Neighborhood | Ghost of Midnight

Where is Front Porch Forum available?

Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 by Michael • 20 comments

Front Porch Forum is available to anyone who lives in one of these Vermont towns [list UPDATED 02/23/2011]…

Alburgh
Arlington
Averill
Avery’s Gore
Bloomfield
Bolton
Bridgewater
Brighton/Village of Island Pond
Bristol
Brunswick

Buells Gore
Burlington
Calais
Cambridge
Canaan/Village of Beecher Falls
Castleton
Charlotte
Colchester
Dover
Duxbury

Essex Junction Village
Essex Town
Fairfield
Ferdinand
Grand Isle
Hardwick
Hinesburg
Hubbardton
Huntington
Isle La Motte

Jay
Jericho
Johnson
Lemington
Lewis
Ludlow
Middlesex
Middletown Springs
Milton
Moretown

Morristown
Newport City
North Hero
Norton
Poultney
Pownal
Richford
Richmond
Sandgate
Shelburne

South Burlington
South Hero
St. George
Starksboro
Stewartstown, NH
Stowe
Sunderland
Underhill
Vergennes
Walden

Warner’s Grant
Warren Gore
Waterbury
West Rutland
Westfield
Westford
Williston
Winooski
Worcester

And we’re expanding to other areas in the coming months. Sign up or join our waitlist. FPF is free to local residents.

Contact us if you want to sponsor FPF’s launch in your town. Join our growing list of launch sponsors: Grand Isle County sponsors, Orton Family Foundation, e-Vermont, Town of Johnson, Johnson State College, Comcast, Lake Champlain Islands Chamber, Franklin County Caring Communities, Franklin Central Supervisory Union, City of St. Albans, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, Revitalizing Waterbury, Town of Duxbury, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, and others

Social Change 2.0

Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

I had the pleasure of introducing David Gershon’s work to Portland, Oregon more than a dozen years ago. So Mike Lindberg’s quote about David’s new book caught my eye…

“Social Change 2.0 exhilarates. David Gershon has not just laid out a compelling and coherent blueprint for social change, but the vividly written stories he shares make us realize that what we thought was impossible can actually be achieved. Having been a political leader in Portland for twenty years, where I worked closely with David, I saw firsthand the power of his work to change the lives of thousands of people. He may well be the number one expert on social change in our country.”
– Mike Lindberg, former Commissioner of Public Utilities and city council member, City of Portland, Oregon

David’s work has some interesting parallels to Front Porch Forum. I look forward to reading it. (Buy the book here.)

Front Porch Forum arrives in Grand Isle County!

Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 by Michael • 14 comments

What a pleasure to announce this… Starting immediately, the good people of Alburgh, Grand Isle, Isle La Motte, North Hero and South Hero, Vermont may subscribe to Front Porch Forum! If you live (or summer) there, please sign up today! And please tell your friends and contacts on the Islands to join FPF too.

A core group of organizers, led by Ruth Wallman of the local Chamber, Frank Driscoll, and Darcy Coates, have labored long to line up sponsors to support FPF’s launch in Grand Isle County. This is exciting stuff! So thanks to them, and to the these great launch sponsors (below). In fact, please take a moment to thank them and send some business their way!

Premier Sponsors

Local Sponsors

If you’re new to Front Porch Forum and live (full or part-time) on the Islands, please sign up… it’s easy, free and won’t clog your inbox. Then go ahead and post a message to your neighbors. Want to know more? Take a tour or read what the local and national media have to say about FPF.

National Neighborhood Day Award!

Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

My family and I were happily surprised by the good folks at Burlington’s East Village Cohousing with their Award for National Neighborhood Day. The certificate reads in part…

for their creation of the Centennial Front Porch Forum, which has brought us together to lead creative and more peaceful lives with our neighbors [Centennial is the broader neighborhood in which East Village Cohousing resides)…

How flattering to be recognized by a group of thoughtful people already living in intentional community! Thanks to the cohousing folks!

P.S. I believe they have a couple of units open at this time for anyone looking for an incredible housing/community opportunity in Burlington. Details… click here.

