eric rochow : social media handyman

I watched an interview of Michael Wood-Lewis this morning, what he is doing is quite similar to what I am doing in our small town, creating a community online that enhances the in-person community.

Robert Scoble of The Scoble Show interviewed Michael Wood-Lewis about his new online service, Front Porch Forum. He has, for the past 7 years, been running an online community for neighborhoods in Burlington, Vermont. He and Valerie Wood-Lewis have now launched Front Porch Forum.

Front Porch Forum’s mission is to help people create healthy and vital community within their neighborhoods. Common sense and a growing body of research tell us that well-connected neighborhoods are friendlier places to live, with less crime, healthier residents, higher property values, and better service from local government and public utilities.
Our service provides email forums for neighborhoods, based on a successful model six years in the making, and capitalizing on our founders’ many years of community development work.

Michael and Valerie Wood-Lewis launched the Five Sisters Neighborhood Forum in the spring of 2000 in hopes of learning more about their corner of Burlington, Vermont and the people who live there. Six years later, the original forum’s incredible success led the couple to launch Front Porch Forum to help others invigorate their neighborhoods too.

When I watched the video interview, it was a deja vu moment; I thought “WOW” as this is my goal in the 2 neighborhoods I live in as well. I think this is particularly well suited to Colebrook, CT. [I divide my time between Colebrook, Ct, and Brooklyn, NY. For our Park Slope block, our Brooklyn neighborhood, I have another plan, more later.]

I’ve been writing the Colebrook News email newsletter for 4 years now, and I just started the community blog, but I have not seen a lot of activity on the blog. Part of it is in educating the town about what a blog is, which is hard in a rural community that is just now getting fully wired to the Net. I also think the word ‘blog’ doesn’t sit well with residents here. So I call the site a ‘community website’ . Front Page Forum rolls of the tongue a lot easier, and sounds more accesible to the average person.

Right now Front Porch Forum is running only in Burlington, Vermont, but sign up for future updates at their site: http://www.frontporchforum.com

Here’s a video interview Robert Scoble did with Michael Wood-Lewis at the Googleplex in NYC, a place I look forward to visiting soon.