Front Porch Forum is a great tool for us and many times we can address issues just by “hearing” the tone of a neighborhood.  It is especially helpful as the buzz begins about neighborhood or traffic issues.  Having the Corporal be a part of all 20 FPF neighborhood forums in our town is a great asset to us when trying to best serve our community.

MONTPELIER, VT — A dozen rural communities across the state will receive digital tools and in-depth training as the initial participants in the new e-Vermont Community Broadband Project. The twelve will benefit from the expertise and resources of e-Vermont’s statewide partners as the local groups develop ways to take full advantage of the Internet for job creation, school innovation, providing social services, and increasing civic involvement.

The 2010 communities (selected from over 40 applicants) are Brighton, Bristol, Canaan, Cambridge, Grand Isle County, Ludlow, Middlesex, Newport, Poultney, Pownal, Sunderland/Arlington/Sandgate, and West Rutland.

“Vermonters have a long history of innovation and finding creative ways to meet our goals,” notes Project Director Helen Jordan. “e-Vermont will continue that tradition by bringing 21st century tools to these communities and nurturing the local development of model solutions we can adapt statewide.”

e-Vermont is not stringing cable or fiber, but is working to make better use of broadband where it is available. An unprecedented network of partnerships will contribute to this two-year project.

• Each community will become part of the Front Porch Forum network, helping link neighbors to each other and local services.
• Digital Wish will bring technology into the classrooms (including a limited number of Netbook computers) and provide essential training for students, teachers, and parents.
• The Vermont Department of Libraries will work with local libraries to upgrade computer equipment and enhance e-services.
• Students in the Vermont State College system will offer classes and workshops in both public and home settings.
• The Vermont Small Business Development Center will mentor businesses to help them increase efficiency and grow their market share through e-commerce.
• Best practices that come from these communities will be shared through statewide symposia, on-line applications, and conferences organized by The Snelling Center for Government.
• The Vermont Council on Rural Development is overseeing e-Vermont, and will bring its expertise in community organizing to help each town connect its schools, government, businesses, and nonprofit providers in new and exciting ways.

e-Vermont updates are posted at www.vtrural.org. Contact e-Vermont with any questions at 802-223-6091 or eVermont@vtrural.org

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.

This is part of the e-Vermont project… an exciting mix of resources coming from a great collection of entities to two dozen Vermont towns.  Here’s the skinny…

From:    Vermont Council on Rural Development
RE:    Broadband Stimulus Fund Project
Date:    March 25, 2010
Contact:    Paul Costello, VCRD Executive Director
802 249-8051 or 802-223-6091

$2.5 million Stimulus Grant Launches e-Vermont: the Community Broadband Project

MONTPELIER, VT -  A $2.5 million federal Stimulus Grant from the federal Agency of Commerce, announced today, completes the funding to launch the $3.7 million “e-Vermont Community Broadband Project.” This major campaign to stimulate broadband use in 24 Vermont towns will be produced by a partnership of organizations dedicated to expanding broadband access and its practical use.  The e-Vermont Partnership will be led by the Vermont Council on Rural Development (VCRD) over the next two years. VCRD is a non-profit organization dedicated to the support of the locally-defined progress of Vermont’s rural communities. Additional support for this project came from Vermont philanthropists and corporate associates.

By reaching the bedrocks of Vermont communities-schools, businesses, municipal government, libraries, health and social services groups-the e-Vermont Project will drive the benefits of the digital age to parts of the state that have been left behind, both economically and in digital culture, and are just now getting broadband services.

In addition to VCRD, the e-Vermont Partnership is made up of the Vermont State Colleges, the State Department of Libraries, Vermont Small Business Development Center, the Snelling Center for Government, Front Porch Forum and Digital Wish. Their application has been financially supported by the Vermont Community Foundation, the Jan and David Blittersdorf Foundation, the Evslin Family Foundation, UVM’s Center for Rural Studies, the Vermont Rural Partnership and by donated services and equipment from Dell, Microsoft, and Comcast.

