From maple creemee tours to swimming holes, farmers markets to local writers, there’s plenty of hidden gems that any new Vermont resident simply must check out. One perfect example is the locally grown VPR podcast, Brave Little State; it will tell you all you need to know about making your home in the Green Mountain State! We think their tip about joining FPF is especially good 🙂
Category Archives: Front Porch Forum
FPF on Reimagining the Internet
Front Porch Forum‘s Co-founder, Michael Wood-Lewis, joined Ethan Zuckerman of Reimagining the Internet for an interview on running a healthy online community. Reimagining the Internet is a podcast that talks to experts in the field about what isn’t working with social media and how it can be improved. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was also a recent guest of the podcast.
Give this great interview a listen!
For more on FPF check out FPF in the news!
“I love my town!”
From bread fairies and neighborhood scavenger hunts, to Little Free Pantries and mutual aid networks, Front Porch Forum members have been reaching outto offer their love and support to each other. This Valentine’s Day we share the love neighbors have for their communities.
While there were too many heart-warming postings and stories to choose from this especially difficult year, here are a few that made us feel warm and fuzzy:
“I heartily praise Northfield’s “gem of a library” and know that there are many additional people, organizations and businesses that have also done a lot to help our community through these recent months. I’d like to suggest taking some time to send a card or email, or perhaps make a phone call, to thank those who have made a real difference in your life. And, in that spirit, thanks FPF for helping me stay connected to the community while I isolate at home!” • Sue in Northfield
“Today, I want to reach out to everyone I have had the opportunity to meet, within the Starksboro community, and to those I hope to meet in the future. I want to say how thankful I am for this community. We are a little shelter of giving and caring and reaching out. Welcome to the newer residents. I have the fortune of knowing there are folks who help, and give, and tire themselves for other needier people around them. I have the fortune that I can disagree with someone’s politics and still be grateful they are my neighbor. Take care everyone this winter season. Reach out. Extend your love and care. Ask for help. We all need to know we are not alone.” • Carin in Starksboro
“I am so grateful for the business owners, healthcare workers, teachers, school nurses, sanitation staff, grocery store staff, and so many others who are obligated to risk their health for the sake of the community, or the sake of themselves and their family as they hold an in-person job while so many of us are struggling at home. Sending thanks and love to the children and teens in this community, whose resilience astounds me and inspires me to keep going, keep making safe decisions to keep their schools open and their lives as close to normal as possible.” • Lauren in Waitsfield
“This is my first time in a small community and the love and support of total strangers has overwhelmed me. I don’t remember everyone’s names, but you have provided me with rides to work, tires, ironing board and iron, and the list goes on. When I post a need, I receive multiple emails. I am grateful to each and every one of you.” • Gloria in Morrisville
Front Porch Forum Expands Staff to Meet Growth
Burlington, VT, February 3, 2021 — Front Porch Forum now has 200,000 members! This recent membership milestone indicates FPF is serving 75% of the state’s 260,000 households, and more Vermonters sign up every day.
In recognition of this growth, FPF expanded its team of Online Community Managers. We welcome new hires, Emily Bissonette and Zach Scheffler, who will help the organization fulfill its mission of helping neighbors connect.
As part of FPF’s 22 staff members, our Online Community Managers (OCMs) play a crucial role in reviewing and publishing many thousands of member postings each week, and providing member support.
Zach says of his new role “It’s a joy and an honor helping Vermonters inform, inspire, and look out for one another.”
Zach has a background in community media and municipal information services. Outside of Front Porch Forum, Zach enjoys a brisk hike, photography, and woodworking.
Emily joined the OCM team in September 2020. “I really enjoy the collaborative work environment at FPF. I’m originally from Vermont and I am also really enjoying being more informed about what’s going on in our state through my FPF work,” she said of her work.
Emily resides in Middlebury with her sweetheart, and kiddo, and a miscellaneous menagerie including a dog, a cat, chickens, and various waterfowl. She is the only Marie Kondo Certified Professional Organizer in Vermont, and when she’s not at work for Front Porch Forum, she focuses on business, Alchemy Organizing or teaching REFIT® dance fitness.
Front Porch Forum is an award-winning Vermont Public Benefit Corporation. Our mission is to help neighbors connect and build community, leading to more resilient communities. FPF hosts regional networks of online local forums where neighbors, small businesses, nonprofits and municipal officials post about a wide variety of topics. This daily neighborly exchange leads to people feeling more invested in their communities and getting more involved.
Extra! Extra! FPF in the news!
Front Porch Forum is gaining some remarkable national attention these days. It’s an honor to be featured and recognized for our community building work, local focus and approach to digital tech. Check out some of the cool things that have been happening with FPF in the media below:
“To Thrive, Our Democracy Needs Digital Public Infrastructure”
Jan. 5, 2021
By: Eli Pariser and Danielle Allen of Politico
“…what we need are not just information services with a mission-driven agenda, but spaces where people can talk, share and relate without those relationships being distorted and shaped by profit-seeking incentive structures. We are just beginning to see glimpses of what these spaces might look like. One model is Vermont’s Front Porch Forum…two-thirds of Vermont households are on the Forum, and many Vermonters find it a valuable place for thoughtful public discussions…
…Built into the premise of this work is the notion that what’s needed is not one publicly owned Facebook clone, but an armada of localized, community-specific, public-serving institutions that can serve the functions in digital space that community institutions have served for centuries in physical places. Vermont’s Front Porch Forum and other examples show this is possible, even in the digital age.”
