Hyperlocal Networks - Community Engagement via Social Media

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Hello. My name is Andrew Miller and I’m a founding member of the Columbus Social Media Café, a social justice and technology activist and community organizer working here in Central Ohio. I’ll be talking with you about Hyperlocal Networks and how we can build community engagement through them.

What are Hyperlocal Networks? Essentially they are micro-targeted communities of interest defined partially by their physical locations (although they will also have other attributes to them that further define them, such as mass transit supporters in Columbus). Hyperlocal networks are not just the connections between people though. Hyperlocal networks include individuals, organizations, relation to place and the cumulative data associated with all of these things.

In order to expand on the idea that these Hyperlocal networks are more than just the individuals who connect let’s take a look at EveryBlock.com. This site was born out of the website ChicagoCrime.org and was the project of a journalist named Adrian Holovaty. EveryBlock.com presents data collected from sources all over the internet, and in some cases from internal government networks, for quickly digestible consumption by residents of a particular physical location. The project was underwritten by the Knight Foundation and as a term of that agreement is now Open Source and available for any community to implement. This idea of opening up data relevant to a locale is key to a site like this functioning. The return benefit is a more aware COI that is able to proactively take on tasks related to their locale that they otherwise would likely have been more reactionary to. An example of this is the building permits and business license sections. Making these documents easily accessible by the public provides a forum to make changes that best fit with the residents needs before finalizing project plans which are then fought via referendums or in the courts. There is a great deal of data about events and other social opportunities to be found here as well which further builds community between residents. The next websites I’d like to talk about expand upon that idea.

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are certainly being utilized in a hyperlocal fashion for certain issues. But it is the truly local sites that are more directly engaged as a part of hyperlocal networks. Here in Columbus a couple of standouts are the Columbus Underground.com and IndieColumbus.com which have each had an impact on how the residents of our city interact.

Thom, a user on Columbus Underground, created a possible route map for a light rail system here in Central Ohio. He used maps of existing rail lines that could be incorporated into the light rail solution. The topic of light rail is frequently on the lips, or, in the case of the Columbus Underground, fingertips of its Community of Interest. With no monetary interest these users are tapping into each others passions and skill sets and developing solutions, or at least the framework of solutions, to many of the issues facing our community. As an individual, developer or agency looking to get projects done it is important to recognize this work being carried out by the COI and how you can gain support by embracing the appropriate network.

I’ve got several case studies that I have been closely tied to, on one side or the other, that I’d like to share with you. The first one I became involved with somewhat involuntarily. On May 30, 2008 my motorcycle, along with many others, was issued a parking ticket for parking in Pearl Alley in downtown Columbus. Knowing that there was no reason that a motorbike should take up a full car parking space (and thus pay the same amount) a network of riders and transportation activists formed. Two days later a face to face meeting was held which included city representatives and local business owners. Local motorbike and scooter clubs spread the message online and off about the parking issue, social networking sites like the Columbus Underground quickly grew the numbers in the Community of Interest and a blog was setup to keep everyone updated with the latest information. This rapid mobilization of the COI and a willingness to work with the city to find a solution instead of expecting the city itself to do all of the heavy lifting resulted in permanent, officially sanctioned motorbike parking throughout downtown Columbus and its busy neighborhoods. The parking remained free for the first year of operation. All of this took place by July 17, 2008 – about one and a half months from start to end.

Last year several changes came to Gay Street in downtown Columbus. These changes have made it much more pedestrian and business friendly. The business owners and city felt it would be both beneficial and fun to throw a party to celebrate this newly redesigned part of our city. The Couchfire Collective is an artist collective who throw many interesting events and have helped to create many unique public events. The Couchfire was feeling the need to expand out from their space and the city was happy to partner with them. What happened was a crowdsourced festival with minimal overhead. The city and Couchfire took the lead on lining up stages, road closing, permits and equipment. For all of the booths, performers, visual arts, etc. it was left up to the COI that formed through the already established online and offline social networks. Using Google Docs as the central repository for schedule data and volunteer needs the COI filled in the blanks and threw one heck of a party. Those who joined in to make it happen became shared owners of the space. Advertising was primarily done through the COI reaching out to its broader networks. All in all this festival which included hundreds of volunteers and thousands in attendance happened, from idea to execution in under 3 months time.

