Category Archives: Front Porch Forum
Me vs. Us: Can Social Media Prioritize Groups Over Individuals?
I just revisited a blog post by Dan Schultz titled In Search of a Community That Takes ‘Me’ Out of Social Media. I came to it after a fan of Front Porch Forum pointed out to me why she likes FPF so much… its design puts neighborhood before individual. Many of the giants of social media these days go the opposite way… they’re all about optimizing the experience for the individual. Here’s Dan’s chart…
#VT’s new Lt. Gov. pushes Civic Engagement
New Vermont Lt. Governor Phil Scott (Rep.) was sworn in yesterday and gave a speech centered on civic engagement. I invite our new Lt. Gov. to see how Front Porch Forum is helping Vermont neighbors connect and get involved locally… e-Vermont too. Some choice quotes…
… as many of you know, 46 percent of registered voters didn’t vote in November. That’s 209,000 Vermonters whose only choice on November 2 was not to show up. They decided it wasn’t worth it, or it didn’t matter, or it wouldn’t do any good, to make their voice heard. My experience shows that’s just not the case… I don’t think any of us fully realized until November 2 what that frustration had turned into; it turned into 209,000 people who had apparently given up… Civic involvement isn’t something that’s only relevant on even-numbered years.
All of us here in the Legislature need to reach out to those folks and welcome them in, even when we might not agree with their views. We need to open our doors. In order to live up to the intentions and the expectations of our accessible government, we ourselves need to be more accessible. That will mean different things for each of us. For me, that means literally opening my office door downstairs a morning or two a week and inviting you in for coffee and conversation. It means opening my virtual doors…
When I challenge Vermonters to get involved, I’m not just talking about the work we do in Montpelier. Because I really believe we all want to help each other; sometimes we just need to know how… one theme that I’ve stressed… is self-reliance, and its partner, volunteerism. In my mind, those are two sides of the same coin. Being self-reliant doesn’t just mean looking after yourself, although that’s important… But self-reliance also means looking after our neighbors, and giving them the support they may need to get to the next step in their lives.
That has a lot of implications.
- That means buying local, and supporting the merchants on Main Street instead of the website in California.
- That means helping Vermont’s manufacturers to identify suppliers and trading partners who are here within our borders or close by in our region.
- That means making it easier and more affordable for more of us to eat local food, supporting our farmers, reducing transportation costs, and getting fresher and healthier things to eat.
- That means investing in energy policies that help us become more independent.
Personally, I suspect that a great deal of the collective frustration that caused those 209,000 people to stay home on November 2 was the sense that our elected officials and candidates kept talking about the goals — creating jobs, jump-starting the economy, and helping our most vulnerable — but didn’t talk enough about how we would get there. Buying local and encouraging innovative local partnerships are part of my vision for how we do it…
Our challenge in Montpelier is to come up with solutions that will strengthen Vermont. Your challenge is to come up with solutions that will help your neighbor and strengthen your community. If we all work together, we will strengthen the legacy of the state that we love to call home.
Is your neighborhood a community?
What a delightful portrait of a neighborhood living in community, by Laura Grace Weldon in Ohio…
What makes a neighborhood? Sometimes that’s hard to figure out.
I’ve lived in a number of places. Not all of them seemed like neighborhoods. When I was first on my own I used to bemoan that my fellow renters could hardly be bothered to return a wave but someone kept stealing my newspaper…
Then we moved to a little house. It was silly how hard it was to meet the neighbors. They’d wave but that’s about it. It took nearly a year to meet the older couple across the street… Finally I baked a loaf of bread, knocked on their door and said I was sorry we hadn’t gotten a chance to meet. They turned out to be lovely people. They still write long chatty updates to me years after we moved away.
I began to understand that it takes effort to make a neighborhood. So I greeted everyone who moved onto our street with homemade goodies. I shared produce from my garden and offered to help others in any way I could. I also started inviting people over. In the fall we had bike parades where the kids spent a happy hour or so decorating their tricycles, scooters, and bikes to ride around the neighborhood in a grand procession before coming back to our house for a picnic. We had cookouts, Halloween parties, and Christmas caroling parties. We met up for working get-togethers such as picking apples and making applesauce.
The major neighborhood bonding events were our summer pig pen parties… [read the full post]
This jibes with what we see in dozens of neighborhoods where Front Porch Forum is used. It takes effort to breathe community into a neighborhood. FPF can help make it easier… and can help sustain those connections over time.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Vermont Public Radio commentator Andrea Learned chimed in today with a piece called “Sustainable Waldo.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to nudge more people toward sustainable living practices. While switching out light bulbs and recycling as much as possible are both easy ways to start that process, what comes next? … we may now need to focus on places where sustainability is hidden in plain sight… Remember the “Where’s Waldo” books? Darned if he wasn’t right in front of your nose and you didn’t see him. So where are some sustainability Waldos?
One great example might lie in urban density and community transportation planning issues… Gardening is another activity where sustainability may be hiding in plain sight.