Read the full article here.
“Imagining Our Social Media Future”
Jan. 15, 2021
Hosted by: Brooke Gladstone of WNYC Studios and featured on NPR
Brooke Gladstone and Eli Pariser explore the limitations mainstream social media places on real communities. Welcoming and thought-provoking digital spaces make community building more possible. How the spaces are designed will decide how we participate in them.
“I’m inspired by examples like Front Porch Forum in Vermont, which is kind of like a slow social network…it’s very heavily moderated local email list that you can post to [daily]. If you post something and it’s against the rules and norms it gets sent back to you with a nice little note saying like “hey can you try saying this a different way.” The once-a-dayness is really important because you have to have a lot of stamina and energy to sustain an argument across 14 days of back-and-forth. What’s interesting about Front Porch Forum is it’s used by a huge portion of households in Vermont. Local representatives in Vermont are on Front Porch Forum because they know that’s where the issues of the day are being discussed and addressed.”
Listen to the full, 15-minute discussion here.
“Replacing Facebooktwittergooglamazonsoft”
Highlights from the New Public Festival, held Jan. 12-14, by Micah Sifry
“Given all the problems with civic engagement today—widespread misinformation, heightened polarization, online mobs (and their offline manifestations), fears of censorship by over-empowered tech bros, social isolation, increased mood disorders from online addiction, the list goes on and on–should we fix the tech platforms, or should we start over?”
Front Porch Forum co-founder, Michael Wood-Lewis, presented alongside dozens of other tech innovators and project leaders working to shape the future of tech spaces. For more information on who participated in this year’s New Public Festival or to sign up for more information, visit here.
“These 14 principles could help big platforms create healthier social media”
Jan. 20, 2021
By: Steven Melendez
“The Civic Signals founders say they have had some discussions with big tech companies about their work. But they also see the signals as useful to smaller and nontraditional operations, including publicly operated civic forums and smaller platforms like the Vermont-run Front Porch Forum, a network of neighborhood-based sites.
“We have a realistic view of what can happen in traditional tech-startup world, and we don’t think that all of these public functions can be served just by private companies alone,” Pariser says. ‘There’s a role for public infrastructure as well.'”
Read the full article here.
“Could Tax Dollars Fund Smaller, Better Social Media?”
Feb. 2, 2021
By: Stephen Gossett
“…Users will need a brigade of options — “localized, community-specific, public-serving institutions that can serve the functions in digital space that community institutions have served for centuries in physical places,” as Pariser wrote in Politico.
One model that Pariser has pointed to is Vermont’s Front Porch Forum, a 20-year-old local forum/digital newsletter that has become an unlikely model for online communities.”
Read more here.
Also, check out more commentary from Eli Pariser from Dec. 2020 on an episode of Your Undivided Attention from the Center for Humane Technology here.
Looking Back to 14 Years Ago
The staff at FPF was touched to rediscover this 2006 Seven Days article titled “Front Porch Forum Encourages Neighborliness — Online and Off.” It’s heartening to see how far Front Porch Forum has come over 14 years.
The article explains how FPF got started. At the time it was written, co-founder Michael Wood-Lewis compiled e-newsletters alone.
“Though Wood-Lewis is currently working on FPF as a volunteer, he sees his time as an investment. He’s hoping that as the service expands, he’ll be able to find local businesses to sponsor it.”
Now the organization has a growing staff of 22. It’s been put to use in communities all over the state, and now serves parts of New York and Williamstown, Massachusetts. The look and feel of the Email Forum has been redesigned and members can now also read their Forum via mobile app and the website.
Check out the full piece for an awesome throwback (complete with a MySpace reference!)
“Local Logic: It’s Not Always a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Technology and the way people use it has the power to unite people or pull them apart. Ethan Zuckerman and Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci of Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University took a closer look at platforms that bring communities together on a local level, only to find that some designs work better than others.
Platforms that operate more like social media, where individuals can post whatever they want instantaneously, can lead to heated, attacking commentary, false accusations, or misinformation. This kind of content may cause civil discourse to devolve and it may disrupt the establishment of ties within a community.
On the other hand, Front Porch Forum is an example of a local platform that has systems in place to help keep conversations civil and community-minded, fulfilling its mission of helping neighbors build community. From Rajendra-Nicolucci and Zuckerman’s piece:
“That organic growth was key to maintaining one of the key differences between FPF and Nextdoor: proactive moderation. FPF uses a team of moderators that review each post to make sure it adheres to the site’s code of conduct (which bars personal attacks and behavior “counter to its community-building mission”) before it’s posted. That helps to keep the discussion friendly and constructive… We believe a platform that takes governance seriously, is designed for a specific purpose, and has ties to the communities it serves can be successful anywhere.”
The authors also share the criteria by which they evaluate various platforms. These platforms operate on a local level broken into neighborhoods, towns, or city blocks.
“Getting local social media right is important. Local platforms present an opportunity to strengthen social capital and civic life. At their best, they can keep residents informed about local issues, encourage civic organizing and action, and facilitate new connections and greater understanding.”
Read the full article on Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University’s blog here.