This case study hurts me the most because I was very much on the other side of this issue. I invested a great deal of time working to pass the UA Library Levy this spring and we were soundly defeated by the anti-library levy campaign. The point here is that you can learn a lot from your mistakes and when dealing with networks that can mobilize so quickly there is a great opportunity for multiple failures over a short period of time. A little background is that the UA Library was looking for a $25M Capital Improvements bond to make repairs, reconfigure some of the space both for compliance reasons as well as to meet the future needs of the space. Over the past 2 years a group now going by the name Change In UA has been building its network of individuals generally opposed to any and all tax increases. Using an online data repository they have been collecting targeted public records that they were able to use against the library. They also employed tactics such as redirecting a pro-library levy campaign domain name. Two major lessons include that even very local politics can devolve into the use of bogus tactics (like the redirect) and that these hyperlocal networks improve access to data and vastly speed up organizing capabilities but they still require the offline connection between participants to get full buy-in. On the library’s side of things there was an assumption that the library’s standing within the larger community would speak for itself which obviously didn’t work out.

As I’ve mentioned; the difference between today’s hyperlocal networks and your pre-web 2.0 networks is not just the organizations and people that are connected but the data and information creation, searching and sharing as a part of the network. There is a limitless pool of data floating around out there and that leaves us with the problem of being buried or being planted. The action is essentially the same but the difference is being buried associates with being dead and gone while being planted offers the hope of growing into something fruitful, something new. One way of allowing hyperlocal data to grow into something else is to use data visualization. With the amount of data available to people these days it is exceedingly important to present your principle information in a dynamic fashion that is attractive, captures attention and is still useful. For the purpose of this discussion a lot of visualization occurs around mapping. That said consider the dashboard setup by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and how that gives perspective on the many facets of museum operation the average supporter might not otherwise consider. The larger point though is that this data is out there, data that has been generated for free or little cost and all you have to do is grab it. Why let good resources just rot in the ground? This data is telling the story of your COI and it just makes sense to help tell that story.

Sticking with the idea of storytelling lets look at what is happening in Iran right now. After the election process fell apart and protestors began taking to the streets data started pouring out of Iran in real-time, across multiple platforms. From people sitting at computers to people in the streets on cell phones; news media couldn’t keep up but they too were getting out their part of the story through their channels as well. The COI were spreading data so fast that much of it was getting buried before it even had a chance to grow. One estimate I have heard was that, at the height of the post election evening, over 2500 tweets (twitter posts) about #iranelections were hitting a minute. This is where the outside world was able to start gardening. Those people with interest in what was happening at that hyperlocal level were joining the COI, gathering what data they could and creating useful narrative and data visualization to be used by those on the ground. Coordinating of refuge and rally movements from all around the world. Reposting of pictures under the Creative Commons licensing so as to maintain a visual record of the events, one that can’t be buried by bureaucracy. This has now happened several times over, the last major event being the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Unfortunately a secondary effect of this sharing was that opposition forces have also been able to reuse this data.

So, this is what we are left with after the particular event has occurred. Looking through the wealth of data created during the organizing and collaboration efforts we find a narrative that provides both historical perspective but also sets the foundation of a continuous story arc. In the past we had few strands of narrative to build from, primarily news media archives and public records but individual and even organizational narratives would be lost unless someone specifically chose to document and publish those perspectives. Due to the hyperlinked nature of open online data we can successfully rebuild and follow the narrative of all players in any project – or against any project. In all of these ways we see how the narrative of our world can grow and change and follow us.

The best way to move forward is to listen, share and participate; by doing this you will embrace, and be embraced by the network. Listen to what is being said about your ideas, your project and your organization. Share your information freely, take feedback and retool. Participate in these networks, not just on a professional basis but as a real human being with real thoughts and ideas and concerns. Don’t rely solely on the experts because those people only make up a small part of the community, understand that your story is linked to the story of the community at large. Honest, open direct dialogue can make the difference between getting a project done and doing nothing.

Thanks to the community of Creative Commons users out there on Flickr who so willingly share their great work with the rest of us so that we can all do even better work together.

Thank you very much for letting me present this information to you. If you’d like to review these slides they’ll be posted soon. You can email me at andrew at andrew dash miller dot com or friend me on twitter at digitalocracy. Andrew dash Miller dot com is one of my blogs you can track me down at as well.

