Category Archives: Community Building

Pig and Rat on Front Porches

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

My father just sent this to me from Sunday’s paper…

Pearls before Swine 2007.01.28 by Stephan Pastis

Pearls before Swine here and here.

Members Spread the Word

Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

Front Porch Forum members continue to spread the word about this free community-building service. Some examples:

1. A group of neighbors and AmeriCorps Volunteers plan to deliver Front Porch Forum flyers door-to-door in Wards 1, 2 and 3 (old North End, downtown, etc.) this Thursday (Feb. 1, 2007). If you’d like to join this group of fun-loving community-spirited folks, meet them at Radio Bean coffee shop on North Winooski Ave. at Pearl St. at 11 AM. For details, contact Rob Filitor (rmfilitor_AT_gmail_DOT_com)… many hands make light work!

2. “I emailed an announcement about Front Porch Forum to my co-workers today. Several people have already written and said they’ve just joined and love it!” -D.W. in Hinesburg

3. “I spoke about Front Porch Forum to my local chapter of a women’s service organization yesterday. It was a surprise for me that this group of seniors was so interested in this service and I am sure some will sign up very soon.” -A.C. in Charlotte

4. “I think that you are providing a wonderful service. I don’t know very many neighbors at this point, so I am hoping this will open the door to new friendships. I will certainly encourage people who are not signed up to do so.” -J.E. in Colchester

Weekly Sampler: Broadband Options?

Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 by • 3 comments

Another 200 messages posted this past week in the various neighborhood forums hosted by Front Porch Forum in and around Burlington, VT. Here are descriptions of some of the postings. Seems that more and more people are posting a variant of “what’s the best broadband option here?” on their neighborhood forums.  This is our second pass at this exercise… check out the first Weekly Sampler:

  • Seeking broadband advice from neighbors
  • Pick-up basketball in Westford
  • Public safety initiatives in Winooski
  • Waterfront air show – pros and cons
  • Seeking a particular issue of National Geographic (twice!)
  • Broadband options in Westford
  • Free tax-prep program
  • Why can’t we recycle more plastic types?
  • Essex town-village merger
  • Meeting announcements for Route 15 planning, Burlington zoning re-write, online safety training, waterfront planning, Burlington armory fate, senior center planning, and more
  • Baker-for-a-day fundraiser
  • Free garden plot in Lakeside neighborhood
  • Seeking Ottawa travel tips
  • Bolton condo available
  • Seeking, selling and giving away:  washer, dryer, fridge, weights for seniors, couch, minivan, houses, hockey skates, router, monitor, cable modem, skis, etc.
  • Bike path test plowing
  • Tutors, babysitters and preschool slots available
  • Slowing down speeding traffic in neighborhood
  • Dog seeks walker
  • Neighborhood beach security
  • Neighborhood parent group forming
  • Ride needed to WRJ
  • Status of ice skating venues
  • Global climate change study groups forming
  • Keys found
  • Time bank launch
  • Car break-ins and hit and run
  • Local baker pitches wares
  • Art studio opening
  • Winter festival news
  • City news from Winooski
  • Five Spice fire
  • Police join more neighborhood forums
  • Neighborhood forum flyering plans
  • Old North End movie night
  • Neighborhood game night
  • And lots of cat postings: lost, found and sitters needed

Forums Reach Tipping Point

Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

Tipping Point

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. This is a national bestseller that’s been in circulation since 2000. From the back cover: “The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire,” like an epidemic.

I can draw many parallels to what we’re seeing with the growth of Front Porch Forum’s membership. It’s fascinating to watch as neighborhoods “tip,” one after another. A few dozen have passed the threshold already… now they have enough members and enough message traffic to sustain their neighborhood-wide conversation.

I also just read The Accidental Influentials in the latest Harvard Business Review about the work of Peter Dodds and Duncan J. Watts. They offer a different view of the mechanics of a social epidemic:

… Gladwell argues that “social epidemics” are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling—we think we see it happening all the time—but it doesn’t explain how ideas actually spread.

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the “two-step flow of communication”: Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else…

In recent work, however, [we] have found that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don’t seem to be required at all.

… marketing dollars might better be directed toward helping large numbers of ordinary people—possibly with Web-based social networking tools—to reach and influence others just like them.

