What's a Portal? Pilsen Shows the Way

Mayor Daley was in Pilsen yesterday promoting "digital excellence," but what does that mean? The hope is that in the four demonstration communities of Pilsen, Englewood, Chicago Lawn and Auburn Gresham, use of digital tools and the internet will become commonplace for residents young and old, well-off and poor. It won't be easy because so many residents lack broadband access and don't have experience with on-line tools, but that's all included in the digital excellence plans that the communities are beginning to implement.

One thing is certain. A community will use the web more if there is relevant local content that is of value to residents, businesses and other stakeholders, and that's where the Pilsen Portal comes in.

Launched last week and still in beta form, the portal is intended to be a place where many, many local people contribute content, find content, and comment about what others are putting up. Already about 20 beta users have signed on as contributors and they're starting to fill up the calendar and the directory (check out the listing for Studio One Tattoos). Jaime Guzmán, on organizer for the project, is putting his videography skills to work profiling local businesses (Kristoffer's Cafe) and even the churches are getting involved putting up the schedules of masses and kermeses (summer festivals).

A dynamic community-created web portal won't bring digital excellence all by itself. But my hunch is that if the portal can engage scores of local people in the telling of the Pilsen story, circa 2009, that will be an important step on the road. And once Pilsen does it, others will follow.

Welcome to Our Neighborhoods!

How do you convey the excitement and hard work that goes into making neighborhoods stronger?

We've tried a lot of different ways over the seven years of the New Communities Program, and probably the closest we've come is in the new video below by Sarahmaria Gomez and Alex Fledderjohn of TuMultimedia.

This is the first half of a longer piece they created as a "thank you" tribute to Jonathan Fanton, the president of the MacArthur Foundation. It captures the voices of neighborhood residents talking about:

• a community garden on Maypole Avenue in East Garfield Park;
• the South Chicago Art Center;
• a mural in North Lawndale;
• the La Estancia development in Humboldt Park;
• a mariachi band at Cooper School in Pilsen;
• the Oakwood Shores mixed-income development in Quad Communities;
• the West Haven Giants baseball team;
  
• the Little Village Boxing Gym; and
• the foreclosure prevention efforts in Chicago Lawn.

All that in five minutes! I think the reason it works so well is because the work it represents is so genuine and real.

Needed for youth writers: Used laptop, camera

I talked to Chicago writer Richard Muhammad this morning and he is excited about the work of the half-dozen young people he is mentoring in the Youth Speak South Shore media literacy program (see post below). They're working across a range of media from TV and radio to print and the web. He's already impressed with the talent and enthusiasm of the students – "and we're just getting started," he says.

Okay, here's the pitch. Richard says some of the participants don't have day-to-day access to computers and that there's a lot of interest in photography and video -- but no equipment to feed that interest.

So if you've recently upgraded from your old laptop or digital or video camera, and would be willing to donate it (rather than have it become obsolete sitting in your closet), Richard could immediately put it into the hands of a young person interested in communications and media. Related software would be a plus. If you want a tax-deduction letter, Richard can probably arrange it through his fiscal agent, Metropolitan Area Group to Ignite Civilization.

Got something? Know someone who does? Drop Richard a line at straightwords4@yahoo.com

Youth speak out in South Shore

Two regular themes on this blog are the need for effective youth programming and the benefits of creating communication vehicles that give voice to neighborhood viewpoints.

Richard Muhammad has combined the two in Youth Speak South Shore, a media literacy and writing program that seeks to "heighten the understanding of youth regarding consumption of media, provide youth with tools to examine media and the skills to create alternatives. In particular, the program focuses on issues of race and the portrayal of Blacks and how these images and caricatures of Blacks persist."

The first blog entry, by 19-year-old Stephen Gardner, takes a critical look at the CNN series Black in America, in which the television crew filmed a Houston dropout-prevention group as it encouraged a young boy, at his home, to go back to school. Gardner writes:

"Now readers please ask yourself this question – how would you react if complete strangers showed up at your house in the afternoon, bombarding you with pleas to return to your job? Under the gaze of television cameras and reporters that just so happened to be there as well?"

It's a provocative piece and a promising debut for new writers in South Shore. Read the full entry at youthspeaksouthshore.blogspot.com

SWOP launches its first web site

A few years ago, an organization could get away without any kind of web presence, but as younger people (and older ones with the digital habit) turn increasingly to Google and the web for basic information, that's what every organization and business needs to offer. On line. The paper phone book doesn't cut it any more.

That's why it was a pleasure to watch Sandra Del Toro build out a new web site for the Southwest Organizing Project, where she serves as director of the Integrated Services in Schools program at Marquette Elementary. She did it in under a month, start to finish, using the Grassroots template developed for the New Communities Program by Webitects, Inc. It's the 12th site built on Grassroots, with more to come.

The SWOP site offers recent news, a directory of staff members and member institutions, and writeups about the group's issue areas, including education, immigration and safety.

It's a good strong demonstration of how an organization should present itself to the world. Congrats to Sandra and the others who put it all together.

Taking, sharing pictures at the May Day March

Patrick and I were chatting this morning about how cool it is that LISC and NCP groups are sharing photos via flickr. The Workshop is trying something similar out for Thursday's May-Day march.

