Disruptive Conversations

How well do you know your neighbors? How often do you see them? Do you know what's going on in your neighborhood?

The reality today is that our lives seem to be getting increasingly busier and we very often don't know our neighbors all that well. Even when we do know our neighbors, we may not see them all that often as our schedules may not overlap. Plus, there are often times of the year when we stay indoors as much as we can (winter in the north, summer in the south) and may see our neighbors only in passing. (Unless, of course, you have a dog, in which case you may see your neighbors a great deal if you walk said dog.)

Here in Burlington, Vermont, we've had an ongoing experiment for the past couple of years in using the global Internet to connect people in their local neighborhood. It's a service called Front Porch Forum (FPF) that started here in Burlington, has expanded to cover the entire county here in Vermont and is now looking to expand into other parts of the country/world.

One of the interesting aspects is that FPF uses that very decidedly unsexy and un-Web2.0 medium of...

email!

Yes, indeed, the killer app for connecting people in their local neighborhood turns out to be... email mailing lists that are restricted, moderated and digested. You have to live in the neighborhood to join. All messages to the mailing list are moderated. And only one message is sent out every day or so (depending upon volume) containing all the other messages. Think of it as almost a community "newsletter" sent to all members.

I have to say that... it works! You know (or come to know) the people in your community There's no spam. It doesn't flood your inbox. There's no special website you have to go to... you just get the message in your inbox wherever you read your email.

Simple. Easy.

And that is perhaps the key. These days it's extremely easy to get set up with an email account, and that's all you need. You can read it whenever you can... so you don't have to be right there.

Here in Burlington where, according to the Front Porch Forum folks, some 30% of all households are subscribers to their neighborhood forum, it's been an incredibly useful service. I've learned of upcoming events (and posted some). Volunteers have been found for local events. Community associations use it to put out info about their activities. The city of Burlington has taken to sending out notices. Local politicians have posted notices. We've had some debates/arguments about certain aspects of our neighborhood (like "should we put a lock on the gate to the beach area?") Advocates for various causes have posted notes about their views. All sorts of notices, requests, questions, debates... (you can read some testimonials online).

Having been active in our local neighborhood (and on the community association board for a year), I've certainly seen the value. People will say "Oh, yeah, I saw that on the forum." I've had neighbors, some of whom I didn't know, contact me specifically because of notes I've posted. Sometimes by email, sometimes by phone and also in person. It has connected our local community together more - and it's been an interesting experiment to watch.

Now is there any real difference from FPF and just a plain, old, mailing list for a neighborhood using something like Google Groups? On one level, no, not really. It's just a mailing list after all. The difference really is that with your own mailing list, someone has to administer it. Someone has to deal with spam, either by approving memberships or moderating messages. And the list has to be publicized. The FPF crew takes on the sysadmin issues and moderation tasks. They also make it easy for people to find your local community mailing list because all you need to do is enter your street address.

To get a sense of the project, here's a video that was recently produced about Front Porch Forum:

Front Porch Forum is also up for a Case Foundation award along with some other great projects and is looking for votes. :-)

Sadly, when we move to Keene, NH, in a few months I'll have to leave the FPF behind (at least until they expand into that area). I'll leave, though, having seen an example of a really old electronic media (email) playing a really neat role in connecting neighbors to neighbors.

Do you have anything similar in your neighborhood? (BTW, you can sign up at Front Porch Forum even if you're not in Vermont and the FPF folks will contact you if/when they expand into your area.)

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