THE CONTRIBUTION REVOLUTION
03.10.2010 // by: Alison
Stand is pleased to announce Clay Shirky as the March 17 City Share speaker. Described by TED.com as “a prescient voice on the Internet’s effects” who “argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works,” Shirky will be speaking to Chattanooga via video chat next Wednesday about the concept of “The Contribution Revolution.”
In addition to teaching New Media at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, Shirky’s consulting practice focuses on the utilization of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. His columns and writings have appeared in Business 2.0, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired. He explains his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations as being about “what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures.”
In an, interview with Jon Lebkowsky, Shirky speaks to the importance of including people at all levels of engagement: “Very often really large-scale collaboration, whether it’s a Wikipedia or Linux or what have you, involves a small number of people who care an enormous amount, and then a large number of people who only care a little bit, but who are participating, who are adding their value to the overall work product.”
Stand believes that participation is paramount to community change, which can’t begin without people speaking up, standing up, and standing together. Clay Shirky’s innovative thoughts on online group formation can help guide the ways we connect around Stand results—in real time, online and in the spaces in between.
Join us Wednesday, March 17 from 12-1 pm at CreateHere for broad insight, Lupi’s pizza, and thoughtful discussion with this internationally renowned social theorist.
If you plan to attend, please RSVP to blair [at] chattanoogastand [dot] com.
A CITY IS ONLY AS VIBRANT AS ITS LIBRARY
02.25.2010 // by: Sarah
Sarah Lester is Stand’s former campaign coordinator and our resident library connoisseur. Here, in anticipation of next week’s City Share with Sari Feldman of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, she tells a little about her library philosophy and the experience of her library travels.
I love experiencing cities. To tap into the pulse of an unfamiliar city, there’s one place I always go. The library. To me, the library speaks louder and clearer than any brochure or tour guide, and it tells me how the city perceives itself and its people. Does the experience of a city stop as you pass through the library’s doors, or is it an extension of this experience?
Here’s my soapbox soliloquy.
A library should be a microcosm of its community—a place where people are encouraged to gather, to interact with each other and with new ideas. It’s more than a static archive for books. It’s a free resource for people and a place to build community. What happens when a library becomes a hub for planning and learning and playing, when it welcomes the messy intersection of community and the creative process? This process isn’t always clean and it’s not always quiet.
The libraries I’ve visited in the last six months are doing something right. I take pictures, I ask questions, and then I come home. I appreciate our local library for what it is - but that doesn’t stop me from wanting more. What if we really put this public resource to use? We can do more with what we have - we can be more relevant, more multi-purpose, more people-friendly, more creative, more talkative.
Fairhope, Alabama. With a population of 14,000 residents, this small-town library averages 700 visitors per day, and 17,000 visitors per month. Now that’s a library!
Seattle, Washington. The downtown central library literally brought me to tears. Clearly, whoever transformed the old “brutalist” architecture into today’s marvel loved more than books - they loved people. It’s a creative design that begs to be used, to be lived in; it reflects an understanding that a library is far more than an archive for books.
Vancouver, Canada. Surrounding the library’s quiet interior are small kiosk-cafes. Don’t leave - just step put of the stacks. Grab a book, find a friend, and talk to your heart’s content.
Indianapolis, Indiana. The Learning Curve at the Central Indy library made me want to be a kid again. Thankfully, they let big kids share in the fun.
Last year, the City of Chattanooga’s Library Task Force released “The Challenge of Change,” a comprehensive analysis of our library system. With this report in mind, along with the Chattanooga Hamilton County Bicentennial LIbrary‘s recent (though very small) boost in funding, we hope that Chattanoogans will either begin or continue to ask: What would make our libraries better? Join us next Wednesday, March 3 for a City Share focused on libraries, featuring Sari Feldman, the director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library system of Cleveland, Ohio and its surrounding suburbs since 2003. For the last year, Feldman has also served as president of the Public Library Association.
Since Feldman became director, The Cuyahoga County Public Library has been on a mission to be at the center of community life by providing an environment where reading, lifelong learning and civic engagement thrive. Due to its renewed commitment to innovative and inclusive programming, friendly design, and continually progressive content, the library has since been named by Hennen’s American Public Library Rating System as the #1 library in the nation for its size for the last 6 years and is among the Library Journal‘s current Star Libraries.
If you plan to attend, please RSVP to blair [at] chattanoogastand [dot] com.
REINVENTING URBAN SPACES
02.10.2010 // by: Alison
From the Lula Lake Land Trust to the Tennessee River Gorge and our local chapter of The Trust for Public Land, Chattanooga’s green spaces have benefited greatly from land trusts over the last 20 years. It’s in large part because of these conservation efforts that Chattanooga has become known as “the scenic city.” At the same time, however, large portions of property within our city’s urban core have been either overlooked or ignored. Where land trusts aim to ensure livable communities through preservation of the natural environment, land banks do so through a focus on the built environment: either repairing or repurposing residential, commercial and industrial properties that are acquired through the tax foreclosure process.
