#BTV #VT - From Charles Lawton in yesterday’s Portland Press Herald…

… Two election cycles ago, Howard Dean introduced us to the financial aspect of this [e-government] revolution by showing how Internet-savvy political appeals could mobilize institutionally unconnected individuals into an effective donation and voting bloc.

Since then, Internet appeals and social media have become basic tools of political campaigns.

Another Vermont innovation — Front Porch Forum — has brought the same technological capability to what used to be the town meeting, the pancake breakfast and the church bean supper. It is a virtual meeting place for neighbors to share ideas on topics as mundane as a lost cat and as controversial as ATV trails and town charters. To judge by its glowing testimonials and rapid spread to towns across the Green Mountain state, it has been a great success.

Much is simply an expression of neighborliness — the loan of a sump pump, a reference to a native French speaker, thanks for a bigger-than-average turnout for church bingo.

But other testimonials speak to the forum’s value in building community — “I look forward to reading it every night. I’m not a Facebook fan but I LOVE Front Porch Forum.” And still other comments illustrate its value as a well-utilized source for varying but always respectful, never ranting, opinions on hot-button public issues.

In this last respect, the FPF represents e-government as a reflection not of a more efficient bureaucracy but of a more involved citizenry. And that is its greatest contribution and the one we ought to seek to promote here in Maine.

Tapping Tech 2.0: Transforming Vermont’s Economy

See pp. 16-17 for a write-up of Front Porch Forum.

May 7, 6 PM
#BTVMayor: How Social Media is Redefining Politics
Maglianero Cafe, 47 Maple Street
Front Porch Forum will be featured on the panel.

May 8
Vermont’s Digital Future Conference
Champlain College
FPF will be on the Connecting Communities panel.

May 15
VBSR 2012 Spring Conference – Creating Pathways for Vermont’s Next Business Generation
UVM Davis Center
FPF is proud to be a conference sponsor.

Front Porch Forum Helps Calais Neighbors Connect

What if nearly every household in a small rural town were in daily communication with each other? What would change?

I remember growing up and knowing everyone on my block, including their pets. All of us neighborhood kids would go on epic bike rides (sans helmets of course) or play group games such as “Manhunt,” “Ghost in the Graveyard,” kickball or Wiffle ball. As darkness fell, we waited until our parents yelled our names before we even thought about heading home.

Some of my favorite memories were created with my childhood next-door-neighbor. Her parents owned a furniture store, and we would spend hours playing “house.” No dollhouse could ever compare to those life-size decorated rooms. I remember calling each other on large rotary phones every morning to see what adventures lay ahead of us that day…

Front Porch Forum is a great way to get recommendations, communicate important information or to simply connect with neighbors for a common interest…

Here are the top ten reasons I believe why neighbors no longer know each other:

#10.  Lawn services
Back in the day, the only people working on lawns were the homeowners. This created a great opportunity to run around with the neighbors while Mom and Dad were outside working. Today, hanging out with the TruGreen guys just isn’t the same.

#9.  Decline of the front porch
This is another social tie that has gone by the wayside. People now hang out in their backyards on their decks. They probably don’t even know what kind of cars their neighbors drive or what time they get home from work. I used to be able to tell that it was almost supper time when I would see Mr. Whitcomb’s car pull in. Likewise, when I heard his car start up in the morning, I knew it was 7 a.m. without even looking at the clock. Today, if I wanted to be aware of my neighbor’s coming and goings, I would have to follow him on Twitter.

#8.  The Internet
Many people can now work from home, do all of their shopping online and even have their groceries delivered. You can conceivably never leave your house.

#7.  Gym memberships
Health clubs weren’t really around when I was younger. People would get their workout the old-fashioned way — walking/jogging/biking around the neighborhood. So, if you were out on your front porch or doing your own yard work, you would see them. Today, people head to an out-of-town gym or work out in their own homes with a slew of fitness DVDs. In the past, there were only so many times we could rewind those Jane Fonda VHS tapes before we gave up and headed outside for a walk.

