[DW] Summer of neighborly online love - Major Neighbors Forums presentation, webinar, links

---------- Forwarded message
From: Steven Clift

We have exciting news to share about our recent neighborhood Issues
Forums momentum:

     http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1215

Our "Neighbors Forum" model combines civic engagement from our
city-wide "online townhalls" (started in 1998) with very local
neighborhood "community life" online communities. The hybrid is pretty
magic.

We embrace openness, civility and inclusive outreach with our
neighborhood public spaces that cover areas with 5 to 20K in
population. We don't ban local "politics" or virtually close the gate
behind a password. This maximizes engagement with elected officials
and the community institutions we support with our tax dollars or as
customers.

In my own neighborhood - http://e-democracy.org/se , we have just over
~17% of households participating - over 700 members. Take a look and
ask what you can do to build something similar for your own
neighborhood.  You may have to believe it to see it.

* Neighbors Forums Presentation

Here is a brand spanking new presentation with slides, extended audio,
flyers, links, etc. to go in-depth:

    http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1215

* Effective Outreach to Diverse Communities

Crucially we've launched the third generation of our diverse community
outreach positions (as we experiment with methods to build inclusive
participation in lower income, highly diverse/high immigrant areas) as
we seek to find ways to leverage minimal resources for maximum impact:

     http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1197

This all feeds into our summer campaign for online neighborhood
participation focused on the Minneapolis and St. Paul:

    http://tcneighbors.org (Twin Cities)

With support through the end of the year from the Ford Foundation, the
Knight Foundation's donor-advised fund at the St. Paul Foundation, the
Digital Inclusion Fund at the Minneapolis Foundation, and the Blandin
Foundation (for coming second generation outreach with our rural
Native American majority community forum) we've just launched a major
outreach campaign to recruit many more participants (Goal: 1000 total)
as well as launch over 10 new all volunteer-led forums.

(This is on top of our local volunteer-led, unfunded effort in
Christchurch New Zealand to open 25 forums for post-quake community
recovery - http://neighbours.cc .)

* Lesson Sharing

With the Ford support we will be packaging up our lessons and sharing
them later in the year and in 2012 we seek opportunities to take our
Inclusive Social Media - http://e-democracy.org/inclusion - training
and outreach to far more communities. We'd rather not be lonely. The
lack of activity at the intersection of raising diverse community
voices online - particularly those that build bridges among
communities locally - and digital inclusion must be addressed.

To learn about future webinars and other involvement opportunities,
here are some places to tune-in:

1. E-Democracy Blog - http://blog.e-democracy.org - E-mail option on left

2. Projects Volunteer Group - http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/projects

3. Locals Online - A peer to peer online community of practice -
http://e-democracy.org/locals

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org

P.S. I've left out my this is soooo much more than simply slapping up
a new Facebook Page for a neighborhood commentary. Creating quality
community public space more effort and better design than essentially
opening a virtual strip mall location off in the far corner of the
parking lot and expecting it to attract real community engagement.

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org

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Ta.

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