“The federal stimulus money provides a tremendous opportunity for Vermonters to ensure that our communities take full advantage of broadband technology, including advancing the bottom line of our businesses,” said VCRD Executive Director Paul Costello.  He emphasized that none of the 24 towns are selected yet, but will be through a competitive application process that will be announced soon.
Vermont’s congressional delegation have been strong supporters of the e-Vermont concept.  Senator Leahy pointed out: “The impact of e-Vermont will yield both short-term and long-term community development benefits, creating new jobs, educating children and using technology to improve Vermonters’ lives.”

e-Vermont Partners worked closely with Vermont’s stimulus office through the application process.  According to Governor Douglas, “This effort is a key part of the SmartVermont strategy. In order to reach our goals in e-Education, e-Health, e-government, and e-Energy, we need to remove all obstacles to Internet use for Vermonters. Even when the problem of access is solved, other challenges like lack of equipment and training remain.”

e-Vermont will help municipal, school, community and business groups in rural Vermont towns design and implement campaigns to expand the use of digital tools and resources to serve a wide variety of local needs including  social networking downtown marketing, community engagement, business development, and school innovation. Local committees in these towns will work with VCRD staff to customize a two year plan from a menu of e-Vermont programs and services such as:

-e-government – training and consultation on podcasting, on-line meetings, community scheduling, website development
-Front Porch Forums that link neighbors to each other and to local services
-Computers and training for libraries and senior centers
-Free Netbook computers for 4-5th graders and extensive teacher training to imbed technology in the curriculum
-Specialized classes ranging from basic computer literacy to advanced applications to meet the range of community and business needs
-e-commerce classes and one-to-one counseling for local businesses
-Building community calendars, business directories, buy-local maps, arts and crafts tours, sports schedules, ride shares, and a variety of new locally-driven digital applications
-Expanding on-line computer health information and opportunities
-Expanding the use of web-based tools to facilitate community engagement and advance locally-designed initiatives

The e-Vermont project will learn from each of the selected towns and share these best practices in the uses of digital tools through symposia and conferences statewide.

Municipal leaders and other local organizations that are interested in adding their community to the list of towns to be considered should contact VCRD at 802-223-6091 or by email at info@vtrural.org.  Details on the applications process will be announced soon and posted at www.vtrural.org

Garrett Hardin called his famous 1968 essay on shared resources “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He argued that a shared village grazing pasture would tend to get overused and eventually destroyed. But even Hardin later acknowledged that shared common resources did not inevitably have to end in destruction, saying that he should have called his essay “The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.”

And from Fran Korton’s interview at Shareable…

Fran: It’s interesting that your research is about people learning to cooperate…

Elinor: I have a new book coming out in May entitled Working Together, written with Amy Poteete and Marco Janssen. It is on collective actions in the commons. What we’re talking about is how people work together. We’ve used an immense array of different methods to look at this question “case studies, including my own dissertation and Amy’s work, modeling, experiments, large-scale statistical work. We show how people use multiple methods to work together.

Fran: Many people associate “the commons” with Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”… What’s the difference between your perspective and Hardin’s?

Elinor: Well, I don’t see the human as hopeless. There’s a general tendency to presume people just act for short-term profit. But anyone who knows about small-town businesses and how people in a community relate to one another realizes that many of those decisions are not just for profit and that humans do try to organize and solve problems.

If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them. But if the community doesn’t have a good way of communicating with each other or the costs of self-organization are too high, then they won’t organize, and there will be failures.

Fran: So, are you saying that Hardin is sometimes right?

Elinor: Yes. People say I disproved him, and I come back and say “No, that’s not right. I’ve not disproved him. I’ve shown that his assertion that common property will always be degraded is wrong.” But he was addressing a problem of considerable significance that we need to take seriously. It’s just that he went too far. He said people could never manage the commons well.

At the Workshop we’ve done experiments where we create an artificial form of common property such as an imaginary fishery or pasture, and we bring people into a lab and have them make decisions about that property. When we don’t allow any communication among the players, then they overharvest [the commons]. But when people can communicate, particularly on a face-to-face basis, and say, “Well, gee, how about if we do this? How about we do that?” Then they can come to an agreement.

That last bit there about communication leading to better community decisions… love it.  It’s so obvious. I guess that’s why it takes a non-economist Nobel Laureate in Economics to explain it to the economists of the world.  And, for what it’s worth, her observation jibes with what we see at Front Porch Forum too.  FPF leads to better communication among neighbors, more face-to-face conversation, and, in many cases, better community decisions.

Congratulations Dr. Ostrom!

We get that question all the time here at FPF… especially leading up to Town Meeting Day and November elections.

The answer, of course, is “YES!”  Some of our members are disappointed to hear that.  They express a desire to keep FPF conversation “polite,” which therefore excludes mention of politics and religion… or anything that might bring feelings of discomfort.