And what about neighborhood involvement, as supported by services like Vermont’s own Front Porch Forum, which host networks of online neighbor-to-neighbor help and information. Communities built on stronger interpersonal relationships and citizen interconnections help build more long-term, sustainable views on big, challenging issues. Whether or not citizens see this as sustainability doesn’t really matter. They are responding to powerful, sustainability-promoting, shared values.
She’s got a point! Sometimes we talk about FPF’s larger community benefits… but most of the time when chatting with folks, we focus on the direct and obvious benefits… use FPF to find an affordable plumber or ride to Boston, to report a car break-in to neighbors, to sell a bike or give away a stroller.
Cities, neighborhoods, community and Jane Jacobs
Convergence from my reading pile…
- Richard Florida: Who’s Your City: How the creative economy is making where to live the most important decision of your life, 2008.
- Jonah Lehrer, NYTimes Magazine, A Physicist Solves the City, Dec. 19, 2010.
- John McKnight and Peter Block: The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, 2010.
Each author talks about cities and neighborhoods, and residents’ decisions about where to live and how to live within their communities. They all reference Jane Jacob‘s pioneering work in community and urban planning. And each is well worth reading.
The Times article examines the research of Geoffrey West who is developing equations that he claims describe cities… parallel to the laws of physics. E.g., “whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity… increases by 15 percent per capita.” Which leads to the idea that moving a person to bigger and bigger cities will make her more and more economically productive.
Richard Florida’s book is full of interesting survey data. Take a look at his maps. Here’s a sample…
Finally, the most compelling and visionary of the lot to this reader is The Abundant Community. McKnight and Block, from a lifetime of experience lay out their case for “a new possibility for each of us to live a more satisfying life” by joining “our neighbors to live and create a community that nurtures our family and makes us useful citizens.” Lots of tactics and examples placed in a useful framework. Many neighborhoods and rural towns in Vermont are using Front Porch Forum in this way and it’s beautiful to behold.
Year-end look at hyperlocal big boys
Peter Krasilovsky offers a year-end look ahead at the WalMart approach to hyperlocal news…
… there is a rap out there that hyperlocal doesn’t scale and these [Patch and Fwix] are toys. Is it still the case?
Patch now has a local presence in 600 communities, with editorial and sales “pods” of 12 each Some of being run by longtime newspaper industry leaders. Last Sunday, LA Times media columnist James Rainey wrote that Patch is revitalizing local journalism and asserted that may have become THE place for journalists to go (aside from wages of $35k-$50k, or half the salary that big city journalists might have gotten from the big metro, if they were hiring).
Patch President Warren Webster… didn’t dispute my characterization of Patch as an experiment that wants to quickly get a national footprint to attract national, regional and local advertisers; create a business directory that goes beyond the Yellow Pages; and scale editorial and sales resources.
On a macro-level, local ad revenues typically split 50/50 between targeted national and local. For Webster (and cohorts), the bet is that Patch is poised to do both. They’ve publicly said they were spending $50 million to ramp it up in 2010…
Peter offers this list of horses in the race, grouped in an interesting way…
National/regional “hyperlocal” news sites
Local editorial and sales
Patch
Main Street Connect
Hello Metro
TBD.org
Geographic aggregation for media partners
Topix
Outside.in
Fwix
Datasphere
Everyblock
Local event and news sites
AmericanTowns.com
Center’d
DiscoverOurTown
Aggregators also supported by unique user-generated content and pro/amateur content farms
Examiner.com
Associated Content
Demand Media
Helium
Merchant Circle
No more nasty anonymous newspaper comments…
Glad to see this move by the Sun Journal is western Maine…
The obligation to stand behind your words has also been a core principle of journalism and this newspaper for many years.
The Sun Journal does not use unidentified sources in stories. When our readers write a column or letter to the editor for the newspaper they use their real names.
That, we believe, makes them accountable for what they say, plus it adds weight and credibility to their words.
But we have deviated from that principle for the Web, believing for several years that “online” was somehow different than “in print.” Nearly all newspapers have.
While we have known the identity of many people commenting on stories at sunjournal.com, it was difficult or impossible for users to know. As a result, some comments have been factually incorrect, reckless and mean-spirited.
While the technology of the Web is very different, our core principles should remain the same.
Both our website and print newspaper are, in fact, like a town meeting or community gathering.
So, beginning Feb. 1 all online comments at sunjournal.com will be accompanied by the real names of the people commenting. Only registered and verified users will be able to make comments. Anonymous comments will not be allowed.
All commenters, including subscribers and those registered now, will have to re-register under the new system.
Many newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News, are now taking steps to make Web commenting more responsible and accountable.
But our new system is the most ambitious effort we’ve seen to elevate the level of online discussion.
Plus, most of our current commenters seem to agree. In an online survey, 57 percent said they would prefer that real names accompany online comments.
The Sun Journal’s motto is “Connecting you with your community,” and for more than 160 years this newspaper has knit together Western Maine communities.
The advent of the Web has given us powerful new ways to connect people and allow anyone to become an active part of every discussion.
We know this decision will not please everyone. In time, however, we believe it will result in a better online experience for all.
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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