suburbs, and cities. Imagine this level of engagement in every part of Vermont and beyond! Let us know if you’d like to help bring FPF to your town (just enter your address on our home page and complete the form).

Three cheers for the tens of thousands FPF members in Vermont… and here’s to vibrant neighborhoods in 2012!

How to put FPF to work for your cause in #VT

Michael — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:17:03 +0000

A friend forwarded an email message today that was sent to dozens of parents whose children attend a local private school. They asked each parent to share the recruitment message with hundreds of neighbors via FPF, kind of like an old-fashion phone tree…

It would be enormously helpful if you would post this announcement to your neighborhood Front Porch Forum — to date, FPF has been the BEST source of prospective families, so it really does make a difference.

We see this all the time from dozens of area nonprofits, political campaigns, small businesses, and various groups. Give it a try to help your cause/event/organization/etc. spread the word to tens of thousands of Vermonters! If your supporters aren’t yet on FPF, send them to FrontPorchForum.com to sign up.

Of course, you’re also welcome to purchase highly effective FPF ad space.

Integral to day-to-day life of community…

Michael — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:16:19 +0000

Dennis posted the following today on the Cambridge #VT FPF…

When, a couple of years ago, a small group of us got together and submitted Cambridge’s e-Vermont application we didn’t realize how integral Front Porch Forum would become to the day-to-day life of our community.

We’ve had a few controversies but there seems to be a self-correcting mechanism in the common sense of FPF subscribers. “It was on the Forum”, has become a fairly common response in town when asked how someone learned of a new business or community service. The Cambridge Front Porch Forum now reaches into more than half of the households in town and I expect that the number of households served will increase yet again when our long promised 100% broadband coverage becomes a reality by next summer. Our Cambridge FPF membership seems to have reached a critical mass and new members join almost daily even though there has been no organized membership drive, that I know of, since last year’s 4th of July celebration. Word of mouth seems to be working! Congratulations to all Cambridge Forum subscribers for making it a valuable community resource and thanks to our local businesses who utilize the Forum with restraint to offer special value opportunities to our community.

Music to my ears! Thanks for sharing, Dennis. We see the points made above happen again and again in other FPF towns, namely…

People don’t realize how much value FPF will bring… six months into it they are amazed.
After an early effort to prime the pump, word-of-mouth keeps new members walking in the virtual door.
FPF typically has the occasional controversy, but it doesn’t go so far as to poison the conversation and drive people away. I’m glad this appears to be “self-correcting”… we’ve worked hard for years to refine our process with this end in mind.
Universal broadband availability isn’t necessary for FPF to get started and make a big impact, AND with widespread broadband adoption FPF becomes even more valuable to local folks.

UPDATE: From another Cambridge FPF member…

A bunch of people were gathered last night in Jeffersonville, and the subject of FPF came up to great kudos for the work you are doing. In fact, some lamented on behalf of friends who live nearby and do not have FPF.

Did I really just do that? For five years?

Michael — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:55:22 +0000

#BTV #VT – I don’t think of myself as a blogger, yet this blog turns five years old today… guess it kinda snuck up on me. Hard to imagine I’ve written 1,150 postings over that time. I started blogging a month or two after launching Front Porch Forum, which now has 30,000 households participating, including half of Burlington.

Thanks to the blog’s many regular readers. Our frequent back-and-forth (mostly off-blog) about the quickly heating up “neighbor conversation” online space is fascinating. Dozens of start-ups are now aiming to help neighbors connect. We’re glad for the company. I invite more of them to contribute to the field by frequently blogging about what they’re learning. Hosting sustainable neighborly online discussions across many neighborhoods is not trivial!

Many of the pundits who focus on adjacent spaces — hyperlocal journalism, social networking, daily deals, etc. — are slowly waking to the staggering potential of online neighborhoods. We’ve seen it first hand in our super successful pilot. Neighbors, local businesses, public officials, nonprofits… they all flock to Front Porch Forum and put it to excellent use.

There’s monster demand across North America for connection to place and neighbors. The opposite — which too many of us experience now — is untenable… living with a neutered sense of community, being surrounded by strangers for years on end, not knowing what’s going on in the neighborhood, not feeling a sense of ownership of your place. Ugh.

Here’s to the next five years!

P.S. What’s with the name Ghost of Midnight?

Do You Value FPF? Become a Supporting Member!