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Hyperlocal Networks - Community Engagement via Social Media - Presentation Transcript

Hyperlocal Networks Community Engagement via Social Media
What are Hyperlocal Networks?
- Online and offline social networks oriented primarily (but not only) by physical location
- Micro-targeted Communities of Interest
- Information repositories directly related to the daily life of those COI
Engaging citizens at their door
Watching community define itself
Passion driven solutions
- Hyperlocal networks are greenhouses for growing grass roots support
- COI understand the resources and issues
- Individuals can remix data and create solutions
Case Study: Motorbike Parking
- May 30, 2008 Motorbikes are issued parking tickets in Pearl Alley
- COI organizes online starting that same day
- July 17, 2008 Mayor officially designates free motorbike parking
Case Study: Event Organizing
- Couchfire Collective and the City saw a need
- Call for participants done online
- Shared ownership of space
- Use of Google Docs to build programming
- From idea to execution in 3 months
Case Study: Library Levy
- $25M Bond Levy campaign to repair, reconfigure and expand building
- Hyperlocal network developed around anti-tax + location
- Grass roots organizing effort
- Reuse of public record defeated the levy
Hyperlocal data visualization
Meeting needs in real-time
- COI provide data in real-time to share across multiple platforms
- COI report on events via multiple channels
- Outside world can then re-use, remix and join in with a broader vantage point
Narrative of shared history
- Local experience documented online through various applications
- COI grows beyond the hyperlocal network
- New perspective and ideas added
- Narrative becomes more dynamic, like storytelling before written language
- Useful components of the narrative are used as foundation for future events
Embracing the network Listening Sharing Participating
Photo credits | non-screenshots http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyeline-imagery/ CC http://www.columbusunderground.com/potential-columbus-light-rail-map http://www.flickr.com/photos/31302833@N04/ CC http://www.flickr.com/photos/56624456@N00/ CC http://www.flickr.com/photos/splorp/ CC http://www.flickr.com/photos/fishbwl/ CC
Contact info Andrew Miller [email_address] Twitter:@Digitalocracy Slideshare.net/Digitalocracy

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Hyperlocal Networks Presentation Abstract

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Hyperlocal Networks Presentation Abstract

Digital technologies are changing the way people work, recreate and communicate within their physical community. The explosion of social applications has caused vast amounts of opinion and fact based data about local resources and issues to be cataloged. Due to this explosion of information; collaboration and community organizing is building around these issues, ideas and community resources with participation levels not previously possible. This phenomenon is referred to as hyperlocal networking.

Cities and organizations can take advantage of this hyperlocal networking and (re)develop around user groups who self identify through digital communities. In Columbus these user groups form on sites like The Columbus Underground and Columbus Tech Life, etc. Through monitoring and participation in these hyperlocal networks the approach to civic and private projects can be specifically targeted. The very same networks can then be used to market (re)development in a micro-targeted way; creating grass roots networks that evangelize for you.

Hyperlocal networks utilize the free tools of the internet to aggregate and re-use the data being creating. The result is knowledge repositories as micro as a city block. Often what is developed by these networks can be directly adopted by other entities or easily remixed to fit an even more specific need.

During the ferocious Mumbai terrorist attacks that occurred in November 2008 a stream of real-time data was being remixed by individuals, participating in hyperlocal networks, to build useful information such as Google mashups that plotted the danger zones and Wiki’s with health and safety information; all the while developing a historical record of the event as it unfolded. An unfortunate side affect of this information may have been to provide the attackers with data to further their destruction.

At the heart of the hyperlocal network is individuals with a passion based, instead of profit based, motive for the focal issue or resource. An important distinction of hyperlocal networking is the rejection of hierarchy and a general distrust of push (one direction) information.

Engagement at the hyperlocal level is only effective if a strategy is in place for sustaining the interaction and understanding the resulting information. It is important to interact transparently otherwise your efforts will be rejected as being manipulative. The short-term reward for engagement is a relatively low (or no) cost research and data development group. The long-term reward is greater buy-in from user groups and a healthier and safer community.