I appreciate that point of view.  That’s the kind of thinking I grew up with.   But FPF operates under a different principle… the idea that more conversation and information sharing among neighbors will lead to more people getting involved in local issues, and result in better decisions being made much of the time.

This process can be messy.  People need to behave and have thick skins.  Local powerbrokers may need to loosen the reins a bit and develop strategies for engaging hundreds or thousands of constituents (that’s one place FPF can be of service).

In South Burlington, VT, for example, one City Councilor is speaking up about the U.S. Air Force’s plan to replace local F-16 fighter jets with new F-35s.  Her postings have reached directly into 2,000 South Burlington homes (out of 7,000 total) and have circulated widely beyond.  She’s forwarded many links to websites to facilitate voters in doing their research.

After dozens of postings from neighbors across several weeks (with various opinions and sharing more research), the Burlington Free Press picked up the story today, with staff writer Joel Banner Baird delving into the concerns and gathering quotes from various residents and local officials.

While I’ve heard that some civic leaders in South Burlington are upset at the Councilor for bringing the public into this issue through Front Porch Forum, most citizens I’ve heard from are grateful.  E.g., as quoted from the Free Press… Gene Palumbo, “We need more information.  We’re all curious.”

In another case, a selectboard member in Essex Town posted a campaign announcement plugging her re-election across the 18 FPF neighborhood forums in her area.  Other folks rightfully questioned this use of FPF, concerned about fair access to voters through FPF… fair between incumbents who enjoy wide access vs. challengers without access.  Well, FPF has a solution in place!

As laid out in FPF’s election-use guidelines, anyone on the ballot may post a single campaign announcement across ALL relevant FPF neighborhood forums.  So, everyone gets ONE shot to reach all FPF members.

Burlington grappled with many ballot items (e.g., instant run-off voting, IRV) on FPF this year, as well as debating choice of candidates.  Westford got into school budget issues.  Huntington explored conflict of interest.  Starksboro heard from candidates for two races… the first contested seats in years.  A Milton challenger used FPF and other means to unseat an incumbent.

Several local political observers report that Front Porch Forum is a surprisingly powerful new tool for both elections and ongoing governance.  Now that FPF’s service region blankets one-quarter of the state’s population (Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, plus Starksboro), we’re hearing from campaigns for statewide office as they ramp up for November 2010.  So weigh in and stay tuned!

Susan Comerford, a longtime community organizer and now associate dean for academic affairs and

Credit: William Duke

research at the University of Vermont’s College of Education and Social Services, calls it “the best community organizing tool that’s come along in the last 30 or 40 years.” To understand its importance, says Comerford (who started posting on the forum the day she needed a recommendation for a carpenter), you have to think about what’s happened in the American economy in recent decades.

“It’s not that people care less about community,” she notes. “It’s that the economy has shifted how much people have to work to keep up their standard of living. You don’t have one of the two partners home during the day making all those social connections, providing some sense of safety to the neighborhood. People have less disposable time than they used to.”

In a world like that, a system that lets you sit down for 10 minutes at the end of the day and learn what’s happened to your neighbors should, in Comerford’s view, earn Wood-Lewis one of those MacArthur “genius” grants.

UPDATE: The media coverage of Bill’s look at FPF is growing.  Check it out here, starting March 1, 2010.

It makes sense.  FPF has a huge local audience and Town Meeting Day is March 2… less than a week away.  Candidates, political parties, advocacy groups… they all are working to get the word out about their issue, their campaign.

But at its core, FPF isn’t about blasting out a single message to thousand of local homes.  It’s about neighborhood-level conversation.  Any local resident may join the single FPF neighborhood forum where he/she lives and post to his/her heart’s content.  (FPF is available in 25 Vermont towns.)

Most people are glad to read items from their clearly identified nearby neighbors… then continue the conversations on the sidewalk or at the local store or school.  FPF members seem less excited about reading one-way bulk postings from non-nearby neighbors.

That said, FPF does offer a range of options around elections, spelled out in our FAQ.  If you want to weigh in before Town Meeting, check out the guidelines and start posting!

Case in point… a Burlington resident who opposes a ballot measure to repeal Instant Runoff Voting.  She asked FPF to broadcast her posting across many of Burlington’s nearly 40 online neighborhood forums.  We declined and encouraged her to post it on her “home” neighborhood forum and ask friends in other neighborhoods to forward her message.

