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. [...]
E-Democracy.org is proposing a Minnesota version of the Sunlight Foundation’s Great American Hackathon on December 12th. No matter the civic-spirited code you write or open source projects you contribute to, this will be a chance to meet other programmers in Minnesota interested in online government transparency, the reuse of government data, online civic engagement etc. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Update July 31 – Marny Xiong will be leading intensive outreach in the month of August to add another 100 members (on top of the 100 recruited thus far) with a special emphasis on outreach to the Southeast Asian communities. If you would like to help with tabling, hanging posters and more, contact us. Update [...]
When someone you know or a neighbor is a victim of crime, particularly violent crime, it hits home. In my own neighborhood Issues Forum covering Standish and Ericsson in Minneapolis where we have close to 10% of households interacting daily, Erik Mitchell shared: All, I regret to report that my [Erik Mitchell] wife, Jenny, was [...]
We had a great time in Grand Rapids Minnesota discussing citizen/social media and the launch of their local Issues Forum. Watch Ross William’s explain the Nortern Community Internet project. The local cable access center taped the presentation … stay tuned for on-demand access.
Tomorrow evening (Thursday, Apr. 2), I will be presenting on Citizen Media and Issues Forums (using a sub-set of the free webinar slides) in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Here is the announcement and the local Issues Forum currently in recruitment mode. Join us and spread the word. The other week, I spoke at the NewsOut conference [...]
Folks in Cook County, Minnesota took advantage of our relatively new photo sharing feature with our Issues Forums with their recent ice storm. To share a photo, simply attach to an e-mail or upload via the web and we do all the auto-resizing automatically. Photos attached to the same subject become an automatic slide show [...]
What can you do when you have 300+ neighbors gathered everyday via a local Issues Forum? Consult them. Below is letter from Sam Newberg – both a Standish Ericssson Neighbors Forum member and a member of the Minnehaha-Hiawatha Corridor Community Advisory Committee asking participants to provide input into county government led community investment project. I’ve [...]
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