Slide by slide notes:
1.Hello. My name is Andrew Miller and I’m a founding member of the Columbus Social Media Café, a social justice and technology activist and community organizer working here in Central Ohio. I’ll be talking with you about Hyperlocal Networks and how we can build community engagement through them.

2.What are Hyperlocal Networks? Essentially they are micro-targeted communities of interest defined partially by their physical locations (although they will also have other attributes to them that further define them, such as mass transit supporters in Columbus). Hyperlocal networks are not just the connections between people though. Hyperlocal networks include individuals, organizations, relation to place and the cumulative data associated with all of these things.

3.In order to expand on the idea that these Hyperlocal networks are more than just the individuals who connect let’s take a look at EveryBlock.com. This site was born out of the website ChicagoCrime.org and was the project of a journalist named Adrian Holovaty. EveryBlock.com presents data collected from sources all over the internet, and in some cases from internal government networks, for quickly digestible consumption by residents of a particular physical location. The project was underwritten by the Knight Foundation and as a term of that agreement is now Open Source and available for any community to implement. This idea of opening up data relevant to a locale is key to a site like this functioning. The return benefit is a more aware COI that is able to proactively take on tasks related to their locale that they otherwise would likely have been more reactionary to. An example of this is the building permits and business license sections. Making these documents easily accessible by the public provides a forum to make changes that best fit with the residents needs before finalizing project plans which are then fought via referendums or in the courts. There is a great deal of data about events and other social opportunities to be found here as well which further builds community between residents. The next websites I’d like to talk about expand upon that idea.

4.Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are certainly being utilized in a hyperlocal fashion for certain issues. But it is the truly local sites that are more directly engaged as a part of hyperlocal networks. Here in Columbus a couple of standouts are the Columbus Underground.com and IndieColumbus.com which have each had an impact on how the residents of our city interact.

5.Thom, a user on Columbus Underground, created a possible route map for a light rail system here in Central Ohio. He used maps of existing rail lines that could be incorporated into the light rail solution. The topic of light rail is frequently on the lips, or, in the case of the Columbus Underground, fingertips of its Community of Interest. With no monetary interest these users are tapping into each others passions and skill sets and developing solutions, or at least the framework of solutions, to many of the issues facing our community. As an individual, developer or agency looking to get projects done it is important to recognize this work being carried out by the COI and how you can gain support by embracing the appropriate network.

6.I’ve got several case studies that I have been closely tied to, on one side or the other that I’d like to share with you. The first one I became involved with somewhat involuntarily. On May 30, 2008 my motorcycle, along with many others, was issued a parking ticket for parking in Pearl Alley in downtown Columbus. Knowing that there was no reason that a motorbike should take up a full car parking space (and thus pay the same amount) a network of riders and transportation activists formed. Two days later a face to face meeting was held which included city representatives and local business owners. Local motorbike and scooter clubs spread the message online and off about the parking issue, social networking sites like the Columbus Underground quickly grew the numbers in the Community of Interest and a blog was setup to keep everyone updated with the latest information. This rapid mobilization of the COI and a willingness to work with the city to find a solution instead of expecting the city itself to do all of the heavy lifting resulted in permanent, officially sanctioned motorbike parking throughout downtown Columbus and its busy neighborhoods. The parking remained free for the first year of operation. All of this took place by July 17, 2008 – about one and a half months from start to end.

7.Last year several changes came to Gay Street in downtown Columbus. These changes have made it much more pedestrian and business friendly. The business owners and city felt it would be both beneficial and fun to throw a party to celebrate this newly redesigned part of our city. The Couchfire Collective is an artist collective who throw many interesting events and have helped to create many unique public events. The Couchfire was feeling the need to expand out from their space and the city was happy to partner with them. What happened was a crowdsourced festival with minimal overhead. The city and Couchfire took the lead on lining up stages, road closing, permits and equipment. For all of the booths, performers, visual arts, etc. it was left up to the COI that formed through the already established online and offline social networks. Using Google Docs as the central repository for schedule data and volunteer needs the COI filled in the blanks and threw one heck of a party. Those who joined in to make it happen became shared owners of the space. Advertising was primarily done through the COI reaching out to its broader networks. All in all this festival which included hundreds of volunteers and thousands in attendance happened, from idea to execution in under 3 months time.