Michael — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:19:41 +0000

#BTV #VT – We’re working hard to improve and expand Front Porch Forum in 2011-12 and we need your help to make it all happen. Please become a supporting member today and help us reach our goal of raising $30,000 by October 30! Contribute here:

http://frontporchforum.com/supporting-members

Every year, members like you help fuel FPF so that we can continue to help neighbors connect and build community. More than 30,000 local households have joined and shared hundreds of thousands of postings with their neighbors through FPF!

Whether it’s flood recovery efforts, group yard sales, car break-ins, sharing perennials, election debates, block parties, town notices, or other topics, our small band of committed staff work day and night to keep this all going.

If you enjoy and value Front Porch Forum, please become a supporting member today at:

http://frontporchforum.com/supporting-members

Your contribution is critical to keeping FPF going strong — and will be enormously appreciated. We look forward to serving you and your neighbors in the coming year.

Your FPF team,
Michael, Nina, Linda, Jamie, Lynn, Gisele, Jeff, Regina, Suzie, and Jan

P.S. We also accept checks, payable to…
Front Porch Forum
PO Box 64781
Burlington, VT 05406-4781
802-540-0069

FPF is not a charity and contributions are not tax deductible. Ad sales to local businesses cover part of our expenses, and your supporting-member contributions help close the gap.

Block by Block: Community News Summit

Michael — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:21:00 +0000

I’m looking forward to speaking at the Block by Block Community News Summit in Chicago (Sept. 29 – Oct. 1). Sounds like a fantastic gathering of online community news publishers. I’m eager to share what we’ve been learning about community engagement through our work with Front Porch Forum, but I suspect that I’ll learn more from other participants than vice versa. Thanks to the sponsors for bringing this group together.

Natural disasters, neighbors and social networking

Michael — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:36:04 +0000

NPR recently covered Daniel Aldrich’s work… he’s looking at how neighbors help each other during disaster. We watched this on Front Porch Forumthis spring when flood waters ravaged many Vermont communities and people rallied to help those who lived nearby. From NPR…

Aldrich’s findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive… a disaster… government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath. When Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren’t those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals. In Japan, Aldrich found that firetrucks and ambulances didn’t save the most lives after earthquakes. Neighbors did.

Meanwhile, from Keith Hampton and Pew colleagues…

Do [social networking sites] isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?

In their fascinating report, they share several observations from their survey, among them… ”In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%) say they use at least one of social networking sites.” The adults surveyed are using Facebook mostly to connect with people from their past… high school, college, family. Facebook doesn’t appear to be used much among current neighbors (chart)… less than 2% in this survey. So, can social networking sites be used by neighbors to help each other… during disasters, as well as with more pedestrian issues the rest of the time? Hampton’s earlier work suggests yes (e-neighbors study and a previous Pew study). Portia Krebs of USTelecom (The Broadband Association) reported this past week…

Consider this: 28% of Americans know none of their neighbors by name, and fewer than half of American adults know most or all of their neighbors. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Americans who go online daily are more likely than non-Internet users to know some of their neighbors’ names – and 27% of Internet users said they used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues. Front Porch Forum – a neighborhood-based network serving small cities and towns – gives registered users an opportunity to discuss everything from road repairs to the school budget. According to FPF, half of the residents of Burlington, Vermont subscribe – and an astonishing 90% of those users said their local civic engagement increased thanks to this online service.

Facebook works so well to help connect old acquaintances. But it’s not so good at helping neighbors find each other. Perhaps that’s because Facebook is all software and no community management. The role of effective online community management to bring diverse people together online in civil and constructive conversation is critically important. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson weighed in recently on this point…

Modern community building isn’t easy but if there is one thing the Internet has taught me over the past 15 years, large engaged communities are incredible powerful things, both commercially and socially. Building them is important and ultimately very valuable work.

Amen! We’re excited to see the dozens of online neighborhood forums that are bursting with activity on Front Porch Forum and we look forward to expanding to more places in the near future. Check out our new web app.

Note: This post originally appeared on the PBS MediaShift IdeaLab blog.

Adrian Holovaty on who’s winning hyperlocal…

Michael — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:04:17 +0000

I think Front Porch Forum is winning. They’ve managed to get 90% of households in a #VT neighborhood to sign up for it, and the community contributions are high quality, useful and interesting.

Beyond that, there are a bunch of great neighborhood blogs in various pockets in the U.S., like West Seattle Blog and Uptown Update here in Chicago.

And finally, I’m biased, but I think EveryBlock is genuinely interesting and useful, especially with our recent community-focused relaunch.

Thanks Adrian! That’s great company for FPF to keep. (See StreetFight for the full interview.) As I’ve said before, EveryBlock’s relaunch is a powerhouse.