CommonPlace Intro Slidedeck

Project Outline - Fall 2010 1

“Making neighborhoods better” 2

A Web Platform for Local Communities • CommonPlace builds web platforms for local community engagement 3

A Web Platform for Local Communities • The CommonPlace platform is designed to help you and your neighbors share public information with the people and organizations that make up your local community – Events – Needs – Announcements – Goods & Skills 4

A Public Resource Online • In each community we work with our goal is to create an awesome public resource for all community members to use: – To find out how to engage in their communities right now (find events, fulfill needs, etc) – To share information with the people and organizations in their area 5

Civic Mission • Our mission simple and expansive: to use the internet to make neighborhoods better places to live in – More connected – More civic – More empowered 6

If you know a community that would beneﬁt from a CommonPlace platform, we’d love to work with you organizing@commonplaceusa.com 7

How CommonPlace Works 8

A Civic Networking Tool • CommonPlace is a networking platform that connects you to your neighborhood and the local organizations in your area • It’s a “common place” online for community members to come together and share 9

Value for Neighbors • Use CommonPlace to find out everything that’s happening in your local community – All information is streamed on the main page of the platform (your “local community feed”), and gets sent to your inbox as a online bulletin 10

Value for Neighbors • Or, use CommonPlace to instantly reach out to the people and organizations in your area – Send needs/offers/invites/announcements directly to your neighborhood – Search a directory of people, organizations, goods, and skills in your local area – Subscribe to organizations you care about – Message people when you want 11

Value for Local Organizations • For local organizations and businesses, CommonPlace provides the best tools to directly reach out to the network of people around you that matters – Share events and announcements – Search for important people in the community – Create a beautiful web presence – Make your community a better place to live in 12

Platform Design • All this functionality comes together in a simple, intuitive user interface 13

Platform Design Almost everything you need to do is contained on this front page Sort through community information with a Easily post click of the button. information to your Results are ﬁltered neighbors into the wire. See the proﬁle of the neighbor posting the Feed of community information information whenever you click streaming through the feed to the left your “wire” 14

Use Cases 15

Designed for Engagement • CommonPlace is designed to help you engage with your local community network in the way you want to engage 16

Use Cases: 1 to 1 • Use CommonPlace to find a specific person, organization, or event in your area Need CommonPlace Send out a need to your neighbors through your Need to borrow a ladder CommonPlace’s NeighborhoodBoard Need to ﬁnd someone to mow Send a NeighborhoodBoard announcement and your lawn search through the directory for skill “lawn mowing” You want to ﬁnd an event to go Look at all the events posted in the area to on Saturday night Search “hiking” and see all the organizations, events You want to go hiking and people associated with hiking in your area How CommonPlace Works 17

Use Cases: 1 to Many • Use CommonPlace to reach out to your entire neighborhood or specific affiliation groups in your area Need CommonPlace Send out an announcement to your neighbors Your cat ran away through your CommonPlace’s NeighborhoodBoard Send out an invite or announcement to your You want to organize a neighbors through your CommonPlace’s neighborhood watch group NeighborhoodBoard Start a local organization, search for people You want to start a biking club interested in biking You want to stay up-to-date with Subscribe to announcements from the school and police and school activity the police 18

Use Cases: 1 to All • Use CommonPlace to get in touch with everyone in your local community Need CommonPlace You’re organizing a band night in Start an organization, ﬁnd people who might be the town park interested, send an event to the entire community You’re the town supervisor and you want to encourage people to Send out announcement to the entire community vote 19

Why CommonPlace? 20

Filling in a Gap • CommonPlace fills in a gap between old community information infrastructure, and new social networking platforms 21

Bulletin Board as Platform • Local communities already have public platforms for neighbors and local organizations to share information – They’re called public parks, community centers, and bulletin boards 22

Better Tools • These are important civic technologies – They have sustained our public sphere since America’s founding • But they’re old and in some cases extremely inefficient 23

Borrowing a Ladder • Consider the example of “needing to borrowing a ladder” – You need to take down an old satellite dish on your roof, but you don’t have a ladder tall enough – Ladders are expensive, and you only need it for a few hours • What do you do? 24

Borrowing a Ladder • Your neighbors are perfect to loan you the ladder – Your neighbors probably have that ladder (they have houses similar to yours) – You could borrow it rather than buy it – You could get it very quickly – And there’s probably at least one person who’d be willing to loan it (You live next to them, so there’s a very high chance of return; ladders have a lot of “excess capacity,” meaning, they’re not used that much) 25

Borrowing a Ladder • But the truth is, you probably won’t reach out to your neighbors • Why? Because the tools aren’t there – High time costs – Reach selective audiences – High social barriers – Time delays 26

Borrowing a Ladder • How would you even begin to ask for the ladder? • Flyers – This takes a long time; limited reach; large delay between posting and getting a response; no norms of asking for tools by flyer • Bulletin boards – Limited space and audience; delay in time; no norms 27

