Fw: [Locals] Final questions?

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-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Clift <clift@e-democracy.org>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:32:36
To: <locals@forums.e-democracy.org>
Reply-To: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
Subject: Re: [Locals] Final questions?

I'd definitely like to hear more experiences about online leading to
greater connections in-person. What works?!

This definitely happens across our network - particularly at the
neighborhood level-, but we really don't know if it is a once a month
rare occurrence or something we could design to make happen more
often. I often contemplate what the "Do Something" button might look
like or what tools we might offer/recommend for small groups to take a
discussion from the forum, get into a small online group, meet in
person or facilitate some lighter time effort mix of MeetingWizard
with FreeConference to make telephone group calls easier to promote
AND then importantly report back to the full forum on their progress,
need for larger group input.

Offline Connected Examples:

1. Community garden group launched from online discussion - interest
discovered online, people met offline many many times and reported
back online from time to time - See our recent webinar for story:
http://e-democracy.org/webinars

2. Powderhorn Park - Response to violence - No forum is better at
sharing written notes on public/neighborhood meetings. In response to
recent shooting and gang violence, folks used the forum to promote a
number of in-person gathering including some "Talking Circles":
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/1ushRoG1XfIk3iQo3MhHJp

3. Event recruitment - The Experimental College group used our Cedar
Riverside forum to recruit new participants:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/40hpcLeboYobvykSRA8qF4
They even included a Somali version of their announcement. Someone
with their confirmed with me directly that a handful of new people
came based on the forum posting.

4. Regular gatherings - For the first six months of the rural Cass
Lake Leech Lake forum they had monthly get togethers to chat local
issues and celebrate the birthdays of the month. They even had their
own inaugural ball fostered by the forum:
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/189
This participant noted that because of the forum she was interacting
with more non-Native folks since moving to the reservation (this is a
major Native American area) over a decade ago:
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/509

5. Park Design Input - We used my neighborhood forum to encourage
people to attend a planning meeting on a new splash pad. When no one
reported the highlights, someone who went did and I tracked down the
presentation:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/hVgJbedNeTPfdIHM9Hj7d

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072

Steven Clift
Ericsson, Minneapolis
Info about Steven Clift: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/stevenclift

View all messages on this topic at: http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/4gTh5Ee97rHKs43s0Q6jTi
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