Interesting discussion led by Jeff Jarvis about local news online this week… does hyper local matter to 18-35 year olds or not? And, if not, then let’s just declare it dead and move on. Jeff goes the other way and says that hyperlocal is just very hard to pull off and that everyone is interested in it, regardless of age.
Yelvington.com jumps in today and really nails it…
One camp agrees hyperlocal is important. The other thinks local is dead and it’s all about hyper-me. Me, me, me.
Here’s the thing. For most people, there is no difference between hyperlocal and hyper-me, because most real people live very local lives.
I do not. Lately I’m acutely aware of how little I actually live where I live. I have a well-stamped passport, gold status on Skymiles, friends scattered around the planet. I dare not assume that other people are having the same 21st century virtual experience that I’m having with my wifi connections and my global-roaming text messages.
I get the point about hyper-me, I really do, but I also know that most people live locally. And for them, hyper-me and hyperlocal largely overlap.
Human beings need connections. We’re hardwired that way. But modern life gets in the way. TV and the automobile sell us connections but deliver isolation. Stand at a street corner and count the cars with drivers talking on their cellphones. They’re fighting back.
I’m looking at some proprietary research from one city where fully 38 percent of women who were interviewed reported that connecting was their biggest personal challenge.
Virtual connections through a social networking platform are better than no connections at all, but the real opportunity, I think, is in virtual connections that are combined with real connections. Physical-world connections. Hyperlocal space.
That’s what Front Porch Forum is all about. And I don’t doubt the research about women feeling challenged by connecting with other people in this day and age. Check out the unsolicited remarks from FPF members… it all boils down to developing lasting connections with real people… in FPF’s case, with nearby neighbors.
And, good for him for recognizing that he’s not Joe Average. I know of several (if not most) “local” efforts that are designed by national-focused people with little experience of living in community with neighbors, serving on school committees, running a fundraiser for the volunteer fire dept., etc. And they feel that way.
Many of these “local” online services are built for a national collection of locals, thus losing a degree of authenticity. Just like eating at McDonalds among strangers is a fundamentally different experience than bellying up to the counter of a local diner and talking about the Little League playoffs.
Kevin Harris writes today…
Adults were three times more likely to play out when they were young, than children are today… released by Play England:
71 per cent of adults played outside in the street or area close to their homes every day when they were children, compared to only 21 per cent of children today.
There has been a decrease over the past thirty years in children’s access to the streets and outdoor areas near their homes. Increasingly their independent mobility is restricted by traffic and fear, which in turn causes them to spend much of their time indoors or at organised activities. The combination of an increase in vehicles on the roads, increased parental anxiety, and restrictions on children’s mobility in the form of child curfews and anti-social behaviour orders has reduced children’s outdoor play opportunities.
The qualitative research reported included focus groups with young people aged between eight and 18. From which comes this scary piece of news:
Ten of the participants said that they never played outside on the streets and areas near their home.
That’s ten out of 64 participants. And in the light of my recent note about the importance of unstructured time, this point is noteworthy:
In all the groups, children and young people said that having the freedom to choose what to do, and where to spend time, particularly in contrast to time spent in school, was very important. Even the youngest children talked about having this freedom and time away from parents and adult supervision.
There’s much more material here
This is all about England, but it sounds not too dissimilar from the ol’ U.S. of A. While I’m tempted to launch into a lengthy piece that starts with “When I was a boy… ” – I’ll instead just add my hearty “hear, hear!”
I don’t have anything beyond intuition to back this up… but I believe that Front Porch Forum works to reverse this unsettling trend. That is, a neighborhood with a thriving online FPF forum becomes a friendlier, more neighborly place, where parents get to know their neighbors over time and thus become more comfortable turning their kids out to play. Maybe I’m wrong… but it’s just this kind of thing that motivates us to make FPF work for more and more communities.
Thanks seem hardly enough when conveyed to UVM Professor Susan Comerford for her remarkable words shared on a PBS.org blog this week…
Front Porch Forum is a postmodern return to citizen democracy which is nurturing the burgeoning hunger for community in our society. Feeding the mind and the soul, the neighborly interchange provides the information necessary to participate intelligently in the democratic process, develop deeper connections with those around us, and provides the support and care that meld individuals who live near one another into neighbors. This may well be the most important advance in community development strategies in decades. Communities around the country will be seeking this opportunity to strengthen their social infrastructure, to foster healthy communities, and to provide the support necessary for their citizens to live vibrant, connected lives. Michael Wood-Lewis deserves a MacArthur Fellowship for an idea as visionary and important as this.
An award of this magnitude would facilitate the hard work and creativity needed to bring the community-building success of our pilot area to other locales across the United States… marvelous to even be mentioned!
Yelvington writes today about the wax and wane of social networking site popularity…
Brands just aren’t what they used to be. A brand used to be something that stood the test of time. Now a brand is still powerful in terms of defining what a product is all about, but when it comes to loyalty, fuggetaboutit. Brands today are volatile.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the social networking space, where Orkut and Friendster are about as attractive as yesterday’s dog food. Myspace, the hot item just six months ago, is in a brand tailspin from which it may not recover; even the kids are sneering at it. And the new darling? It’s Facebook, which a year ago looked like a dead-end street…
Facebook’s founders supposedly have turned down offers approaching a billion dollars for the site. Smart or not? Facebook is certainly ascendant. The question I have is: For how long?
Amen. I think of hang-outs from my high school days… a particular hamburger stand for a couple months, until all the kid brothers and sisters showed up, then the crowd would up and move to the arcade on Saturday nights after the football game… then the pizza shop… then the 24-hour donut place (hmm… them’s good eats!).
I seem to recall that the arcade did NOT survive when the in-crowd moved on. Other places did fine and probably preferred that the teenagers got lost after awhile.
So I’m guessing that the “it” social networking site will continue to shift (I don’t know who’s after Facebook)… it’s not about bells and whistles, it’s about who’s there. That’s reasonable. Some sites will compete for the favor of the masses, while others will be content to develop niches.
I like Front Porch Forum‘s potential. It’s not about popularity, it’s social networking with your neighbors… online a little so it can happen in person a lot. I see it as a solid base that doesn’t try to compete with the trendies… part of any real community’s infrastructure. We’ll see.
I learned more today about a promising event coming this fall to Burlington (October 23-25, 2007)…
COMMUNITYMATTERS07 is the next annual gathering of the Orton Family Foundation and PlaceMatters, where a national network of practitioners comes together to learn, share, inspire and seed innovation in place, collectively elevating the art and science of planning for vibrant, sustainable communities.
Building on the success of the PLACEMATTERS06 conference held last year in Denver, COMMUNITYMATTERS07 will be coming to Burlington, Vermont for a three-day event that will showcase planning technologies and methods, foster discussions and collaboration among citizens and professionals, and improve the way communities make decisions about their futures. COMMUNITYMATTERS07 seeks to support and expand an emerging network of place-based innovators while focusing on challenges particular, but not unique, to the Northeast.
Good stuff and inline with Front Porch Forum‘s focus.
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