Reaching beyond social media’s “Big Three”

Posted on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

Inman News columnist Gahlord Dewald posted a piece today aimed at real estate professionals about how they might make the most of social media tools. This clip caught my eye…

… If you expand beyond the “Big Three” social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you might find very specific platforms that align with your goals. For example, in Burlington, Vt., we have an awesome forum system called Front Porch Forum. This platform is highly targeted by neighborhood and operates via (wait for it …) e-mail.

Not what you might think of when you think super-new-cool technology. But FPF is a highly valued resource in our town. About 40 percent of the local population are members (and this is a college town). The neighbors talk about the neighborhood. Pretty relevant for a real estate professional.

Spending the time to locate active social media platforms that are topic-focused — to round out your me-focused Facebook-LinkedIn-Twitter participation — is a good idea…

FPF is what members make of it

Posted on Monday, September 14, 2009 by Michael • 1 comment

I thought this comment to an earlier blog post deserved it’s own spotlight. From Hannah…

… Front Porch Forum is what people make of it. I belong to the Orchards forum in South Burlington and sometimes it seems like there is even too much conversation going on (in a good way!). Our forum is made up of an area that you could walk through on foot in 1/2 an hour or less, which allows us to have conversations that really affect us all, like a specific stop sign or dog-walking ettiquite in our neighborhood park. For us, the size of our forum is perfect, because there are few enough people that we recognize names when we see them but enough voices to keep a conversation going.

Bringing public officials to the neighborhood level

Posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

The local Gannett outlet published an opinion piece yesterday about Front Porch Forum and social media…

… the writer is unfortunately misinformed about the depth and effectiveness that has been reached in filling the gap between formal local government assemblies by the Front Porch Forum… The FPF creators chose to capture its audience at the neighborhood level because people already naturally choose to organize and deal with critical issues in their lives at this level. So, in a way, the FPF forces government officials to “come down” to the neighborhood level and speak more openly about what they intend…

Read the full column.

Engaging Citizen 2.0… FPF’s glad to be there Sept. 9

Posted on Saturday, September 5, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

What an honor! Front Porch Forum is headed to Washington, DC on Sept. 9 to participate in an event called Engaging Citizen 2.0: From Obama to the “MyFaceTube” Revolution, How is Social Media Reshaping Civic Engagement? We’ll be in the Library of Congress with several luminaries of the “using social media for civic engagement” crowd, including…

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com
Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup.com
Joe Trippi, whom many Vermonters will recall from his “Dean for President” days
And many other important thinkers and doers.

They’ve capped the gathering at about 100 folks from around the country who are among the top in this quickly emerging field. Thanks to The Case Foundation for FPF’s special invitation. I’m looking forward to learning from the conversation and sharing FPF’s amazing story of actual civic engagement catalyzed through FPF’s virtual front porch (here’s a recent sample).

This event will be streamed online live at www.ncoc.net and will be live on Twitter– follow @ncoc and #ncoc.

FPF will also swing by the Gov 2.0 Summit… again thanks to The Case Foundation.

Revealing the good core of a neighborhood

Posted on Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Michael • No comments yet

From Dawn in Burlington’s Old North End…

I am 39 and spent the better portion of my childhood in the ONE. While it had it’s concerns even then, it’s much worse today. However, the core of ONE was good. It seems to be hidden today, but it became clear to me after I found Front Porch Forum that the “core” is still present. It shows in FPF with the support and compassion that is here. I found it comforting to read. I was kind of shocked and a bit saddened upon my return to the neighborhood, but in looking around at the wonderful community building underway on FPF, I’m coming around!!

Attention Surplus and Hyperlocal Advertising

Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Michael • 1 comment

From marketing guru Seth Godin today…

There was an attention drought for the longest time. Marketers paid a fortune for TV ads (and in fact, network ads sold out months in advance) because it was so difficult to find enough attention. Ads worked, so the more ads you bought, the more money you made, thus marketers took all they could get.

This attention shortage drove our economy.

The internet has done something wacky to this situation. It has created a surplus of attention. Ads go unsold. People are spending hours on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or other sites and not spending their attention on ads, because the ads are either absent or not worth watching.

When people talk about the problem with free online, they’re missing the point. Free is creating lots of attention, but marketers haven’t gotten smart enough to do something profitable with that attention…

Big companies, non-profits and even candidates will discover hyperlocal, hyperspecialized, hyperrelevant… this is where we are going, and it turns out that this time, the media is way ahead of the marketers.

And many Front Porch Forum advertisers would agree.

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