Up in northern Minnesota along the Gunflint Trail a major forest fire is slowly coming under control. A community network and citizen media initiative called Boreal Access is keeping people up-to-date online and aggregating a number of the local blogs.
How do we learn from this effort and small town projects like Northfield.Org and Locally Grown Northfield, mix it with broader Web 2.0 and social media trends and best share the story of citizen media and online citizen engagement across rural Minnesota? How do we extend E-Democracy.Org’s own experience with Issues Forums in a small city like Winona to rural towns and regions?
We have some ideas that we will soon be proposing next week (likely) to the Blandin Foundation which specifically serves rural Minnesota.
What are your comments and suggestions? Post them here or e-mail them to: team@e-democracy.org
Steven Clift
Board Chair, E-Democracy.Org