#6. Dual-income families
There are simply fewer people home during the day. The adults go to work and the kids — and even the dogs — go to daycare.

#5. No free time
We have so many “time saving” advances, yet we don’t seem to be any more efficient. You’d think not having to get up and walk across the room to change the television channel or adjust the volume would give us at least an extra hour a week!

#4. Fear
The media has scared us so much that we may actually fear strangers. They constantly remind us there could be predators or meth labs right next door to us.  This doesn’t really encourage people to bring a fruit basket to a new neighbor.

#3. Laziness
If we get to know our neighbors, they may actually (gasp) ask us for a favor. We don’t want to water their plants while they’re away or help them finish their basement.

#2. School bus stops
It seems like the buses these days stop at each child’s house. We had one stop that the entire neighborhood walked to. That’s where we always met the new kids and got to know each other’s parents.

Click here to see reason #1!

People looking for an online neighborhood forum used to have few free choices beyond discussion sites such as Yahoo groups or email lists. Now options are popping up left and right. Besides Nextdoor, which launched nationally last fall, there’s Home Elephant, My Virtual Neighbor, Neighborland, Yatown and Hey, Neighbor! — to name a few. Some are available in just a handful of cities so far.

“There’s probably 20 startups in this space,” said Michael Wood-Lewis, chief executive and co-founder of another site, Front Porch Forum. His company launched eons ago, in Internet terms — 2006…

Neighbors write in with questions, problems, ideas or needs — “Urgently seeking lost dog,” for example — and the company compiles everything into an emailed newsletter that comes out as often as there’s sufficient content.

In Burlington, Vt., 10,000 of the city’s 16,000 households have signed up. In Westford, Vt., residents used Front Porch Forum to start a food pantry. And in tiny Moretown, one of the Vermont communities hit hard by Tropical Storm Irene last August, neighbors reported that having had the e-newsletter for a year beforehand turned out to be a big help.

“During that year, book clubs were formed, dog-walking groups got together, the school’s PTA got stronger, more people were showing up for events,” Wood-Lewis said. “So when a disaster hit, it wasn’t a bunch of kind of vaguely familiar strangers who weren’t sure how to reach each other. They were living in a community.”

Atlanta-based Home Elephant, which launched last year, allows users in the same neighborhood to share news, chat and pass on alerts. People can sign in through Facebook and let the company suggest neighbors to “friend.” Nearly 6,200 neighborhoods in more than 70 countries — including some areas in Maryland — are using it.

Chandler Powell, a Home Elephant co-founder, said… he feels like the David to Nextdoor’s Goliath, because Nextdoor is a Silicon Valley startup with venture capital money. Home Elephant — so named because elephants are social creatures — has no marketing budget and is a nights-and-weekends labor of love at the moment, Powell said.

Nextdoor, with its Facebook-like feed for neighborhood conversations, has an immediately familiar look. It also has designated spots for recommendations, resources, photos and the like, along with a map showing where participants live. And users can receive neighborhood “urgent alerts” sent as text messages to their cellphones.

If there’s no Nextdoor site in your neighborhood, you can start one — but only if you get nine other neighbors to sign up within three weeks. The company is trying to avoid ghost-town websites.

To join, you have to prove you live where you say you do — providing your home telephone number for a verification call, for instance. Or a vetted neighbor can vouch for you, which is how Nextdoor said most people end up joining.

Of the approximately 2,000 Nextdoor neighborhood sites, 20 are in Maryland. Seven more are in the pilot stage locally, waiting for enough sign-ups.

After midnight last night, I observed a very large bright red light in the sky traveling north away from Smugglers’ Notch ski area. It appeared to be quite high in the sky, above the mountains and traveling slow. It was not a plane. There was no sound. I ran outside and watched as it traveled over my house. It appeared to go higher as it continued, in straight line path in the sky. I watched until it disappeared over the mountain behind us. I was hoping someone else observed this unusual phenomenon. I would also appreciate any reasonable explanation as to what this could have been.

Posted by Karen on the Cambridge Front Porch Forumtoday!

