Thinking about local communities again
My thinking about local communities did not stop after that blogpost in August last year, which received some nice comments by the way.
What I noticed however, was that I could use some “locals” to think with me on the subject. Via the website of a local photo-club I traced a web-savvy potential “co-thinker”. After some email exchanges, we even ended up with a team of three! Next Tuesday Wednesday is our first face-to-face meeting and I am really looking forward to it.
What we could (should?) discuss first:
- Who is who (introduction round; who’s good at what?)
- Mapping the local www-space (what’s there online?)
- Value of local resident participation on the local-www (use cases; what are people looking for?)
- Implications of local resident participation on the local-www?
- The local media-landscape (actually it’s about one good local newspaper!)
- Mission of the project (what do we want to achieve with getting locals online or online locals to the local web?)
- What potential tools would be available (who has experience with what; learning curves etc.)?
Actually, to me personally the difficulty of finding like-minded people for this project already highlights the value of connecting people here via local online tools.
Just thinking, that it may be worthwhile to create a series of blogpost about this venture…
Technorati tags: Citizen journalism, Local web, Web 2.0, Community, Hyperlocal, Local
Add to del.icio.us 
| 
posted Jan 14, 10:58 PM on Jan 14, 2008 |
category: Local web
/ Web2.0
Marcel
I’m writing to you for two reasons.
The biggest challenge to local online media is getting people to think to use it. And local businesses to try to play some sort of role. Too many of them aren’t internet savvy.
To get people involved, you need to engage them on things that are important to them. School issues. Social calendars. Fun stuff. And for local businesses, you should probably have some sort of online review system. Where businesses get rated. That should attract some attention.
The other thing I want to say is actually make a suggestion. Try using ooVoo. They are a client of mine. Online video telecommunications. It’s free, it’s lightweight, and you can have up to six people on it at once.
http://www.ooVoo.com
Frankly, I need to start using it more.
— Jonathan Trenn Jan 14, 11:29 PM #
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments about my local community project. Engaging people should indeed be a top priority!
I checked out this ooVoo service and it looks nice. Haven’t tried it though but I save the link in Del.icio.us.
— Marcel Jan 15, 11:14 PM #