8.This case study hurts me the most because I was very much on the other side of this issue. I invested a great deal of time working to pass the UA Library Levy this spring and we were soundly defeated by the anti-library levy campaign. The point here is that you can learn a lot from your mistakes and when dealing with networks that can mobilize so quickly there is a great opportunity for multiple failures over a short period of time. A little background is that the UA Library was looking for a $25M Capital Improvements bond to make repairs, reconfigure some of the space both for compliance reasons as well as to meet the future needs of the space. Over the past 2 years a group now going by the name Change In UA has been building its network of individuals generally opposed to any and all tax increases. Using an online data repository they have been collecting targeted public records that they were able to use against the library. They also employed tactics such as redirecting a pro-library levy campaign domain name. Two major lessons include that even very local politics can devolve into the use of bogus tactics (like the redirect) and that these hyperlocal networks improve access to data and vastly speed up organizing capabilities but they still require the offline connection between participants to get full buy-in. On the library’s side of things there was an assumption that the library’s standing within the larger community would speak for itself which obviously didn’t work out.

9.As I’ve mentioned; the difference between today’s hyperlocal networks and your pre-web 2.0 networks is not just the organizations and people that are connected but the data and information creation, searching and sharing as a part of the network. There is a limitless pool of data floating around out there and that leaves us with the problem of being buried or being planted. The action is essentially the same but the difference is being buried associates with being dead and gone while being planted offers the hope of growing into something fruitful, something new. One way of allowing hyperlocal data to grow into something else is to use data visualization. With the amount of data available to people these days it is exceedingly important to present your principle information in a dynamic fashion that is attractive, captures attention and is still useful. For the purpose of this discussion a lot of visualization occurs around mapping. That said consider the dashboard setup by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and how that gives perspective on the many facets of museum operation the average supporter might not otherwise consider. The larger point though is that this data is out there, data that has been generated for free or little cost and all you have to do is grab it. Why let good resources just rot in the ground? This data is telling the story of your COI and it just makes sense to help tell that story.

10.Sticking with the idea of storytelling lets look at what is happening in Iran right now. After the election process fell apart and protestors began taking to the streets data started pouring out of Iran in real-time, across multiple platforms. From people sitting at computers to people in the streets on cell phones; news media couldn’t keep up but they too were getting out their part of the story through their channels as well. The COI were spreading data so fast that much of it was getting buried before it even had a chance to grow. One estimate I have heard was that, at the height of the post election evening, over 2500 tweets (twitter posts) about #iranelections were hitting a minute. This is where the outside world was able to start gardening. Those people with interest in what was happening at that hyperlocal level were joining the COI, gathering what data they could and creating useful narrative and data visualization to be used by those on the ground. Coordinating of refuge and rally movements from all around the world. Reposting of pictures under the Creative Commons licensing so as to maintain a visual record of the events, one that can’t be buried by bureaucracy. This has now happened several times over, the last major event being the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Unfortunately a secondary effect of this sharing was that opposition forces have also been able to reuse this data.

11.So, this is what we are left with after the particular event has occurred. Looking through the wealth of data created during the organizing and collaboration efforts we find a narrative that provides both historical perspective but also sets the foundation of a continuous story arc. In the past we had few strands of narrative to build from, primarily news media archives and public records but individual and even organizational narratives would be lost unless someone specifically chose to document and publish those perspectives. Due to the hyperlinked nature of open online data we can successfully rebuild and follow the narrative of all players in any project – or against any project. In all of these ways we see how the narrative of our world can grow and change and follow us.

12.The best way to move forward is to listen, share and participate; by doing this you will embrace, and be embraced by the network. Listen to what is being said about your ideas, your project and your organization. Share your information freely, take feedback and retool. Participate in these networks, not just on a professional basis but as a real human being with real thoughts and ideas and concerns. Don’t rely solely on the experts because those people only make up a small part of the community; understand that your story is linked to the story of the community at large. Honest, open direct dialogue can make the difference between getting a project done and doing nothing.

13.Thanks to the community of Creative Commons users out there on Flickr who so willingly share their great work with the rest of us so that we can all do even better work together.

14.Thank you very much for letting me present this information to you. If you’d like to review these slides they’ll be posted soon. You can email me at andrew at andrew dash miller dot com or friend me on twitter at digitalocracy. Andrew dash Miller dot com is one of my blogs you can track me down at as well. less