FW: [OSGeo-Discuss] Anybody Interested in Helping Out With a Town Meeting on Suburban Redevelopment for #dosomethingday on 10/8

[karsten]

Hey Folks,

 

forwarding this email from the osgeo discuss list
in case anyone is interested ;)

 

Cheers

Karsten

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From: Discuss [mailto:discuss...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Miles Fidelman via Discuss
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2024 12:36
To: dis...@osgeo.org
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Anybody Interested in Helping Out With a Town Meeting on Suburban Redevelopment for #dosomethingday on 10/8

Hi Folks,

We're organizing a town hall meeting to kick off our program on Neighborhood Redevelopment, with an intent on building something like the Internet Engineering Task Force - lots of working groups, focused on redeveloping neighborhoods - particularly condominium complexes, built post-WWII, that are at risk of falling apart like the condo towers in Miami. 

We need a movement to "Rebuild Suburbia" or some such, something like the Open Planning Project write large - crowdsourcing neighborhood redevelopment.  I've been planning on doing something around the America 250 campaign - organize meetings in local communities about "where do we go next?"  And then the Harris Campaign, starts doing large group organizing - and FoundersForHarris wants to get a whole bunch of town hall & policy forums going on #dosomething day -10/8 - an opportunity too good to pass up.  So....

I'm looking for folks who might want to organize watch parties, local working groups, in their neighborhoods - particularly folks who live in condo complexes, maybe have a podcast or a blog - so we can build a permanent meeting electronic meetinghouse around neighborhood redevelopment.  A network of hangouts, and working groups. 

Trying to pull this together in 20 days, so .. take a look - let me know if you're interested.

This Old Neighborhood: A Call to Town Meeting

Neighborhood Redevelopment Strategies Program

New Ways Forward for America's Suburban Neighborhoods

Share Your Stories, Visions, Ventures, and Opportunities

Program Launch: #DOSOMETHINGDAY, 8 October 2024

Call for Hosts, Organizers, Presentations, Media Partners, and Sponsors

Pre-Registration & Pre-Conference Activities for Participants

... More in attachment

SOME BACKGROUND
-------------------------------

By way of quick intro, I used to run the Center for Civic Networking, where we did some early work on "electronic town halls" - and later did a lot of work helping cities & towns launch broadband projects.  I wrote the books on putting the Internet in public libraries (All-Out Internet Access American Library Association Editions) and municipal broadband (Telecommunications Strategies for Local Government  Government Technology Press. and Edited/Published the Journal of Municipal Telecommunications), and coined the term "Civic Networking." Details at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfidelman/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20040205011330/http://www.civic.net/.

Now, I'm focusing on the challenges of redeveloping aging suburban subdivisions, before they crumble into the ocean, like Miami's Champlain Towers.  I'm focusing first on the Village of Nagog Woods, where I find myself on one of our four condo boards, and our long-range capital planning committee - discovering just how ill-equipped volunteer condo boards are at long-term planning.  A lot of communities are on the verge of catastrophe - but few are even paying attention - and the lack of support is staggering.  Hence my efforts to launch a program to address the issues.  I've been blogging our early efforts at ThisOldNeighborhood.Net - but so far, it's an unfunded activity.  I've been getting ready to scale up - pursuing funding from various sources, and possibilities for an organizational home.  

I'd been planning to launch a major marketing campaign, in association with the America 250 activities ("let's do more than celebrate our past, let's gather in town meeting to plan our future") - when along comes the Harris Campaign, it's various mega-zoom town meetings, including Founders for Kamala, aimed at entrepreneurs.  The group is calling for folks to organize events - including town hall meetings & policy forums - for #dosomething day on 10/8 - which seems an awfully timely opportunity for us.  Particularly given Harris' focus on housing, middle class economics, and small business - it screams "buy local, build local."

So... We're planning some kind of coordinated series of panel discussions, on "Redeveloping Suburbia" - mostly as a recruiting activity, to get people's attention, and engage them in thinking about the future of their neighborhoods.  And... It seems a perfect opportunity to start building a network of local "civic forums" and community networks (harkening back to the days of FreeNets, and the attempt to build a network thereof) - conveniently, I managed to retain the domain "Civic.Net" - which I envision as the hub of an internet of hyper-local media networks.  

I'd welcome the opportunity to chat about this - sooner, rather than later, given that #dosomethingday is 20 days away.  The best way to reach me is at 617-538-9249 (cell/txt - eastern time, best to txt first), or Facebook Messenger for video chat (Miles Fidelman).

Best,

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. 
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. 
In our lab, theory and practice are combined: 
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown