Update: Drafting guide from here. Please offer your comments on the blog or via our short survey. The other week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released an excellent report on Government Online. When I left Minnesota state government in 1997 after launching our main portal in 1995, I left because the sense I [...]
We’ve now officially closed our Rural Voices grant from the Blandin Foundation and thought we’d share the full 10 page evaluation with you. Our four rural Minnesota forums continue as all volunteer local enterprises within our 15+ community network. Below are some excerpts to give you a sense of what is in the Word, PDF, [...]
Editor’s Note: Every few months our Community Information and Outreach Leaders with our Inclusive Social Media effort will share their lessons via and update on our Project Blog. This special outreach effort is funded by the Ford Foundation with additional contributions from the St. Paul Foundation for St. Paul efforts. This new digital inclusion to [...]
Our Neighbors Forum adaptation of our Issues Forums model is taking off. Neighborhoods next to our established forums are asking, “Hey, what about us!” New volunteers are stepping forward. The full story, especially our special Inclusive Social Media efforts in lower income, highly diverse/immigrant neighborhoods, is covered by a recent Twin Cities Daily Planet article. [...]
Update: Note our directory of current print materials. Whether you are launching a new Issues Forum or want to refreshing your membership, we’ve found nothing more effective than in-person recruiting. Nothing. Because our forum are hyper-local, the only way to get to the 10% of households we now have in Cass Lake Leech Lake and [...]
The Issues Forum model is always evolving. While real names and civility remain central, over the last few years we’ve being going even more local – be that at the neighborhood level or in smaller rural towns. Now that we have 25 forums across 15 communities, our central support costs are now measurable and growing. [...]
Over the last week, we’ve been in the field building socially inclusive online neighborhood networks AKA “Issues Forums.” Frogtown, St. Paul, Minnesota Last Wednesday, the volunteers of start-up team and local district council staff met at the Hmongtown Marketplace over lunch to discuss the next phase of bringing the Greater Frogtown Neighbors Forum to life. [...]
In conjunction with the Northeast Beat social network on Ning, volunteer Dan Haugen is leading an effort to create our first large multi-neighborhood Issues Forum – NE Minneapolis Neighbors Forum. While our first set of neighborhood forums serve smaller one or two “official” city neighborhood areas, this area covers at least 13 neighborhoods. (Although, the [...]
Update: We’ve added the Cook County Conversations interview with Jim Boyd below. The other week with our community visits to Bemidji and Cass Lake, I sat down with our volunteer forum managers for one on one interviews.The audio is below. These are part of our final evaluation for our Blandin Foundation Rural Voices initiative to [...]
As we wind up the final activities in our Rural Voices effort supported by the Blandin Foundation we will be visiting our new Issues Forum communities to celebrate online participation efforts thus far and to gather lessons and input for what is next. Issues Forums evolve over time. After initial start-up, they can benefit significantly [...]
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