Virtual Community in Your Community?

11-08-2002 7:28 PM

jsalmons

Top 50 Contributor

Joined on 05-10-2000

Hello everyone,

One of my favorite things about this forum is the way people contribute ideas. I would love to hear your thoughts and examples on this topic:

One of my concerns is that as more radio stations and newspapers are owned by conglomerates from out of town, the chance to learn about community events and services is lessened. In some communities, virtual communities or community portals are emerging. They miight be focused on the arts community, human services, or whatever.

What do you have online to complement your local community? Does it work? What do you wish you had?

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

11-26-2002 6:13 PM

retskimo

Not Ranked

Joined on 05-21-2001

TechSoup Member

We started a listserv about 3 years ago in our community that is hosted by a local arts/economic development organization (www.ramp-vt.org). The main purpose of this listserv is to provide a forum for quick updates on any arts related events happening in the "community". Other than that...there aren't a lot of guidelines on how the list should work. It has been amazing to see how it has grown over the years (subscribers are local, regional...and out of state). Occasionally the subject diverts from arts related events...but usually pertains an issue that somehow affects the community. Overall the group is self-governing and the communication is valued.

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

11-27-2002 5:40 AM

jsalmons

Top 50 Contributor

Joined on 05-10-2000

Thanks for letting us know about that one. In the Denver area we have www.artstozoo.org. What about others? How does your local community use virtual community?

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

12-01-2002 2:54 PM

JoelH.

Top 500 Contributor

Joined on 08-02-2002

TechSoup Member

We are an organization just over a year old. On our website we have an upcoming events page which lists events of importance. We also send out e-mail alerts as well as publishing a monthly newsletter which is sent to our members.
Please visit our site www.wsana.org and see our many items of information and inspiration.
Our site went up in March of this year and has already been visited by 4,266 persons, 860 in November alone.
Joel Sheffel
Communication Director
West Suburban Access News Association
Oak Park, Illinois

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

12-02-2002 7:09 AM

Ozzie

Top 25 Contributor

Joined on 05-16-2002

www.craigslist.org has been around for a while and runs the gamut and now has some local regional stuff.

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

12-03-2002 5:32 AM

JoelH.

Top 500 Contributor

Joined on 08-02-2002

TechSoup Member

We are West Suburban Access News Association. A organization just over 1 year old. In March of this year we put up or website www.wsana.org. It has been visited by over 4300 persons since it premired. One of the parts of the site is upcoming events, where we are willing to list any and all events going on in our community. We also have many informative and inhspirational pieces on our site. Our local school district uses many of the items on our site as well as our monthly newsletters which are also posted online to send to all of their Special Education Administrators.
On a personal note, never working before with html codes I am slowly learning the codes and able to even do some of the posting to our site. This is a very gratifying experience to learn the codes and see them actually work. Just recently we were awarded a Community Block Development Grant and were the ONLY new agency so selected which we feel is a honor and also a show of confidence in what we do.

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

12-04-2002 6:34 AM

jsalmons

Top 50 Contributor

Joined on 05-10-2000

Congratulations on the grant and good luck as you build your community resource!

In reply to

RE: Virtual Community in Your Community?

03-14-2003 7:26 AM

jcravens42

Top 25 Contributor

Joined on 09-02-2001

Portland, Oregon

In Austin, Texas, there are several online communities that bring local people together that I'm familiar with, such as HerDomain, which is for women in Austin who work in Internet tech, or want to; and CommunityTech-Texas, for those interested in the "digital divide" in Texas. The big difference in these local online communities versus national or international communities is that you will probably actually meet at least a few of the people on the list face-to-face at some point, if you don't know them already, and that can certainly affect the way people post (ofcourse, for some, it has no affect at all...).

Too often, people talk about how the Internet brings people from far away together; it can also do a great job of further networking the members of a local community together.

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Virtual Community in Your Community?