Some features of the website

At the meeting tonight, there were plenty of good ideas knocking around. I’d like to use this site if I can to capture some of them and start some action on them. Here are a few suggestions.

Updating the site: Any of you can be regular full authors on the site. I want lots of contributors to add things to the site and a few hardy souls to help me with editing (basically, checking an article isn’t full of typos or swear-words). Ideally, I’d like all articles to be checked by a small group of editors before they go live and I want articles to be timed (so that we don’t get 20 posts at the same time each week and none for the rest of the week). Contact me  - use this form – if you want to be an editor or an author.

Any local community group can post ‘contributions’ to the site. We can set them up with a password and they can add things whenever they want. Notices won’t go ‘live’ until an editor has checked them, but anyone who wants a password can have one. Again, contact me using this form if you want to be set up as a contributor (please spread the word on this one)

See that item on the right-hand side – ‘Seen Elsewhere’? That is powered by a tool called Google Reader. You can manage it entirely from a smartphone (a Blackberry / iPhone / Android or similar). I’ve set up a Google Reader account and put a few local websites into it already. There are two things you can do to help here:

• let me know if there are any good local websites that we need to keep an eye on – I’ll put them in our ‘links’ section of the site, but I’ll also add them to our Google Reader account
• let me know if you have a few minutes a week, a suitable phone, and a willingness to ‘share’ anything that is worth sharing by using the Finchlinks Google Reader account (don’t worry – I’ll show you how to do this, and I’ll point you at this video to start with.

Pictures: See that not-very-good pic at the top of this page? Have you got a better letterbox-shaped pic (or something I can crop?) If so, let me know.

Ideas bank

Loads of people have good ideas – LETS systems, Credit Unions, meetups, local campaigns, skill-shares and other social enterprise initiatives. Here’s my suggestions: Let’s draw up a schedule – one a week. We’ll need a volunteer to write it up as a posting that can go live on the site, say, every Saturday morning. Contact me if you want to write one. There is a growing network of ‘hyperlocal’ websites – and often, these ideas will have been tried elsewhere and written about, so every time someone comes up with a new one, I’ll forward it to other site managers and ask them if they’ve got any connections or experience.

Web-community building

Social media sharing sites are great for building traffic. I want to have a YouTube account, a Flickr account, Facebook pages (a few of them if we like), Twitter (using the #finchley hashtag – don’t worry if y0u don’t know what this is yet!), LinkedIn groups and anything else we want. I’ll tell anyone who wants to set up a community network on any of these applications (or any others) that we will publicise them as long as they link to us.

• Pictures: we need someone to volunteer be the site’s picture editor. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. They will need to create and manage a Flickr account – that’s all. They’ll need to dig around a bit to find out how to use it effectively (I’ll help, though Google is your friend in this respect) – There is a Barnet and Finchley Photographic Society – perhaps this can be discussed with them? I’d be happy to come along to a meeting with them one evening if someone convenes it
• Video: a YouTube channel is a great way of building traffic, creating good content for the site and for use as a campaigning tool. Short videos of bad driving create more value than any amount of petitions – a friend of mine is building AccessCity – a site that will show how easy it is to use any part of London Transport if you are in a wheelchair or pushing a buggy.
• Business networks – LinkedIn: great for building business networks. We need someone to volunteer to do this. If you’ve got a good LinkedIn page and you are in business locally, then you are the kiddie for this job. Contact me! I’ll talk you through this. You’ll need to organise the odd meetup / coffee morning and do deals with local cafes (make them throw in a free Croissant if you bring people to buy coffee off them on a Friday morning)
• Facebook groups:  lets get a few going shall we? I’ve already linked to two (one of which I created myself) – this site will really drive members. For example, if you like knitting, then you can set up the Finchley Knitting Group on Facebook – just let me know and I’ll link to it.

Other things: A local e-bayer list. A link to the local Freecycle group …. anything else?

That’s enough for now. Any feedback in the comments welcome! And if you’re on Twitter, follow us!

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