Groundworks Somerville

Here is my new node for groundworks somerville. I figured I'd post exactly what I emailed them, since it worked out and they actually responded to the questions, even if it did take a while. It is quite interesting to read that even they are not 100% sure about the status of Somerville. It made me think about our website, and how people will learn about the different organizations and people in Somerville, but what about Somerville itself? Will we/should we have a page where people can learn and explore about the issues that need to be addressed within the community?

1. In your own words, can you please tell me about the word you do in and for Somerville?

Groundwork Somerville is a community-based organization designed to serve as a catalyst for reuse of former brownfield sites and for community revitalization in Somerville. The organization is an affiliate of Groundwork USA, a network of organizations created by the National Park Service and modeled after the successful network of 43 Groundwork organizations in the United Kingdom. Groundwork Somerville is one of a small number of organizations nationwide that have received planning and startup grants of $100,000 from the National Park Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is currently governed by a Board of Directors representing a cross-section of non-profit groups, community-based organizations, public agencies and business interests in Somerville.

2. How is your organization dealing with economic downturn? Is it affecting your organization, either negatively or positively? Is the downturn affecting the population that your organization serves?

Our organization has not felt the squeeze as much as other non-profits, largely because there are many grants for “green” projects trickling down from the government, which is a label that basically covers all the different programs we run.

3. In your opinion, what is the main economic need(s) of Somerville? Is your organization addressing that need(s)?

I don’t know enough about the different aspects of Somerville to say with any authority, but I know from experience that Somerville Public Schools are very poor, and I think the many afterschool programs Groundwork runs with all age levels helps to inject some science and outdoor hands on learning into the curriculum.

4. We’re trying to understand how people and organizations in Somerville are connected. What/who are the three most important partnerships you have—and/or—the organizations you work most closely with?

Difficult to say because our different programs have different needs, but overall probably Tufts University, Somerville Public Schools, and the City of Somerville

Outreach Opportunity - Launch

Kretzmann and McKnight’s Community Building Workbook provides a thorough guide with which to analyze the extent in what manners and the extent to which an organization is involved in the local community. I went through the survey questions using our project as the organization to try to discover where our strengths and our weaknesses lie. It is clear that our project’s greatest strength lies in its objective of having a direct economic impact on the community by mobilizing resources (volunteering) specifically within the local community. However, going through the questions, one weakness of our project that struck me is the extent to which we are engaged with institutions and organizations of Somerville. We are building this networking map on a fairly large scale, and yet the organizations we are hoping to connect have little (if any) knowledge of the project. Considering that the launch of our map is coming up, I think our project’s prospects for success could be greatly increased by outreach aimed specifically at getting organizational and institutional participation. The easiest and most cost efficient way would be to draft a newsletter type email to be sent to the organizations that are already on the map (or maybe send out hard copies—but this would cost money) announcing our launching, goals, and ways to participate. However we approach this, our launching presents an excellent opportunity to contact these organizations and get them excited about the map, being more tangible and useful to the organizations than when we were simply contacting them for information.

Facebook changes as community changesi

Although this is not about our site or the project at all, I thought that it was an interesting bit of information on how networks evolve.

These are excerpts from an open letter to all users of Facebook from the creator, Mark Zuckerberg

-Facebook's current privacy model revolves around "networks" — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

-However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

-We've worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone's needs are different. We'll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

well, thats actually a large portion of the letter. I just found it very very interesting.

Some interesting design for the map

Hi guys!

I have to do a mapping project for my design class. I browse through the internet to look for some cool and interesting design to stir some ideas for the project. I found this one website that is really pretty. It shows so many different design for mapping. You guys can browse around and check out the many patterns they offer...
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/search.cfm?input=map

It is just an idea that we could make our website look a little bit - I know that we are pretty much set with circle, but looking for new things wouldn't hurt, right?

Users connecting to Orgs

Welcome back to Medford/Somerville everyone... While I was in Virginia for thanksgiving I grabbed a UVA newspaper and it finally surfaced in my book bag this morning, and some clever little Cavalier designed this comic:

"
Facebook needs more options than 'Send Friend Request." Lots of people on Facebook are not my friend.

(insert sad face stick figure drawing)


____________
Send a Message

View friends

Send Friend Request

Send Enemy Request

Send Arch Nemesis Request

Send 'I wanna creep on your pictures' Request




So it made me wonder: how will organizations be able to control if they don't want to be linked other organizations, causes, or users? What if Tufts' LCS wanted to send an "arch nemesis request" to Jenn Bollenbacher or Dean Ladin (even if he got accepted by TFA-- congrats)?

I don't remember us discussing this, and only touching on the idea of users being able to connect to other users.