Greetings!
I've been working on designing and testing an innovative use of Google Plus tools to help my local community (Santa Rosa, California) improve its civic engagement. I'm a member of a group of veteran citizen activists who are trying to encourage our residents to work more collaboratively toward more productive outcomes on issues of public policy and changes to our community.
They are meeting every couple of weeks, and are planning a conference in November, followed by some followup workshops to address the needs of business, nonprofits, schools, local government leaders, and citizens. While I am sure that the meetings will be helpful in bringing more of our residents into dialogue with the committee, I am eager to begin to utilize some communication and data management tools which Google have made available to see if we can answer some of the key problems which have been discussed.
Here is what I'm working on:
One of the most common frustrations I've heard about controversial city issues is "I didn't know this issue was being discussed until I read about it in the newspaper", or "I would have come to the meetings about this if I'd have known they were being held". Clearly, we need to both have earlier meetings on issues as they are brought forward, and we need to better publicize the meetings. Posting agendas on city websites, and having notices of the agenda availability emailed to subscribers, isn't enough.
Because I've spent most of my career working with nonprofits to improve and support the community, I have been amazed at how much of our effort is spent trying to get the word out about what each of them does, and to alert the community when opportunities are organized to support them.
I think that many of the same residents who are concerned about our community issues are also supporters of our nonprofit organizations. This community of caring individuals would greatly benefit from a comprehensive event calendar which informs members of that community about fundraising events they could attend, about key meetings on community issues, and about the work in general of their nonprofit organizations.
In addition to an easily accessible, comprehensive community calender, the information should be displayed on a community map using Google Maps. Neighborhood projects, issues which are location-based, and meetings in my proximity should be easily seen. More and more, residents are relating to online maps for their information, as the power of the internet is used to connect us. Community data should also be available in geo-maping forms.
So I have established a Google Community entitled "Santa Rosa Civic Engagement". It uses Google Maps, Calendar, and Google Events to post all of the key information about the upcoming meetings and fundraisers related to our community's need for change. Here is a link to the MindMeister Design to illustrate how I created a master calendar (built from data I expanded on Sonoma State University's Center for Community Engagement Community Calendar, and linked from the Sonoma County Volunteer Center) the and map to identify the fundraising and volunteer training events in the county. Linked calendars for the various regions of the county result from the ease with which Google calendars can be integrated. The first one I created, and linked from the Google Community, identifies only those events in Santa Rosa. I am working on better integration of local maps created by Google Engine Mapping to Google Calendars.
Links to appropriate additional information about community issues are included, as well as the opportunity for a feature to allow ongoing dialogues by members of the community. Easily organized chat rooms, video-conferences, and sub-group meetings are facilitated by the Google Community tools.
In addition, it contains a link to a Google Blog, and a post with links to all of the websites for the nonprofits in Santa Rosa. The information was obtained from the detailed lists which have been assembled by the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County and the local 2-1-1 Information and Referral System.
Improving the civic engagement of Santa Rosa's residents will take all of our energy and talents. I plan on contributing what I can to the efforts to provide tools to make information more available. Maintaining the information on the Google Community page will be easy for me, as it seamlessly integrates the meetings and nonprofit contacts into my own Apple Calendars, emails, maps, and social networks on my MacPro and IPod Touch. The notifications which are generated, and the City's own subscription-based and Google Alerts to my Gmail, will allow me and others to keep the data fresh and vibrant. I have no doubt the conversations within the post threads will be informative and productive. The integration of it all within Google Plus makes it easy to manage, and invitations to those on other social platforms is also available.
Additionally, I'm going to be working to produce some panel discussions on video focusing on civic engagement stories. There are some professors at the junior college, producers with the community media center, and social media consultants who will be involved.
Gregory Fearon
I've been working on designing and testing an innovative use of Google Plus tools to help my local community (Santa Rosa, California) improve its civic engagement. I'm a member of a group of veteran citizen activists who are trying to encourage our residents to work more collaboratively toward more productive outcomes on issues of public policy and changes to our community.
They are meeting every couple of weeks, and are planning a conference in November, followed by some followup workshops to address the needs of business, nonprofits, schools, local government leaders, and citizens. While I am sure that the meetings will be helpful in bringing more of our residents into dialogue with the committee, I am eager to begin to utilize some communication and data management tools which Google have made available to see if we can answer some of the key problems which have been discussed.
Here is what I'm working on:
One of the most common frustrations I've heard about controversial city issues is "I didn't know this issue was being discussed until I read about it in the newspaper", or "I would have come to the meetings about this if I'd have known they were being held". Clearly, we need to both have earlier meetings on issues as they are brought forward, and we need to better publicize the meetings. Posting agendas on city websites, and having notices of the agenda availability emailed to subscribers, isn't enough.
Because I've spent most of my career working with nonprofits to improve and support the community, I have been amazed at how much of our effort is spent trying to get the word out about what each of them does, and to alert the community when opportunities are organized to support them.
I think that many of the same residents who are concerned about our community issues are also supporters of our nonprofit organizations. This community of caring individuals would greatly benefit from a comprehensive event calendar which informs members of that community about fundraising events they could attend, about key meetings on community issues, and about the work in general of their nonprofit organizations.
In addition to an easily accessible, comprehensive community calender, the information should be displayed on a community map using Google Maps. Neighborhood projects, issues which are location-based, and meetings in my proximity should be easily seen. More and more, residents are relating to online maps for their information, as the power of the internet is used to connect us. Community data should also be available in geo-maping forms.
So I have established a Google Community entitled "Santa Rosa Civic Engagement". It uses Google Maps, Calendar, and Google Events to post all of the key information about the upcoming meetings and fundraisers related to our community's need for change. Here is a link to the MindMeister Design to illustrate how I created a master calendar (built from data I expanded on Sonoma State University's Center for Community Engagement Community Calendar, and linked from the Sonoma County Volunteer Center) the and map to identify the fundraising and volunteer training events in the county. Linked calendars for the various regions of the county result from the ease with which Google calendars can be integrated. The first one I created, and linked from the Google Community, identifies only those events in Santa Rosa. I am working on better integration of local maps created by Google Engine Mapping to Google Calendars.
Links to appropriate additional information about community issues are included, as well as the opportunity for a feature to allow ongoing dialogues by members of the community. Easily organized chat rooms, video-conferences, and sub-group meetings are facilitated by the Google Community tools.
In addition, it contains a link to a Google Blog, and a post with links to all of the websites for the nonprofits in Santa Rosa. The information was obtained from the detailed lists which have been assembled by the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County and the local 2-1-1 Information and Referral System.
Improving the civic engagement of Santa Rosa's residents will take all of our energy and talents. I plan on contributing what I can to the efforts to provide tools to make information more available. Maintaining the information on the Google Community page will be easy for me, as it seamlessly integrates the meetings and nonprofit contacts into my own Apple Calendars, emails, maps, and social networks on my MacPro and IPod Touch. The notifications which are generated, and the City's own subscription-based and Google Alerts to my Gmail, will allow me and others to keep the data fresh and vibrant. I have no doubt the conversations within the post threads will be informative and productive. The integration of it all within Google Plus makes it easy to manage, and invitations to those on other social platforms is also available.
Additionally, I'm going to be working to produce some panel discussions on video focusing on civic engagement stories. There are some professors at the junior college, producers with the community media center, and social media consultants who will be involved.
Gregory Fearon
