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Patrick's work updates

    1. Finding some very interesting urban-centric blogs out there, each with a unique take on the future of cities.
      http://www.thepolisblog.org/ -- great international angles.
      http://www.infrastructurist.com/ -- transit and energy issues.
      http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/ -- built spaces
      These are creative sites that are raising the game to new levels.

    2. Thinking about doing more before-and-after photo stories to illustrate the impact of community development efforts. Photos from Providence, RI, have attracted visits and comments on the Institute web site here:
      http://www.instituteccd.org/case-studies/1410

    3. Talking to practitioners around the country about how they use communications to support their work. Twin Cities LISC has just hired a pro journalist and 11 neighborhood contributors to create stories for neighborhood and citywide web outlets. Boston LISC has an Americorps fellow whose goal is to post a new story each week, with photos. Interesting stuff. Wondering if we might use the Groups function here to get some interchange going.

    4. Just went live with the web site for the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, at http://instituteCCD.org. We had plenty of good material to work with – quality-of-life plans, case studies, evaluations, reports, handbooks – and decent photography, too, so it was fun to put it together.

      Next challenges: keeping it fresh with new material, and getting readers to participate and comment on articles.

    5. Working on a new web site for the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, a venture of Local Initiatives Support Corporation designed to spread knowledge and advance the field. Watch for it starting March 1.

    6. Finishing phase one of a corporate history project (S&C Electric Company in Chicago) and heading back to LISC after a four-month leave of absence. I'm more convinced than ever that social networking and internet tools will be central to communications strategies.

    7. Just back from a brief vacation and not doing much writing yet. Instead, talking to lots of people, gathering information, reading, thinking, getting organized. It's nice but won't last. I feel the writing urges building up (and the assignments lining up) so it's only a matter of time . . .

    8. Old-fashioned print publication work, putting out a quality-of-life plan for Washington Park and six brochures with maps for Burnham Centennial tours. Final prep is tedious stuff but the end products are worth it.

    9. We posted more than 350 professional-quality photos about the eight-day Spring Into Sports event, using embedded Flickr slideshows. That and daily story updates produced a big bump in traffic, but we still haven't reached many of the youth. A Facebook group (Neighborhood Sports Chicago) didn't work at all. We'll keep trying.
      http://www.neighborhoodsportschicago.org/display.aspx?pointer=7704

    10. Just loaded up a new web site for Neighborhood Sports Chicago, a fledgling coalition of nonprofits that use sports programming to support youth development and community improvement. We launched the site in 13 days from start to finish, using the Grassroots web site template built by Webitects, creator of this Collab site.

      http://www.neighborhoodsportschicago.org

    11. Webitects (creators of CommunityCollab) just helped us set up Chicago's first "aggregation page" for neighborhood-oriented news, with automatic (RSS) feeds from 11 neighborhood sites and eight sites covering urban issues. It's an experiment in bringing lots of news into one place to help people find what they need, fast.

      Go here: http://www.newcommunities.org/news/cnnb.asp

    12. Just added some great new audio to our multimedia section: podcasts by students at Curie Metro High School that give a very real kid's-eye view of their neighborhoods. The quality of the work is high, thanks to teacher Sarah Levine and the students who put in plenty of time writing, capturing sound and editing. Check it out by scrolling down on this page:
      http://www.newcommunities.org/tools/multimedia.asp

    13. Learning more about RSS feeds so that we can do a better job sending our material out to others, and bringing theirs to us as we build up an "aggregation" page at http://www.newcommunities.org/news/cnnb.asp

    14. We're building up readership of our blog at communitybeat.blogspot.com by adding posts by new contributors and making sure other sites like outside.in pick up the feed. It's working out pretty well.

Patrick

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Chicago, IL
Primary expertise
Communications
Sub-specialties
community web sites, new media tools, and quality-of-life plans