I’m not sure which social theory best explains what we’re witnessing with the spread of Front Porch Forum. It’s not unlike a dry forest… lighting strikes one neighborhood and its forum bursts into a flame of activity. Other neighborhoods (parts of the forest) smolder for weeks or months before igniting a slow burn. Hmm… I’ll have to work on that comparison.

Military Air Show Debate

Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

Last summer I was enjoying a day at the beach in Oakledge park with my family and some friends. Our four small children were thrilled to be in the water and combing the short stretch of sand for little treasures. As I stood where the bike path terminates along the back of the beach, I looked out and surveyed my brood thinking like a lifeguard… how long would it take me to get to my three-year-old who was wading in beyond bellybutton depth… what if my wife slipped and dropped our newborn in the water… typical father duty.

I can’t begin to describe then the shock when a fighter jet exploded through the air just above our heads. The earth shook. My ears rang. The jet, flying so low that we had no warning before it burst over the trees a hundred feet behind me, was on us in an instant.

I didn’t have one second to protect my family… not even an instant to lay a comforting hand on my oldest son who sat in his wheelchair next to me. Just BOOM!

Welcome to Burlington’s waterfront air show 2006.

For the past couple of weeks the messages against the air show have been multiplying across a number of neighborhood forums. This is a great use of Front Porch Forum. Other members have responded in support of the air show. Most of the comments break down along predictable lines… anti-war = anti-air show and vice versa.

Perhaps the growing number of people against the Iraq war who find the air show objectionable, and therefore wish it canceled, miss an opportunity. I still shake when I remember that instant… I had no idea what was happening, only that some terribly violent power was exploding over my children. I was powerless.

So, while my family was in no real danger, this facsimile of modern warfare in the homeland was a deep-felt reminder of what the U.S. military is doing to people in Iraq (and elsewhere) for longer than our involvement in WWII. My wife and I were able to comfort our kids as they all sobbed, terrified, with “it’s only the air show.” What do parents say in real war zones to their surviving children?

Thus the opportunity. Don’t protest the imitation; rather, use it to protest the real thing. While the military jets streak across the waterfront next summer, excite the local population to imagine that this isn’t a patriotic celebration of our might… instead, use it as a sobering moment of solidarity with humans caught up in war.

Imagine Burlington under attack. Imagine missiles from those jets slamming into the hospital, the water treatment plant, the power plant… bombs dropping on neighborhoods, schools, bridges. Those are our jets after all. Our guns (made in Burlington), our neighbors and relatives in uniform. Only seems fair that we all get an annual reminder of what we’re visiting on other communities half-way around the world.

What the Neighbors are Saying

Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

At one point in my past, I led a 20-year-old trade association of New England utilities with about 30 employees. We took pride in the 100 or so letters we received each year from members who took the time to tell us how pleased they were with our work.

So I’m tickled pink (to channel my mother) that shiny new and relatively tiny Front Porch Forum hears from it’s happy members in droves. Here are three unsolicited comments received just this evening:

Thanks for creating such a great local resource – we really love getting our Front Porch Forums in our mailboxes. -A.P. in The Quarry Neighborhood Forum

I think that you are providing a wonderful service. I don’t know very many neighbors at this point, so I am hoping this will open the door to new friendships. I will certainly encourage people who are not signed up to do so. -J.E. in Bay Creek Neighborhood Forum

Another success: I just received, delivered to my door, 3 packages of diapers for my son. A wonderful town member did not want to throw away unused diapers, so she posted on Front Porch Forum. I replied and she dropped them off! I will be thanking her with some of my homemade bread this week. What a great way to connect, reuse, recycle and overall develop a wonderful sense of community! -H.A. in Westford Neighborhood Forum

More such comments live on our Testimonials page.

