Rufus Griscom says a lot in his recent posting…
In recent years I have been moving towards what I call the E.M. Forster Principal — the view that community, broadly defined, is everything. It’s not 50% of our happiness in life, or 75%, but rather 95% plus. (Forster assembled my favorite two word aphorism: Only connect.) So many of the things that we think are critical to our happiness — creative productivity, success, money — may be important only in so far as they enhance community. Community, in this view, is the final currency, the lingua franca, in which everything is valued.
Here’s an example: Though I believe I want to write a beautiful novel ten years from now as an end in itself, the value of that act — writing a beautiful novel — may be in the final analysis the way that experience broadens and deepens my relationships with others. When you have written a beautiful novel (I imagine, not having written one) you meet more people, each of whom has a head start in understanding you. The same case can be made for the value of building companies with teams of people (among the most gratifying experiences I have had), and even the value of making money.
Of course money can both connect you with others — by enabling you to help other people out and build things of value, not to mention spend time interacting with people rather than sewing machines — and it can also disconnect you from people, by causing you to distrust other people’s interest in you, or travel in circles different from those of your original community. I think a credible case can be made that the great “does money make you happy” debate all boils down to whether money builds or erodes community for a given individual. Extreme sums of money are generally more likely to destroy community — there are only so many billionaires, after all, and when you are a billionaire, the rest of the world must seem suspiciously solicitous. A radical change in one’s financial situation in either direction can cut you off from your community — lottery winners end up less happy because they leave their original communities and become distrustful of their relationships, but on the other hand a sudden loss of money makes people (say the Madoff relatives) less happy because it forces them to leave their communities, or no longer engage in bonding experiences central to a given community (like feigning disappointment in food at overpriced restaurants). Fame, I imagine, can have the same double-edged sword as money — a little is empowering to community building; a lot can be isolating. The point, here, is that community is arguably everything.
Thanks to Scott Heiferman for the tip.
Our portfolio company Meetup has learned to focus on successful Meetup groups. Those are Meetup groups that are active, meeting regularly, have growing memberships, and are paying fees to Meetup. Meetup could focus on other data sets like monthly unique visitors, new Meetup groups, total registered users, revenues, profits, cash. They collect that data and share it with the team. But the number one thing they look at it successful Meetup groups and that has worked well for them. It is their key business metric.
In Front Porch Forum’s pilot network, we host 140 online neighborhood forums. As with Meetup, the groups’ levels of activity and success vary tremendously. Good food for thought.
The exciting new e-Vermont initiative is kicking off this Friday. Two dozen lucky Vermont towns will be on the receiving end of $3.7 million worth of access, gear, expertise and services to help their communities take full advantage of broadband internet access. We’re thrilled to expand Front Porch Forum through this new program.
So… which Vermont towns should be on the receiving end of this program? Leave a comment below. And, if you want to apply on behalf of your town, get in touch with VCRD immediately!
Media Alert
Contact: Paul Costello, VCRD Ex. Dir.
802 223-6091, info@vtrural.org
PO Box 1384 , Montpelier, VT 05601New e-Vermont Partnership Launches $3.8 million Community Development Project
Press Conference to Preview e-Vermont Community Project
Friday, April 9, 2010
11am
Vermont State House
Cedar Creek Room1. Project Background and nutshell summary
2. The role of e-Vermont partners:
-Heather Chirtea, Digital Wish
-Paul Costello, Vermont Council on Rural Development
-Mary Evslin, Evslin Family Foundation
-Christopher Kaufman-Ilstrup, VT Community Foundation
-Lenae Quillen-Blume, VT Small Business Development Center
-Martha Reid, VT Department of Libraries
-Mark Snelling, Snelling Center
-Karrin Wilks, VT State Colleges
-Michael Wood-Lewis, Front Porch Forum
Press Q&A(MONTPELIER) The two-year, $3.8 million e-Vermont Community Broadband Project is a bold new initiative to help rural Vermont towns use the internet more effectively to advance a wide variety of local needs including downtown marketing, community engagement, economic development, school innovation, job creation, health and social services, and e-commerce. It marks the first such effort in Vermont’s history.
The new e-Vermont Partnership is encouraging communities to apply quickly as it selects the first 12 communities to work with. This comprehensive approach will help our towns fully realize the potential of the digital age.
The Project is supported by a just announced $2.5 million Stimulus Grant from the federal Agency of Commerce. Additional support comes from Vermont philanthropists and corporate associates.
This project is not adding fiber optic cable or making other infrastructure improvements. It is focused on helping local e-teams develop innovative uses for the internet to address the needs listed above.
Learn the details of this story and the impact this e-Partnership will have as it works to strengthen our communities and economy.
David Brooks writes in yesterday’s New York Times that we should be pursuing happiness and well-being, not focus so single-mindedly on wealth…
… poor nations become happier as they become middle-class nations. But once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being… The United States is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness…
If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.
If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing).
This is the business that Front Porch Forum is in… but our society doesn’t typically measure what FPF produces so well. Again from Brooks…
…most of us pay attention to the wrong things. Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives. Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions. Most governments release a ton of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones.
This promises to be a great event hosted by USDA RD and VCRD…
The 2010 Northeast Rural Summit: Generating Rural Innovation and Regional Partnership ~ April 12 and 13, 2010 at the Burlington Hilton Hotel
Visit the Summit Website to Register or for more information
Join national and regional USDA leaders, state agency leaders, non-profit and business leaders from throughout the northeastern United States for two days of strategic planning around four crucial directions for the rural northeast:
- Food Systems: Local Foods Development and Regional Foods Systems
- Energy: Advancing Efficiency, Generation and Fuel Development
- Broadband: Global Opportunities & Rural Lifestyles
- Rural Economic Development: Investment in Innovation
The Summit is designed to share best regional and place-based practices and build strategic partnerships among state Rural Development offices and rural leadership organizations throughout the region.
It’s a real honor to have Front Porch Forum featured April 12 at this event.
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