Local community sites and blogs seem to be getting more attention at present, and the model is changing. On the one hand the admirable Oncom set of sites covering Richmond and surrounding areas announced last month that it is closing after 10 years despite great effort by volunteers. Fund raising efforts are in hand, so there's a chance of relaunch.
About the same time Tom Steinberg of MySociety floated the idea on the e-democracy exchange mailing list of a map-based system by which any local blogs, email lists and other online activities could be signposted to get more attention and cross-over. In the US the Placeblogger project is doing that on a national basis. Communities Online - an early UK initiative - has some listings but these haven't been updated recently. Jon Udell is planning to use his sabbatical - and considerable Net expertise - to set up a community website using a set of open source applications. BBC Click reports on a Parisian experiment Peuplade in creating online neighbourhood sites linked to face-to-face meetings.
The early models of local online communities - like Oncom - aimed to replicated physical proximity online. "Please come to our your space and contribute ...." Some local interests did, many didn't, and it proved difficult to get a sustainable mix of funding, advertising, and volunteer effort. I hope Oncom shows it is possible once you have a core of enthusiasts and supporters. I'm just not sure it is replicable (which doesn't mean it isn't right for Richmond)
On the other hand, now that more and more individuals, groups, organisations, companies, public bodies are creating their own sites in town, cities and villages - and they can be joined up - a different model is possible in which the nature of sustainability changes. Search engines enable users to find local content, particularly if there is one dedicated to do this - as in Brighton and Hove. As more and more sites produce RSS feeds, not just static pages, it is much easier to link and showcase what is happening, as John Udell plans to do and I think Tom Steinberg is suggesting. I hope MySociety rise to the challenge.
Earlier: Proxicommunication - or technology at local level revisited
The price of local democracy - a bit of "street clutter" (about Oncom)
BBC helps start local blog communities
Another model under development in Burlington, Vermont, USA is Front Porch Forum. We launched a few months ago and we're now hosting 130 neighborhood forums covering every home address across the greater Burlington area... more than 3,000 households have joined already (5-10%). Our most robust neighborhoods have 9 out of 10 homes partaking. A few dozen have 20-40%. It's been all word-of-mouth and some local media coverage. People are doing great things with this service... and not just the typical tech-heavies... an 80-year-old couple joined the neighborhood forum serving their area just yesterday.
We're developing a sponsorship program now and about 50 local small to micro businesses have found their way onto our waiting list... they want to reach targeted neighborhoods.
Speaking at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society tomorrow about innovative local uses of the internet... snow willing. The warmest winter on record just ended for Vermont today with big white flakes blanketing everything... finally!
More about our efforts on our blog. Cheers.
Posted by: Michael Wood-Lewis | January 14, 2007 at 02:35 PM