Archives for September 2008
Millions of middle class Americans are watching their savings shrink dramatically in the Wall Street debacle unfolding before us. Much is being written and said about it all… lots to digest.
But one angle I’ve not come across yet is the strategy that a small but growing number of people are employing… to invest more personal [...]
New media thinker and do-er Dan Gillmor will speak at the UVM Center for Rural Studies 30th anniversary bash on October 4, 2008 starting at 5:00 PM. I’ve been fortunate to hear Dan speak and follow his online writing for the past couple years… great stuff. And now he’s leading the newly formed Knight Center [...]
I don’t have much data about the multiplier effect of Front Porch Forum, that is, how much off-forum activity does an FPF posting stir up? So I was interested to read the following from Mike in Burlington’s South End. His small neighborhood of 120 households has about 70 of those subscribing to their FPF neighborhood [...]
Mark Glaser, New Media Expert for PBS, offers examples of the internet serving local communities…
Everyblock.com
Front Porch Forum
Spot.us
That’s heady company for FPF… two nationally known Knight Foundation grant recipients. Everyblock and Spot.Us are both exciting projects. See Mark’s comments for yourself…
Some people question Front Porch Forum’s strategy of blanketing an entire metro area with our online neighborhood forums. Why not, instead, just provide them in the areas most likely to embrace the service?
Well… because we never know where or when FPF will catch hold. This past week we’ve seen another formerly snoozy FPF neighborhood forum [...]
Keith Harris in the United Kingdom writes today that “What’s missing is communication, not information” on his blog Neighbourhoods. Some of his points…
This is very definitely work in progress but maybe the argument is something like this:
for various reasons there is a crisis of local social connections which causes evident damage
examples of local communication (post-its [...]
We keep stumbling over pieces about the value of “local” in the digital universe (and vice versa)… right out of Front Porch Forum’s playbook. Today it was a couple of journalists…
Mark Potts writes in part…
Anyone who questions that people are interested in talking about their communities hasn’t dug in to the plethora of listservs, Yahoo [...]
I just learned that all the great activity surging through Front Porch Forum is being recognized by the Rural Telecom Congress as a finalist for its RTC Champion Awards! The final selection will be decided at the Rural TeleCon 2008 conference at Smugglers’ Notch, VT on October 8, 2008. It’s a great honor to be [...]
I always learn something valuable, so it’s a pleasure to converse with an audience about Front Porch Forum. So I’m grateful for the invitations to address these upcoming events. Please come!
• Connecting with your Essex Neighbors using Front Porch Forum
Brownell Library, Essex Junction Village, Lincoln St
Sept. 15, 2008, 7:00 PM
• Building Community [...]
When neighbors start heating up over a topic through Front Porch Forum, our local traditional media often picks up on it and writes a story. Some issues are of larger public concern, e.g., violence, multi-million-dollar development projects, etc., while others are more modest. Take today’s story by Suzanne Podhaizer in Seven Days: Right to Bite: [...]