Thanks to Dave West for sharing this link…
The City of Decatur, Georgia is evaluating the use of a virtual world interface to “encourage community networking, improve civic engagement, and promote economic development.”
“Virtual Decatur will provide an environment in which residents, businesses, institutions and visitors can interact and connect… it is it is imperative that the project go beyond the features of traditional virtual environments. The overarching purpose of this project is to allow users to interact with the City in new and innovative ways that are not possible in the real world.”
Possible features of the proposed Virtual Decatur might include:
• Opportunities to gather citizen input on policies, topics of interest, city services, and happenings
• A Virtual City Hall Tour with multimedia capabilities.
• Opportunities to earn coupons for use in real stores/retail establishments.
• Streaming video of public meetings, ideally with a chat room feature that allows viewers to comment.
• Access to visitors information (store hours, directions, weather, etc.)
Well… I’m all for experiments, so I’m hopeful that the good folks in Georgia will go ahead with this and then report out results for the world to see.
In a way, it sounds like, as Dave put it, “Front Porch Forum 2.0.” Hmm… The purpose of Front Porch Forum is to kidnap peoples’ attention while online and redirect it back to the neighborhood, and, ultimately, get them face to face with neighbors for block parties, crime watches, yard sales, meals on wheels, city council hearings, etc. That is, FPF is a gateway to real neighborliness and civic engagement (not just virtual facsimiles). Perhaps the project above will do the same… or perhaps it will prove to be another way to avoid face-to-face contact with the people we live around.
I’m hoping for the best! Good luck to Virtual Decatur.
Greg and I serve on a telecom board together and he’s made great use of Front Porch Forum in his own neighborhood. So it was lovely to find his posting headed for the next issue (No. 500!) of his forum. Thanks Greg!
Congratulations on #500!…
I wanted to be a part of the 500th Anniversary Edition of the South Union Neighborhood Forum!
Congratulations to Michael Wood-Lewis and family for an incredible vision and sticktuitiveness (I guess the real word is indefatigability, which I have trouble pronouncing) that we here in Burlington have been the fortunate beneficiaries of for many years.
I hope you, the subscriber/reader, always follow up when Michael passes on a request to support Front Porch Forum through surveys, grant applications, underwriting advertising and so on. We want to be certain that FPF will be around for many more years to come…
Happy Holidays!
Greg Epler Wood
From Scott Heiferman again…
RevBilly: “The Revolution in the Hello… we’re sluggish now from our deep sleep – we will go to the neighbor that we daily padded by with our iPod, go up to that person and slow down. Taking in that so ordinary and so fantastic neighbor – the revolution is here… If we walk in our streets again we re-magicalize them. Touching each other for a moment, “Hello!” – in that moment the architecture around us seems to change… Say hello to a neighbor and trade names and a new economy begins. Can we sense the release from debt and the launch into real wealth when we find a stranger who was always nearby but was lost in our consuming?”
From Scott Heiferman…
Forbes: “The Watch List: Meetup.com. The bartering economy will expand. Local social networking communities will continue to thrive and help people connect to information, resources, ideas and employees. Meetup.com groups will be at the center of the burgeoning part of the economy. Entrepreneurs will tap these groups for goods and services and to form new partnerships.” (Maureen Farrell via Greg)
We certainly see high volumes of business being done through Front Porch Forum… and it seems to be increasing as the national economy sours.
Matt Thompson posted on his blog today…
I’ve been parroting Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” model so much recently that I forget how many people still haven’t heard it…
BTW: This principle dovetails nicely with Caterina Fake’s philosophy that you build a real community by greeting each early user at the door. Among the most essential skills that I believe must be taught to tomorrow’s journalists is community management — a skill entirely lost in today’s discussions about newsroom training. Technical training will be obsolete in a year. But the best community managers on the Web today employ principles refined over a long history of community leadership.
The value of community management to Front Porch Forum‘s early success becomes more apparent every day.
From the National Business Review…
CommScore’s latest global market share figures give Microsoft’s Hotmail 283 million users – a 15% increase year -on-year, despite a rash of complaints about a recent redesign.
Yahoo Mail is a close second, with 274 million users.
And Google is a distant third, with 113 million Gmail users around the planet.
But I don’t understand why so many people use webmail instead of an email client (e.g., Thunderbird or Apple Mail). Using one of these webmail providers (including AOL) leaves all of your email on their servers instead of your own hard drive. It’s like having the Post Office keep all of your written correspondence for you in their filing cabinents instead of your own… bizarre. Except, of course, these huge corporations also are mining your private email for marketing data (and more?).
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