During the official VisionPDX launch on April 1st, 2006, e-c-o coordinated with EcoTV, City Repair, and local community sustainability stakeholders who came together for Sustainable Community Convergence. Visions of community members were automatically collected with our original Vision Harvester Kiosk and eventually presented to the City Council. Since increased community networking was an expressed value, this project puts a plan into action to directly engage and network at least 1800 households.
e-c-o will establish the empowering Community Organizer (eCO) position to connect with businesses, organizations, and citizens face-to-face. In doing so, the character, assets, resources, concerns, and visions of the community will be mapped and made accessible online via a community website and through the six bicycle-powered InterACT-a-Vision Stations (ISs) that are to be implemented throughout the Richmond neighborhood. While engaging the community in structured two-way conversations designed to educate citizens about existing and emerging tools for community collaboration, the eCO will gather input and encourage businesses, organizations, and neighbors to participate by: engaging with existing entities; providing feedback about the project; providing demographic neighborhood information; developing applications or content for the ISs; providing equipment, materials, internet, or labor for their local InterACT-a-Vision Station.
Using free and open source software based on Squeak, the community is invited to develop plug-ins and content, though the out-of-the-box installations are robust and user-friendly. These ISs display an interactive 3-D virtual map of the Richmond neighborhood to be used for education, communication, listing resources, and collaborative modeling of future possibilities for the Richmond community. Learn more about this on the eCo-Munity page explaining the InterACT-a-Vision Stations (ISs).