Borrowing a Ladder • Knocking on your neighbors’ doors – Very high time costs; low chance of identifying a person with the ladder who’s willing to loan it; very high social barriers • Phone – You can only get to people you know; they don’t live right around you 28

Borrowing a Ladder • So you do the sensible thing…you buy the ladder – It costs you $150 – You use it once...and now it sits in your garage gathering dust • A missed opportunity – Expensive – Wasteful – Didn’t get a chance to meet a new neighbor 29

High Barriers to Engagement • That’s just one example... • Think about all the inefficiencies that prevent us from engaging in our local community – One to one: How do you quickly find people, organizations, events, announcements, needs in your community? – One to many: How do you quickly organize groups of people, like neighbors or bicycling enthusiasts? – One to all: Are there any dedicated tools that allow you easily to reach out to everyone in your community? 30

Lowering Barriers • CommonPlace drastically lowers the barriers to sharing with or finding information in your community Neighbor Neighbor Neighbor Neighbor 1 2 3 4 Neighbor Neighbor Neighbor Neighbor 1 2 3 4 vs. CommonPlace Hey Hey Hey Hey #1 #2 #3 #4 Hey #1 31

Easier to Engage • And if the barriers are lower to engaging, we’re more likely to do it – Personal value - fulfilling needs – Communal value - making the community itself better to live in 32

The Internet • The internet has extraordinary potential to change the way that we engage with our local community networks • Yet existing social networking sites are not up to the task 33

New Social Networking Tool • While social networking tools like Facebook and LinkedIn connect us to our private networks of friends and colleagues – People we already know – Who live all around the world – Sharing photos, status updates and messages 34

Public Networks • ...CommonPlace connect us to the network of people who live right around us – The people who live right around us – Whom we see every day but might not know – Sharing public, communal information about events, needs, announcements, goods and skills 35

Local Community Network • Whether we realize it or not, this public network is one of the most important networks in our lives – The people we smile at on the sidewalks – The man who sells us our groceries – The folks that we wait at the bus stop with 36

Local Community Network • It’s rich with opportunities – Neighbors, local businesses, local organizations, government institutions – All sharing information about events, announcements, skills, goods, needs, and interests Local Government Organizations Neighbors Busineses Institutions Promotions Events Announcements Needs Skills Goods Interests 37

Local Community Network • And it’s at the heart of our everyday wellbeing – How safe our neighborhoods our – How clean our streets are – How good our schools are 38

Existing Social Networks • CommonPlace connects you to this public network - it’s a better bulletin board, or a Facebook for the civic sphere 39

Revitalizing Local Communities 40

The Internet and Local Community • CommonPlace helps people help their communities • Our team began this project by asking the question: How can the internet be used to to rebuild local community in America? 41

Taking Action, Building Up Trust • When you borrow a ladder on CommonPlace, you’re not just getting that ladder... • You’re also getting to a chance to meet your neighbor, learn her name, build up some trust, create a template for future helpfulness, create a new conversation starter Your You Sharing a ladder Neighbor Building up bonds of trust, norms of reciprocity, information networks 42

Social Capital • These bonds of trust, reciprocity, and identity between neighbors -- called “social capital” -- are a vitally important social good • Years of research has found that social capital can have a huge effect on the places that we live in – From a Harvard study: “If you had to choose between 10% more cops on the beat or 10% more citizens knowing their neighbors' ﬁrst names, the latter is a better crime prevention strategy.” 43

Social Capital Effect • Harvard Professor Robert Putnam’s groundbreaking study of civic engagement in America, Bowling Alone (2000) found that social capital is positively correlated with almost everything that communities value – Safety, cleanliness – Health, wellbeing, – Business productivity, government efficiency 44

Community in America • CommonPlace is the first web platform that was built specifically to target social capital levels within neighborhoods 45

Decline in Community • Now consider the importance of this task • For over a generation local community in America has been in decline • By almost every measure: – Americans trust each other less – They know fewer neighbors – They join fewer organizations – They’re more cynical about government 46

Updating Institutions • Why has local community been in decline? • There are a lot of BIG answers – Demographic shifts, technology changes, etc. • But there’s a more common-sense explanation: the tools that we use to connect us to our communities haven’t kept up with the changes in our day-to-day lives 47

Community in America • So ask yourself: what if we could rebuild the tools that connect us to our communities? – So that they’re more open, more convenient, and fit in with our daily routines? – So that they make it easy for people to get more from their communities, and to take action to improve them? • We might make our neighborhoods better places to live in • We might just help rebuild community in America 48

Our Team 49

Who We Are • CommonPlace was founded by Harvard students Max Novendstern and Peter Davis • We have advisers in the Harvard Sociology Department, the Harvard Business School and the City of Boston • We are launching our beta platform this fall in select communities around the country 50

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CommonPlace Intro Slidedeck

by Max Novendstern on Oct 09, 2010

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CommonPlace Intro Slidedeck — Presentation Transcript