How about your #VT town? From Greg Sterling today…
I was alerted to this intriguing data point by ValPak’s Twitter feed: according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 21% of US adults do not use the Internet. That works out to about 50 million people (figuring the US adult population is about 240M).
Interesting data to keep in mind… 79% is a huge proportion… but it’s not 100%. It makes Front Porch Forum‘s high take rates all the more remarkable… greater than 40% of households subscribe in dozens of neighborhoods and towns in our pilot region.
And it makes projects like e-Vermont that much more important. Check out e-Vermont’s new website and, if you live in Vermont, get your community to apply for the second round of grants by Nov. 17, 2010! From e-Vermont…
e-Vermont’s new web site, www.e4vt.org, is the central spot to keep updated on the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project. This two-year initiative is helping rural Vermont towns take full advantage of the Internet to create jobs, drive school innovation, provide social services, and increase civic involvement. e-Vermont is not stringing cable or fiber, but is working to make better use of broadband where it is available.
The new e-Vermont Partnership, led by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, is already working together with selected communities statewide to provide digital tools and in-depth training. Twelve more towns will be selected by the end of 2010 to be part of this project. The new website has details on how to apply prior to the November 17 deadline. It also carries updates on the exciting work in the first 12 e-communities, and includes a calendar of upcoming workshops and conferences that will share what is being learned in these pilot towns with communities around Vermont.
For further info, you can also reach e-Vermont at 802 225-6091, or Helen_at_vtrural_dot_org.
Jill Kiedaisch at the Orton Family Foundation offers good insights through her writing. So I was especially pleased to see her attention focused on Front Porch Forum this week. Here’s a tidbit (full post)…
But the coolest thing about FPF in my book is that it upends the assumed role of the Internet in our lives. It asserts that our online lives don’t have to be distinct from our offline lives—that they can merge in healthy, useful, positive, reciprocal ways. And even better than that, Front Porch Forum encourages us to reconnect with each other in person, tªte- -tªte, to have conversations and shake hands and share babysitters and roto-tillers and generally help each other out. It pulls us out of our digital isolation and pushes us back into our front yards and onto the street, out to the park or the playground or the farmer’s market or the local garage to see what’s going on, to remember who we are, and even who we want to be, as parents and friends and citizens. It helps us be neighbors.
Knight News Challenge award winner Front Porch Forum explained here… http://to.pbs.org/bbmK3o
The first business featured in Cringely’s (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour… Vermont’s own Front Porch Forum! Robert X. Cringely rolled his family-packed RV through Burlington this month as he kicked off his tour. FPF was selected as one of the 24 featured start-ups out of 400 applicants (thanks to John Seiffer for nominating us!).
Bob is putting together a TV series and a documentary out of this tour… to rival his work on PBS. We’re thrilled!
He wrote today about the visit on his 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