If you are bringing a camera phone to the march and want to post pictures for folks who can't make it or to view later--Community Media Workshop has created a photobucket account where we will post pictures from marchers' camera phones. Here's how it works:

Send pix from your camera phone to: chicago_mayday.68461@uploads.photobucket.com

As fast as we can moderate and post them, you will be able to view them online at:

http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll303/Chicago_Mayday/feed.rss

or view them at www.communitymediaworkshop.org

It's a bit of an experiment. Next stop for us: twitter. as soon as Maude from my office helps me understand what the hell it is. (Can we say hell on this blog, Patrick?)

New (media) tools for communities

Ernest Sanders records a radio blog with his phone.
Photo by Eric Young Smith.

Communications was a hot topic last week at the Getting It Done: New Tools for Communities conference, and the clear direction was toward digital "new-media" tools. A few observations:

- Ernest Sanders of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp. showed how his organization has used web sites, video, audio slideshows and even the Vocalo.org radio/web site to promote its work. Oh, and old-fashioned printed newsletters and giant posters on CTA buses, too, because digital doesn't reach everyone, at least not yet.

- The web services firm that has built 10 NCP-related web sites, Webitects, Inc., introduced its "Community Collab" networking site, now in development, that is intended to provide a knowledge-transfer function for people in the community development field. Paul Baker, Billy Belchev and others from Webitects signed up 200 participants from all over the country as potential beta users. The site will be ready for testing by the end of 2008.

- Alberto Ibarguen, president of the Knight Foundation and former publisher of the Miami Herald, tore up his planned speech for the closing luncheon because he wanted to talk about his favorite subject: the need for communities to take up the communications role that newspapers once served. Ibarguen stopped in on the Digital Media and Youth discussion group and liked what he saw. But his pitch was that we all must push aggressively and quickly into the digitized world.

The conference gave the New Communities Program scribe team a good workout, with five writers and two photographers working the action. John McCarron is merging scribe reports into a conference overview that will be available soon. In the meantime, we sorted through some 3,500 digital photos, picked out the best, and learned how to post them in sets on Flickr. We even created a nifty "badge" (in the right-hand column of this blog) to urge people to click through to the galleries.

Thoughts? What are you seeing in the new-media area, or where do you see opportunities in this fast-changing world?

A community slant at Vocalo.org

One of my ongoing interests on this blog is exploring the new forms that communications are taking as the old broadcast and newspaper models fall apart. I can't tell yet how important web/radio might end up, but I'm certainly intrigued by the possibilities being kicked around by Chicago Public Radio's offshoot, Vocalo.org.

One of Vocalo's host-producers, Dan Weissman, told me yesterday that the station stirs things up by trying a new programming format every six weeks. The latest experiment will be a neighborhood-focused program centered around visits to the studio by community activists followed by journeys out to the 'hood to see things and meet others.

Interesting.

It gets started on Tuesday, March 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a visit from Jermont Montgomery of Imagine Englewood If, an organization that works on projects related to open space, youth and beautification. Two weeks later on March 25, Dan will visit with Ernest Sanders of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, again from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ernest is one of the New Communities Program's most prolific communicators, not simply writing stories and taking photos for the web, but making audio slideshows and using his cell phone to send reports to Vocalo.

To get more people in on that action, Vocalo is sponsoring another of its anyone-can-be-a-broadcaster trainings next Monday and Tuesday, March 10 or 11, at Batey Urbano, 2634 W. Division. "You'll learn the basics, including recording, editing, licensing, music selection, using your telephone as microphone and uploading content to the Vocalo.org web site," said the e-mail I received. "You'll also get to test some inexpensive recording equipment and free software." You can register online at the Vocalo "store" or call 312-893-2956. You can catch Vocalo at 89.5 FM if you live on the far South Side or Northwest Indiana; otherwise the best way to listen is by streaming it on the Vocalo browser. A more powerful antenna will start working this summer, Dan says, spreading the broadcast through metro Chicago.

Where's it all going? Who knows. But it sure is interesting watching the new media evolve.

LSNA web site makes Chicago mag's "best"

The Logan Square Neighborhood Association's web site at lsna.net is one of the best web sites in Chicago, according to the cover story in Chicago Magazine 's February issue. The site offers newsletters, calendar items, job and volunteer listings and policy papers, the magazine says, to help readers "keep abreast of this diverse and still changing community."

Not mentioned is that the site, edited by LSNA's Monica Garreton, includes a bilingual button to flip much of the text over to Spanish translations, deep directories of local organizations and businesses, and regular news stories that reflect the organization's advocacy work in affordable housing, immigration, education and other issues important to the neighborhood's mostly Latino families. The site is one of 10 created by New Communities Program lead agencies to provide "portals" for community information. Congrats to LSNA!

Other sites on the list include Alexander Russo's District299.com, a long-running source of news and commentary about the Chicago Public Schools, now hosted on the Catalyst Chicago web site; MarshfieldTattler.blogspot.com, a journal of community life in Back of the Yards; and ChicagoLatinoNetwork.com, which helps Latino professionals keep up with events and meetings.