Posted on Friday, November 5, 2010 by
Michael •
What is it about Australia? We get requests frequently from folks down under asking about bringing Front Porch Forum to their shores. Here’s one from today…
Have you considered extending this concept overseas? A good story always travels well. By the way, I am an American and grew up in Detroit/Grosse Pointe, MI. We used to know all our neighbours back in the 60s & early 70s. I have been living in Australia for some 17 years now and even here I try to do this with my neighbours and always introduce myself to new arrivals, but with your inspiration I would like to take it further. -Lars
I am a high school teacher and community organiser. I love the Front Porch Forum concept, and have tried to do the closest thing I could think of in my local part of Brisbane, Australia… which was a simple email list. I distributed hundreds of letters to the houses around me, introducing myself and explaining the concept as best I could.
I did get some interested responses, but not enough people providing content to get the thing off the ground. I also was unsure about how to run it: an email group where people can all post and reply? (Disadvantage = they have to work out how to use email groups)… or just accept and collate content and send out regular newsletters, eg: weekly or fortnightly (Disadvantage = centralised, dependant on one person, lack of interactivity, slower.)
In the end I went for the latter option, setting up an email address which was mystreetname@gmail.com… with my street at the centre of the are that I distributed flyers to.
If anyone has any better ideas about how to run a solo operation along the lines of FPF, I’d love to hear them. Or ideas about how people like me/us could connect with each other to collaborate on a mutually supportive project.
Cheers,
Murray Carew
Have found an Australian tool called Neighbourhood Networks. Have signed up and am checking it out:
http://neighbourhoodnetworks.com.au/
Looks like they still have a fair bit of work to do before it becomes fully functional. Worth singing up however, to register interest and receive updates.
Another comment re the website I mentioned above – 3 months later and I have not received any reply to my email enquiries. Looks like nothing’s happening anytime soon
🙁
On the other hand, check out this facebook group I’ve created:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hyperlocal/
Hi Murray… sorry to read that you haven’t heard from them. And I’ll take a look at your fb page.