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Ways to organize at the neighborhood level

Inspired by our discussions today at the Laughing Cow, I started thinking about how we need to organize ourselves as we start the process of pulling our neighborhoods together to initiate transition ultimately. One thing that occurred to me is that I have no idea where other Transitioners are in Boulder. Is there anyone else in my neighborhood with whom I can share the job of organizing?
Perhaps one thing we might consider, to facilitate a grass-roots level effort- and it would involve this website actually, would be for us to identify where we each live in Boulder with perhaps a link to Google-Maps for a visual. Actually, an interactive Boulder map with neighborhoods labeled, community centers, etc. would be an excellent way for us to look at Boulder in a new way, to see where our assets and energy are. Later we could include features including a way to zoom in on neighborhoods and find the community greenhouses, root cellars, cobblers, micro-bakeries and cafés, etc.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Morgan on November 9, 2008 at 8:53pm

This would be an outstanding tool, Nisa! The Abalon Guild has a map of Boulder's Fallen Fruits on google maps. If someone knows how to do these kinds of things, doing or teaching this would be a great contribution! Nisa, do you know how to make these maps?

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Permalink Reply by Nisa B. Hallesy on November 10, 2008 at 9:10am

This is beyond my skill- my thought though is that we could consider doing something along the lines of what the Abalon Guild has done using google maps.

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Permalink Reply by Nisa B. Hallesy on November 13, 2008 at 2:22pm

I would suggest Glacier Ice Cream on Baseline in the Meadows shopping center in East Boulder for my part of town. They have a nice meeting area and also serve coffees and tea.

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Permalink Reply by Dana Miller on November 13, 2008 at 10:03am

An ambitious and wonderful idea! We in Denver would love to explore a similar possibility and then it could go national!!!!

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Permalink Reply by Adam Brock on November 13, 2008 at 4:31pm

Actually, making custom google maps is pretty darn easy, as long as you have a google account. Just go to maps.google.com, click on "my maps", and then "create new map". To make it a group effort click "collaborate." You can add points, lines, shapes, adjust the colors and shading, attach photos... the sky's the limit.

as an example, here's a google map I made of coffee shops and transportation infrastructure in Denver that took me maybe 30 minutes to put together.

If you guys wanna start brainstorming things to add to the list might be able to get the ball rolling, at least for Denver.

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Permalink Reply by Nisa B. Hallesy on November 13, 2008 at 7:35pm

I thought of this too, and have reviewed the instructions for how to do it. We do need to brainstorm what to mark on our maps at this point. In Boulder we could decide what are good public meeting places (such as cafes) and put them on the map. I realize that at this point we don't have many of what would be considered visable manifistations of the project that we hope to have developed over time. In my mind, what won't be on the map now is almost more significant than what will be. We might consider having another map with ideas for potential projects- call it an "Idea Map", and see which ideas grab the most interest so we can consider the "how" that must follow the ideas.

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Permalink Reply by Sanjay Rajan on November 20, 2008 at 9:13am

Nisa,
I was not at the meeting but at Newlands Neighborhood, we are working actively with an existing neighborhood community driven organization http://newlandsgreenlands.com to build upon their existing framework. Our next steps are either: this organization become a Transition Neighborhood initiative organization or we setup a separate group to work in collaboration with them.
One useful trick we are learning is have a few members with keen interest in Transition initiative also be members of other neighborhood organizations. This helps educate as well as help build upon synergies that may exist. After all there are quite a few of us who want to do the right thing and reduce our carbon footprint if not reverse it.
Additionally, spawning neighborhood level Transition meeting at your 'local' coffee shop helps!
I hope a large proportion of the people who come to Laughing Goat meeting, are doing the right thing and walking-biking-using public transport and finally car pooling.

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Permalink Reply by Nisa B. Hallesy on November 20, 2008 at 1:16pm

Finding others involved in initiating transition in our neighborhoods can reduce transportation-related fuel use, because more related meetings can be done progressively more locally, and because we can carpool more readily.