Flint, Michigan has long been known as a casualty of the automotive industry, and roughly a third of its houses currently stand vacant. In 2002, the Genesee County Land Bank was created in order to address the thousands of abandoned properties that were deteriorating all over Flint. In the eight years since its inception, the land bank has acquired over 4,000 such properties and has instituted ten programs to variously repurpose them: Planning and Outreach, Brownfield Redevelopment, Development, Adopt-a-Lot, Clean and Green, Demolition, Housing Renovation, Sales, Side Lot Transfer and Foreclosure Prevention.
Land banks can serve as planning tools for revitalizing and directing reinvestment back into blighted neighborhoods. And in the last few years, The Genesee County land bank has become a model for cities such as Ann Arbor, Indianapolis and Little Rock because it satisfies community needs on both a short and long-term scale. In the short term, fiscal aid is provided in the midst of an economic downturn and wide-spread mortgage crisis; while in the long term, the groundwork is laid for lasting neighborhood renewal.
Dan Kildee is Genesee County’s treasurer as well as being the Land Bank’s chairman. He’ll be joining us for next Wednesday’s City Share to discuss the importance of reinventing urban spaces.
Please join us for this enlightening presentation followed by thoughtful discussion from 12-1 pm on Wednesday, February 17 at CreateHere.
Lunch will be provided by the King Smokehouse on Main. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to blair [at] chattanoogastand [dot] com.
For footage of last week’s City Share, visit the Action Lab.
SUPPORT “STAND & DELIVER: EDUCATION”
02.02.2010 // by: Veronique
Stand and CreateHere are pleased to announce our participation in the Refresh Project, a vetting process for innovative ideas sponsored by Pepsi and GOOD. Our project is Stand & Deliver, a six-month community change process focused on improving education in Chattanooga. Awards are determined by a public vote, and polls are open February 1 through February 28.
We’re asking anyone who supports education to get the vote out during the entire month of February! Users can vote daily for up to ten different projects, which means you can cast 28 votes for Stand & Deliver, and up to 280 votes for projects that are revitalizing communities across the country. On Monday, our application goes live, available here.
But what’s the project? Stand & Deliver starts with the production and distribution of ground-setting documents—infographics, best practices, Stand data, and local interviews. These research pieces will be widely available in several formats, and will play a major role in engaging 1000+ people in two 24-hour citizen summits, to be held in October, 2010. During these summits, citizens will pitch potential projects, produce asset maps, connect with diverse skills sets, and act on the needs, and strengths, of local education. We’re asking for $50,000 to make this project possible.
So, how can you get involved?
First, vote for Stand & Deliver today and continue to do so during the entire month of February. Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/createhere to vote.
Next, spread the word: reach out to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. Education is everyone’s business.
Finally, think big, and act accordingly. We believe all the ingredients for innovation and community renewal are already here: it’s just a matter of connecting people, ideas, and action. Help us kick-off this exciting project, and help us deliver on a promise to make our community better.
A DIGITAL WORLD, FOR BETTER OR WORSE
01.27.2010 // by: Alison
Technology is a fickle beast—and last week’s City Share with Casey Caplowe from GOOD is a perfect example of this tender fact. Those who were present for Casey’s presentation, as well as that of DJ Trischler from the Half Campaign, can attest that it was a very informative and inspiring lunch hour…and we thank them greatly for their participation.
So, bad news first. We’ve been experimenting with streaming conversation platforms, and unfortunately our audio recording fell prey to this experimentation. In spite of how moved we were by Casey’s talk, we were unable to record sound this time and therefore have no audible record of it. We do have Casey’s slide presentation, though, which you can view here.
Now for the good news. Last week was also our first attempt at live-tweeting an event. So, while we don’t have a sound clip for you, you can check out @StandHQ on Twitter for direct quotes, summaries, and web links from the talk. And, as a result of our #CityShare live-tweet barrage, we got some great feedback from @GOOD and @StandHQ followers all over the world.
One of our posts quoted Caplowe in asking, “What makes a neighborhood?”—and we were surprised and pleased to see how similar the feedback was to this very simple, very tough question. These three posts pretty well encapsulate the trend:
Ryan Michael Fogarty of New York replied through two consecutive tweets: “This is small, but when some one says a pleasantry (“good morning”, etc.”) So few people say things above a grumble…I’m always surprised and happy when people do it. Thanks 21st Century cynicism.”
Marco Giovanni Sain of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil replied with “Good people that you can count on when necessary.”
And Dave Thomas from LA, said that “talking, tolerance and respect” are what make a difference.
Interestingly, each of these responses comes down to one central theme. A neighborhood can be many things—it can exist online amid websites, message boards and social media or it can take place on street-corners, across balconies and picket fences, in parks, churches and cafeterias. Regardless, it seems that what makes a neighborhood is no more complicated than the people within it. Online or in person, good neighbors make good neighborhoods.