Category Archives: Democracy
Front Porch Forum in Two Slides
Here’s Front Porch Forum boiled down to two slides…
Citizen Engagement and Economic Growth
From a Knight Foundation blog today…
Soul of the Community (SOTC) is a three-year study conducted by Gallup of the 26 Knight Foundation communities across the United States focusing on the emotional side of the connection between residents and their communities.
In its first year, the study compared residents’ engagement level to the GDP growth in the 26 communities over the past five years. The findings (overall report, reports by community) show a significant correlation between community-citizen engagement and the economic growth.
Easy communication among neighbors a right?
John Wonderlich at Sunlight Foundation quotes Steven Clift today…
When I was a child and my father had cancer, I remember neighbors coming to our assistance in our time of need. Today, with modern life keeping neighbors as strangers, we must use these new tools to break down barriers to community. You deserve the right to easily e-mail your immediate neighbors the morning after you’ve been burglarized without having to go door-to-door to collect e-mail addresses. We can balance safety and privacy with selective public disclosure of such personal contact information with an intelligent “unlisted to most” directory option that is not the all or nothing of today.
This is big “C” community and small “d” democracy. A collection of better-connected blocks, tied to broader neighborhood and community-wide online efforts will serve as the vibrant foundation we need for accountable and effective representative democracy right up to the Congress and president. You cannot force everyone to be neighborly, but the bonds of community can be restored and nurtured despite dual income families and the assault on time for community involvement.
Right on. We’re honored that they both mention Front Porch Forum. And thanks to The Pulse from the Knight Foundation for pointing me to this post.
Online tools to help local communities
Matt, on the LocalMouth blog, writes recently…
Personally, I think there’s great potential for simple online tools to bring local communities more closely together. It may be a struggle at the start to get together a critical mass of neighbours, and it may need a liberal dash of coaxing, but once you’ve got the ball rolling, people’s natural desire to communicate with others should take care of the rest. Good stuff will happen. ‘Good’ won’t always mean that people get along well or that arguments won’t take place. Far from it. When people are talking about stuff that matters, conversations are bound to get heated at times, and that’s where the delicate job of moderation comes in. But generally, I think, more communication between local people can be a very positive thing.
Right on! He goes on to list several UK websites that each focus in a different way on their local community… and Front Porch Forum.
I look forward to checking out the local sites he mentions. Thanks Matt!
State Rep. Uses Front Porch Forum to call for Boycott
Matt Ryan reported for the Burlington Free Press today…
Vermont campaign signs along Vermont 15 in front of the Essex Junction Shopping Center have prompted a departing state legislator to call on citizens to boycott businesses within the center — even though the businesses’ managers said they had nothing to do with the signs.
Rep. Peter Hunt, a Democrat from Essex Junction, wrote in a post on Front Porch Forum on Oct. 17 that he would stop shopping at Aubuchon Hardware, Rite Aid Pharmacy, Sherwin-Williams, Quality Bake Shop or “any of the individual store (sic) who have taken this political stance as long as they have these signs on Pearl Street.”
“I am disappointed that these business (sic) have chosen to a (sic) political stance to support candidates from one party,” Hunt wrote. “This is completely out of line.”
He concluded with, “I hope all of you will also shop in other stores.”
More than a dozen FPF subscribers have responded on our service, none in agreement with Rep. Hunt’s call.
Knight News Challenge 2009!
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is opening up the third round of its News Challenge.
We’re giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs.
If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information, we’d like to see it! You have the opportunity to win funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech, and community-oriented people who want to improve the world.
Deadline Nov. 1, 2008. The good folks at Knight have a hand in so many great projects that it’s tough to keep track. We’ll be submitting an application to take Front Porch Forum to the next level… the two paragraphs above describe FPF to a tee. We were honored previously this year to be involved in a couple Knight initiatives.
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Challenging Conventional Web 2.0 Wisdom
A friend jokingly refers to Front Porch Forum as the “anti-internet” and he got me thinking. I ended up with the chart below comparing conventional wisdom for much of “Web 2.0” vs. FPF.
FYI, Front Porch Forum hosts networks of online neighborhood forums that blanket metro areas. In our Chittenden County, VT, pilot, 11,000 households subscribe, including one-third of Burlington. People connect with neighbors and build community through the exchange of postings among clearly identified nearby neighbors.
So, Peter Kafka got me thinking more with his post on Silicon Alley Insider the other day, in particular this gem…
It’s counterintuitive, but during an up cycle people accept conventional wisdom, and during a down cycle people challenge it. That’s good. Very good. And the cycle will winnow competition.
Well… an upside to our economic crisis! A year ago during good times a few Web 2.0 experts took a look at Front Porch Forum and each, in his way, told us that we needed to get in line and look more like the left column above. And just in the past week I’ve heard from some folks in the same crowd and they’re showing up with open minds and probing questions.
New Media Guru in Vermont Oct. 4
New media thinker and do-er Dan Gillmor will speak at the UVM Center for Rural Studies 30th anniversary bash on October 4, 2008 starting at 5:00 PM. I’ve been fortunate to hear Dan speak and follow his online writing for the past couple years… great stuff. And now he’s leading the newly formed Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Front Porch Forum is tickled pink to be involved (albeit in a small way). Come to the conference all day… or at least catch Dan’s talk at 5:00 PM and the panel he’ll moderate after that.
-Author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People (2004; O’Reilly Media)
-Director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
-Director of the Center for Citizen MediaAt the newly created Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Dan Gillmor is working to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. He is founder and current director of the Center for Citizen Media and previously founded Grassroots Media, Inc. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont (’81), Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.
And I seem to recall some former Vermont professional connection of his. Hmm…
PBS offers Examples of New Media aiding Local Communities
Mark Glaser, New Media Expert for PBS, offers examples of the internet serving local communities…
That’s heady company for FPF… two nationally known Knight Foundation grant recipients. Everyblock and Spot.Us are both exciting projects. See Mark’s comments for yourself…
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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