#digital placemaking

Now that most people are online, or soon will be, we’ve got a whole new way of bringing people into the process, and we’ve embraced the potential of today’s 2.0 social media to enhance our existing Placemaking services. We refer to this as Digital Placemaking. It’s the integration of social media into Placemaking practices, which are community-centered, encouraging public participation, collaboration, and transparency.

PPS on Digital Placemaking

People look online first for everything, and communities are no exception.

Kelly McCafferty's contribution to the project

Chat rooms, ScReEnNaMeS, AdultKing, cheat codes, Everquest, AOL/Rent essay writing contests. While the cultural forms we encounter on the internet are always changing, there was something palpably unique about the early web; for many of us, this is simply because we encountered it for the first time as adolescents. As many of the entries in When all of my friends are on at once detail, adolescent experiences online in the pre-mobile computing era were often alone, all-engrossing, and/or associated with some form of embarrassment.

Corey from Ignite Vegas just invited me in an authentically written, personable email (aside: get dozens of press release and mass invitations per day that I delete, and only respond to people) to speak at their 3rd Ignite event (I can't attend, as I'm in New Orleans).  I'd totally forgotten what I submitted back on December 14, 2011 (wasn't a go back then) and pulled up the original email proposal--and am pasting it below. Still relevant I think:

Session Description:  Cyberspace + Meatspace: Mashups that Transform Mere Space into Deep Sense of Place  SESSION DESCRIPTION This talk will be a rapid-fire neighborly photowalk of past and present examples to making the real-life knock-knock-knock tangible world we live, eat, barter, bake, breathe, and play and partake in even better. Through the collaboration of virtual and real space we can rise to the challenge to create human-scale places with a palpable and pulsing community spirit. For instance, two slides might include these examples: In Utrecht, The Netherlands an urban game design studio made a game: "We challenged ourselves to design a game for the [troubled] area of Hoograven which would function as an intervention of sorts. The game would be a short-term event that would hopefully have a positive effect on the neighborhood on the longer term. We aimed to connect residents through light-weight, casual play." In Brixton, UK, a local Meetup.com group got together "most months there were twenty of us: artists, activists, social-media people , architects, think-tankers, squatters."  Their group picked up momentum and convinced the owners of a nearly-vacant marketplace to "to fund a competition, making shops available for up to three months, rent free, to people who submitted the best ideas. The initiative kicked off with a freewheeling open house. "A week later, we had ninety-eight proposals, some for temporary creative and community projects, others with longer-term business plans," Hine says. The result? Nine months later, Granville Arcade, as it's locally known, is thriving. Eight of the businesses originally selected for the competition remain; the rest of the shops are leased to new tenants." TELL US WHY YOUR SESSION IS GONG TO BE AWESOME!  I have a passion for places that are fun, vibrant, innovative and neighborly to live in and the grassroots collaborations in which people make a place lively and welcoming. I've lived in urban San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Brooklyn, New Orleans, and am now residing in Las Vegas. And I adore the Internet (began working as a computer engineer in the Internet industry in 1993; later, included the company that held the patent for online shopping cart.) However... I'm saddened how often the Internet is cited as if it were an enemy of real-life connections and real places as if it were the wedge driving people apart, and tearing social cohesion (and I'm not going to quote Bowling Alone here).  So I'd like to show and tell how the Internet is used and can be used more as an ALLY in placemaking, and also challenge all of us to design for BOTH rich online and offline experiences. Why not just enrich life and our lives, and never mind the distinction of virtual or geographical.  Today alone, I read these stories (and no I wasn't hunting for them, just normal course of a day) which seem to challenge my underlying premise, that technology especially the Internet, can be used to strengthen interpersonal and community bonds making for vibrant living conditions. "Sometimes you can live without food," Tiongson said. "But you can't live in isolation, and that's what I'm going through. It's been very difficult for me." -http://www.lvrj.com/view/solitary-holidays-organization-gives-hope-to-area-s-struggling-residents-135491353.html "One of Facebook's main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated." - http://www.cnbc.com/id/45659248 (read it in today's Las Vegas Sun originally) "I was walking the dog in the park the other day and saw a father pushing his little girl on a swing. It was a lovely sight until I realized Dad was checking his BlackBerry while he was pushing. Is there any way you can give that little girl her father back? She'll be gone before he knows it." - http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/story/2011-12-14/final-word-craig-wilson/51888056/1 As far as experience on stage: I spoke at IgniteNOLA (New Orleans) in February 2010. I have in the past, spoken at BlogHer, NewComm Forum, SxSW and other Internet conferences. (Here's a link to transcript to one talk I gave on blogging in business in 2005, http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2005/08/business_bloggi.html). There's also more about me (if you need a bio or overview) at http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/about.html (although much of that is obsolete, it does have accurate backstory) and on Google+ http://gplus.to/eve11, Tumblr panmesa.tumblr.com, and Twitter @eve11