She took our advice and now we see her message popping up all over the city, and in each case it has a lead-in sentence from the friend stating their agreement with her position.  So now thousands of potential voters are getting the message, each with an extra pitch from a nearby neighbor… very effective.  “Best advocacy tool in town,” is how she put it.

And the original advocate had to convince dozens of friends across town to help her get her message out.  This is democracy!  Just the opposite of big money buying elections through mass media.

Indeed, I answered a knock on my door this morning and found a neighbor returning a borrowed pan.  We took the opportunity to discuss the merits of the IRV-repeal ballot measure for five minutes, each getting a little more food for thought before our respective moments in the voting booth next Tuesday.  A great use of Front Porch Forum!

House Concurrent Resolution 235
Congratulating Front Porch Forum on Its 10th Anniversary

Offered by: Representatives Wizowaty of Burlington, Aswad of Burlington, Bissonnette of Winooski, Donovan of Burlington, Frank of Underhill, Head of South Burlington, Heath of Westford, Jerman of Essex, Johnson of South Hero, Krebs of South Hero, Larson of Burlington, Lippert of Hinesburg, Lorber of Burlington, Minter of Waterbury, O’Brien of Richmond, Pugh of South Burlington, Ram of Burlington, Spengler of Colchester, Stevens of Waterbury, Till of Jericho, Waite-Simpson of Essex, Weston of Burlington, Wright of Burlington and Zuckerman of Burlington

Whereas, Front Porch Forum (FFP) has helped thousands of Vermont neighbors connect and build real community through its free, online service, and

Whereas, FPF now hosts 140 online neighborhood forums that blanket all of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, plus Starksboro, and

Whereas, more than 17,000 Vermont households subscribe to FPF, including in excess of 40 percent of dozens of neighborhoods and towns, and

Whereas, hundreds of local businesses and public officials use FPF to connect with Vermont customers and constituents, and

Whereas, thousands of Vermonters use FPF to find lost pets, report break-ins, organize neighborhood clean-ups and block parties, give away and sell household items, announce public events, debate local issues, and more, and

Whereas, FPF has been recognized nationally for helping Vermonters lead more civically engaged lives, and

Whereas, FPF looks forward to expanding its service to all Vermont towns, and

Whereas, today, March 30, 2010, marks Front Porch Forum’s 10th anniversary, now therefore be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives: That the General Assembly congratulates Front Porch Forum, Inc. on its 10th anniversary and its success in reinvigorating Vermont neighborhoods while building new online communities, and be it further

Resolved: That the Secretary of State be directed to send a copy of this resolution to Michael Wood-Lewis at Front Porch Forum, Inc. in Burlington.

As Front Porch Forum is high on our list of FPF we appreciate about this neighborhood and this community, we decided to make a financial contribution to support this very worthy cause.   We encourage you to do the same in whatever amount fits your budget.  Clearly we all want this forum to be around for a long, long time!

Where else can you possibly find out about all of the amazing things happening right in the neighborhood, and engage in such lively dialogue with your neighbors about Burlington happenings?  Our FPF is tailored to the ONE and its fantastic blend of personalities, opinions, and politics — so evident with each edition landing in our in-box.  Our family calendar routinely fills up each week (and quickly!) with events and activities we read about on FPF — often they are free and within easy walking distance.  Bumping into friends once there only further reminds us of the value of FPF.

FPF has helped us to…  meet our neighbors through buying, selling, and bartering,  find a dog sitter,  learn about nearby businesses we love to support, formulate our opinions regarding local politics, better connect our kids to local sports, theatre, music and art, sample new and delicious foods, and advertise a variety of school-related events with outstanding results.  There is nothing else out there that helps us feel connected and stay connected in quite the same way, whether it be by posting information or by reading someone else’s news.   Financially supporting this local venture helps to ensure that a quality service that we all increasingly rely on stays viable and strong during these trying economic times.  Supporting this local Vermont venture just feels right.

We hope you too will support Front Porch Forum!  Now’s the time.

-Siobhan Donegan
-Vince Brennan, Burlington School Commissioner

And another note just arrived from the O.N.E…

I’m also urging my neighbors to support Front Porch Forum.  Look at what we all gain by gathering online to share tips, questions, and information that bind all of us together based on shared interests and concerns.  During this season of gratitude, please consider donating to preserve the wonderful effort behind FPF.  Thank you!

-Megan Humphrey

UPDATE: Another nice note from nearby the two above today… from Maggie…

I loaned a guitar to someone for four weeks and was unexpectedly rewarded with baked goods!  Thanks for building community.