Weekly Sampler: Fire Victim Gratitude

Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 by • 2 comments

This past week saw about 200 messages posted in the various neighborhood forums hosted by Front Porch Forum in and around Burlington, VT. People often ask for a concise summary of what members submit to their neighborhood forum… I’ll share some of the topics from the past week. If this works, perhaps I’ll repeat in the weeks ahead. In no particular order:

  • Thank you to neighbors from fire victims in Essex
  • Wireless broadband in Westford
  • Seeking neighbor to sew on buttons in Burlington
  • Sugarshack open-door offer in Westford
  • Pick-up basketball game discussion
  • Senior center programs announced
  • Seeking bridge game, apartment, drum lessons, bike route, sled run, contractor
  • Sidewalk snowplowing in Essex
  • School Commissioner update in Burlington’s Ward 5
  • Many people seeking leads for home snow removal
  • Movie night at Euro Gourmet for Five Sisters neighborhood
  • NYC dog seeking new home in Vermont
  • Impeachment petition circulating in various towns
  • Free wine rack, car seat, and lots of other stuff
  • Snow parking ban announcements
  • Seeking off-street parking during bans
  • Housing regs discussion in the Old North End
  • For sale: snow shoes, yoga lessons, GIS services, singing Valentines
  • Lots of municipal news in Winooski… ice rink status, etc.
  • Waterfront airshow comments
  • Found: aqua blue fleece hat
  • Available: housekeeper, babysitter, real estate appraiser
  • Lots of new member introductions
  • And, a week can’t go by without… Lost cat!

Block Parties Popping Up all Over

Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007 by • 1 comment

Human beings are social creatures. The current high degree of individual isolation in the United States appears to this layperson to be at an all-time high. The culprits? Who knows? Television, suburban sprawl, migration and job turnover, fear of strangers and crime… the internet?

So… here’s some good news. In many of the neighborhoods in which Front Porch Forum hosts a forum, people are throwing block parties in order to meet their neighbors (and reconnect with those they already know). In most cases, the neighborhood forum was both the catalyst to gather and the means to issue the invitation. In others, people are using their forum to invite a broader swath of the neighborhood than just the folks they know.

One forum member in the Old North End challenged her neighbors:

I appreciate reading everyone’s experience and stories on how to solve the recycling problem and crime. However, I think one of the long term solutions is to stop being reactive and start having discussions about how to raise the social capital of this neighborhood. Can we start talking about events, social activities, neighborly gestures and other positive things we can start doing to benefit the neighborhood?

After ten days and many good responses, she wrote again to the neighborhood:

Hi – Thanks to everyone who responded to my call for social capital building. To start us off, I would like to invite everyone in the ONE Central Forum to my place on Sunday from 1-4 pm for dessert and coffee. If you’d like to bring something, that would be great… but not necessary.

Other recent examples occurred in: Hinesburg, Richmond, South Burlington, Charlotte, and neighborhoods in Burlington: Birchcliff, Appletree Point, Staniford, and many in the Five Sisters.

Local Reviews from Strangers vs. Neighbors

Posted on Sunday, January 14, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

Millions of dollars are flowing into dot.com start-ups that provide the public a place to read and write reviews on just about anything local… restaurants, stores, etc. Some include: insiderpages.com, judysbook.com, riffs.com, yelp.com, and zipingo.com. Blogosphere comments swirl around their relative merits and their mangement ups and downs… hard to hear the true tune through the din.

Some of the comments seen recently: Rahul Pathak, Naffziger’s Net, Greg Sterling, Andy Sack, TechCrunch and another. It goes on and on, of course. Where’s there’s money invested, there’s commentary.

Front Porch Forum does local review too, but it’s a different model… the reviews are requested and then the reviews come from nearby neighbors. So (1) the reviews are demand driven, and (2) there’s credibility because the advice is coming from the person around the corner with his/her real identity provided. And this is only one of many uses that our neighborhood forums are supporting… classifieds, community organizing, news, etc. It all adds up to helping neighbors connect and foster community within neighborhoods.

In our first city (Burlington, VT), we’re hosting 130 adjacent neighborhood forums that in sum cover the entire metro-area. Five to ten percent of the local households have joined in our first few months with dozens of neighborhoods in the 20-40% range and a couple exceeding 90% already. And it’s all driven by word of mouth and a spinkle of local media attention.

Local Online Changes

Posted on Sunday, January 14, 2007 by • Comments are off for this post

David Wilcox writes about changes in the field of local online and links to several examples in England, France and the United States:

The early models of local online communities – like Oncom – aimed to replicated physical proximity online. “Please come to our your space and contribute ….” Some local interests did, many didn’t, and it proved difficult to get a sustainable mix of funding, advertising, and volunteer effort.

I submitted a comment to his blog about Front Porch Forum… a new model that showing early promise.

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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