overall neighborhood online community engagement work:
http://e-democracy.org/inclusion
Thank you Knight Foundation.
While the vast majority of the resources go toward our hybrid model of very
public, open, and accessible community building and NOT private nearest
neighbor networking, we do have a Technology and Innovation budget and three
years to use it!
So some next steps:
1. BeNeighbors.org/BeNeighbours.org will be our "Got Milk?" site promoting many
local online groups online via a geo look up/map interface. It will promote the
30+ forums we host in the Twin Cities as well as dozens of mostly private,
resident-only block/few block level nearest neighbor online groups (Facebook
Groups, YahooGroups, new .com entrants, etc.)
Would you like to help us build this directory leveraging open source?
Let us know. We've been tracking the CityGroups - http://citygroups.org - code
in Drupal created by one of our members here and how we might adapt that idea.
We also want to build general tools that online neighborhood groups can use
help promote their online spaces be it online promotion/sharing tools or even
generating print fliers.
If this works in the Twin Cities to "increase the pie" for all sort of neighbor
connecting efforts and is designed to scale with distributed input/maintenance
of the data, then we can go global with this starting point. I don't predict
one winner in this space (Facebook Groups will dominate IMHO for good and bad),
but I do want to help the motivated online neighborhood leader actually reach
people.
2. Electronic Block Club Pilots - Per the grant, in year two (2013) we plan to
go into the field with private nearest neighbor online small groups for under
100 households. (Our current model - http://e-democracy.org/if - covers at
least a couple thousand households with public engagement.)
The "classic" (also cheapest) model is the block leader in the center model who
determines the geographic area covered or the people allowed into the private
exchange. We will combine that model with door to door outreach in low income
areas and seek technology to test and evaluate that allows us to mix in some of
the most active door to door outreach in the field.
We are exploring (comparing at least three options):
A. Leveraging http://GroupServer.org the current open source platform we use.
B. Leveraging Drupal, WordPress (BuddyPress) or other popular open source CMSes
or looking at other web frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, etc. to pull
together the right modules and create some new ones. We know that we want to
add tools that integrate with crime prevention practices like being able to
print and nicely laid out of an opt-in neighbor directory. We are interested in
how VOIPDrupal - http://drupal.org/project/voipdrupal - or similar
modules/plugins might be used to connect those not online on the block or use
voice with non-English speakers.
C. Using tools like Facebook Groups, etc. side by side to research and compare
how they work with block-level groups in highly diverse low income areas. (Or
overall or highest order goal is inclusion.)
Depending upon how our effort to recruit 10,000 Neighbors Forum members in St.
Paul goes this year (again our goal is that the forums reflect the 44% people
of color in the community ... so that outreach goes way beyond the most wired
easy to reach because its cool folks), we may have the resources to try all
three options at a small scale.
With "B" I think this online working group space could be quite relevant. What
I like about "B" is that we can make it possible for all sorts of local sites
(like local neighborhood newspapers) that have an audience to connect people
without going out of business because they couldn't offer something that people
want.
If you'd like to help us develop the specification for "classic" neighbor
connecting within existing open source CMS/community tools let me know. Let's
do it here.
3. Dynamic Proximity Connecting - Our original "Holy Grail" idea remains viable
in my mind, but obviously all the .com start-ups who have entered the space
since we first joined make it difficult to raise resources for an open source
approach.
That said, with moves in the mobile space for mobile dynamic connecting, "usual
place" (street address) connecting ideas will gain some currency. With our
limited resources, I'll be looking for opportunities to promote technologies
such as open source modules _in collaboration_ with other civic technology and
open source projects.
Again, this idea is that each person is the center of their own neighbors
network which in theory eliminates the need for leader to get started in an
area IF the overall area has a critical mass of participants. That "IF" makes
it very difficult to test the idea unless you have an incumbent base like we
and other established projects have in the field.
Again, let me know if you want to work on this area. I have a 15 page plan for
how it could work and an Alpha description.
So, going forward, I look forward to engaging you all here as we get moving on
the new funded work.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
P.S. If you want get more involved with our efforts in general, join our
Projects online group - http://e-democracy.org/projects - Or send an e-mail to
<email obscured> In the subject, write: subscribe
And if you want to help with GroupServer right now, we have a giant list of
"quick win" features we are developing. Drop me a note - <email obscured>
- and join their Developers online group here:
http://groupserver.org/groups/development