Monthly Archives: June 2007

Craigslist Success

Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 by • No comments yet

It was a pleasure meeting Craig Newmark last month at the Personal Democracy Forum.  Mark Evans shares the following about Craigslist…

Curious about Craigslist’s success? Then check out this podcast that founder Craig Newmark did with David Weinberger. Quote of the podcast from Newmark: “Everything on the site is based on user feedback. Frankly, I have no vision whatsoever.” At the mesh conference last week, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster dropped a few mind-blowing facts:

1. The site is serving up seven billion pageviews a month from 200 servers
2. All 24 employees work at a Victorian house in San Francisco
3. The company has never had a tech quit in 12 years
4. Craigslist never holds meetings.

Neighborhood Night of Success on TV

Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

Burlington’s annual Neighborhood Night of Success occurred May 29 this year.  CCTV Channel 17 has been replaying their tape of the event and couple of the replays are still to come:

  • Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 5:40:00 AM
  • Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 11:40:00 AM

Front Porch Forum was one of many proud award recipients that night.

City Councilor using FPF to Organize

Posted on Friday, June 8, 2007 by • No comments yet

Burlington Ward 5 City Councilor Bill Keogh is using Front Porch Forum to organize an initiative he calls Walk with Me…

Want to reduce your health care costs?  Start at home by (and you’ve heard this before): not smoking, watch how often you eat and how much you eat, and exercise.  Exercise is not a sophisticated endeavor.  It means you get out and walk.  Walk up and down the street, around your block.  Just walk.

With that in mind, I am looking for volunteer WWM’s!  Those are Walk With Me leaders.  You would be the person in your neighborhood who would be a leader in a neighborhood walk of, maybe 15 mins a day, twice a week.  This proposal is to get folks in the neighborhood together, to take a short evening stroll. Aha! Exercise and sociability.

By neighborhood, I’m talking about focusing around the area covered by your electronic Front Porch Forum.  The walks could be at 7 p.m. on a weekday and one day of the weekend.  If you are interested, contact me at bkeoghsr@yahoo.com for more details and support.

Good for Bill!  I know a former councilor who has done the same thing in her own New North End neighborhood through Front Porch Forum.  Another great use of this service.

MeetUp.com growing 10% per month

Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 by • No comments yet

Front Porch Forum received a wonderful compliment from someone who knows about such things when he compared FPF to MeetUp.com.  And then today Dave Weinberger wrote…

I’m glad to say that MeetUp.com is doing well, growing 10% per month. (Their only metric is how many successful meetups there are.) I love the Web, but I love faces more than screens. Also, I’m an admirer of MeetUp because it was founded to address a real social need. They are, well, good folk.

The Great Neighborhood Book

Posted on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 by • No comments yet

A new book that may be worth a look (thanks A Librarian at the Kitchen Table)…

The Project for Public Spaces’ new book, The Great Neighborhood Book, by Jay Walljasper, explains how struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there.

“The willful destruction of public life in America has been so stupendous that heroic efforts must now be mounted to restore it. This includes especially the actual places where public life might dwell and thrive. “The Great Neighborhood Book” is a superb manual for this campaign – to take back the places where our buildings meet the street.” James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and the Geography of Nowhere

State Rep. and City Councilor Agree

Posted on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 by • No comments yet

Steve Urquhart, a Utah state rep. who I met at the PDF conference had these wonderful things to say on his blog…

One of the most interesting projects I saw at PDF was FrontPorchForum (FPF). FPF is using online community to build real community. According to FPF co-founder Michael Wood-Lewis, about 20% of the people in Burlington, Vermont, are FPF members. Membership groups are limited to neighborhoods and sign-in is by real name. By using the forum to help match needs with resources for things like shoveling snow, moving furniture, obtaining emergency firewood when a furnace failed, selling old cars, staffing neighborhood watch programs, etc., FPF is using the Internet to help build better neighborhoods in Burlington. Way to go, Michael!

UPDATE (Later): My friend Arjun Singh, the bloggingist city council member in all of Kamloops, British Columbia, paid me a visit in the comments. It’s really funny how people see the world. As far as I know, Arjun and I were the only two elected officials at PDF (at least he’s the only one that I met, I should say). And we both work on the local level (though city and county council types might challenge me on that assertion). While there were lots of famous and important people there and lots of cool things to catch someone’s attention (I’ll blog about some in the coming days), if you look at his blog, you’ll see that Arjun and I both lasered in on a not-so-flashy site doing worthwhile things at the local level.

MacBook on truck roof… happy ending?

Posted on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 by • 3 comments

I had trouble imaging a happy ending when the following message came across the Huntington Neighborhood Forum from a local blacksmith yesterday…

I left my MacBook Pro (17″ screen) on top of my truck and took off down the road. Long story short it fell off between Huntington and Montpelier. At some point I herd a clunk, looked over and passed it off as the passenger seat-belt rattling in the wind. I’m sure that was the the computer. In retrospect I’m thinking this would have happened on the road to Richmond OR getting on the I 89 going south in Richmond . I remember saying to myself I’m not stopping now to fix the seat belt.

Anyway PLEASE keep an eye out for a silver case on the side of the road while biking, walking, or driving. More then likely its in pieces but it has all my business data and such on it….. An obvious lesson for all can be learned from this $2800.00 ++ mistake. I’ll let you all figure it out as it’s way to painful for me to relay.

Today some other Front Porch Forum members weighed in with similar thoughts as mine…

All I can say is “ooouuuuch!” As a dedicated Mac user, I know your pain must be great… I hope some Samaritan found it and will return it to you! If so, you should be able to recover the drive…

So imagine my surprise when the following note just arrived!

I received a call from Small Dog Electronics in Burlington. Some one picked up my lap top off the hi way and delivered it to them!! It was run over a few times BUT the hard drive still works! So all my info was not lost and all will be recovered. HOW ABOUT THAT!  Small Dog actually said it could be repaired!  Thanks to all that looked for me.

Gotta love the happy ending.

Another Happy Subscriber

Posted on Friday, June 1, 2007 by • No comments yet

Just chatting with a Front Porch Forum subscriber this evening… ran into her on Church Street during Jazz Fest. Last we spoke, she was in tears because her car had been vandalized and broken into in her Old North End/Hill neighborhood.

Today it was all smiles. She posted a note about her experience on her neighborhood forum and – viola! – she got two responses… one from a neighbor who’s nearby car was side-swiped about the same time, and another from a neighbor who put her in touch with a city program to help victims of such crimes.

So she got to commiserate with someone, find some redress for her problem, and then she passed along the victim-program info to the other person whose car was damaged… and felt good about lending a helping hand too!

Oh… and she found a squash partner (that’s with racquets on a court!) through her neighborhood forum. A happy subscriber indeed!

About Blog

Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more

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