FOLLOW UP POSTINGS…

• I am very intrigued by your sighting… I’ve visited the crop circles in England and I do think that we have neighbors… Thank you for sharing your experience.
• It was most likely a Flying Sky Lantern.  We have sent those into the sky many times and had neighbors comment on seeing a UFO.
• What you saw may have been a satellite.  I’ve watched them in the past.  Check out the web site stellarium.org for real time satellite and star locations, it’s an amazing site!
• I don’t know how bright or how fast your object was but Mars is a very bright red right now and would be about where you described it at midnight. Planets, especially Mars and Venus are often mistaken for UFOs, especially if scudding clouds give them a sense of greater movement in the sky.  By the way there is a spectacular dance going on between the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter in the western sky right now during the evening and early night hours. Here’s some info.
• I live just down the road from Smuggler’s View, and although I did not see the large, bright, red light, we now live in unusual times.  With last week’s unseasonable heat wave and the strange behavior of my two pups, I feel inclined to paraphrase Carl Sagan’s epitaph to astronomer Johannes Kepler: I prefer the hard truth to my dearest illusions.  Go with your gut on this one.
• The UFO sighting thread included a comment by a neighbor about sending “flying sky lanterns” “into the sky many times” which were mistaken for UFOs. Please reassure me than nobody would release a balloon or other device with an open flame, combustible materials, or any other hazard that could cause a fire. We’ve just had a period of high risk of brush fires due to dry weather. I’d like to think that everyone who lives in this area is aware of the danger and would not send anything “into the sky” without considering the potential for setting fire to the woods.  Probably unnecessary to point out the obvious, but the concept of a “flying sky lantern” caught my eye. Hopefully this was just a joke, a bit early for April Fools. If I saw my neighbor releasing a balloon-borne candle or such, I’d certainly have a discussion with them, but not about UFOs!

• I want to thank all of my Front Porch Forum neighbors for all of the emails and posts, in their efforts to solve my UFO mystery! I now believe it was indeed a sky lantern. After doing some research and checking out some images on Google, it seems to match what I saw. My guess is the lantern was launched at Smuggs.  Looking forward to a special occasion to launch one myself some night!

According to a 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project report, of nearly 2,300 surveyed, half ages 50-64 did not know their neighbors; the number was 52% for ages 65+.

So when I heard about free neighborhood websites, I stopped multitasking. They are a place where neighbors communicate online with others who live nearby about community issues (a new building project in the area, traffic concerns, a burglary, a favorite gardener, a family in need), post requests, and get to know one another. That often leads to face-to-face connections and new relationships.

According to Michael Wood-Lewis, cofounder of the Front Porch Forum, a neighborhood website in Burlington, Vt., there are about 20 similar start-ups around the country. Created in 2006, his is among the oldest and serves one-third of Vermont.

One of most recent entrants is the San Francisco-based Nextdoor, which debuted last October and is in more than 1,200 neighborhoods nationwide. In order to join one of these private social networks, you have to live in that neighborhood (except if you’re an adult child/caregiver) and when posting, use your full name. If there’s no neighborhood website, you can start one and invite neighbors to join.

What does this have to do with caregiving? These companies are seeing adult children, who are caregivers, or their parents or relatives, the care recipients, using it to enlist the help of others. Last winter, during a blizzard, an adult daughter living across town got on the Front Porch Forum website and asked her mother’s neighbors to check on her. Several went over to make sure she was okay and fed, while someone else shoveled her driveway and walk…

Five years after borrowing $8 from her mother to start an online business, Michigan teenager Ashley Qualls has an annual income of more than $1 million. Her secrets?  A creative idea and access to broadband Internet. In [Vermont], Michael Wood-Lewis invested $15 and invited neighbors to “share messages about lost cats and block parties.”  Today, he is president of a thriving enterprise and lives in one of America’s “top-ten” neighborhoods. His secret? Leveraging Internet technology to create a space for community.  These stories may leave you wondering how you could benefit from the opportunities presented by broadband technologies…