Reimagining Cleveland

Lilah Zautner of NPI Leading the Workshop Discussion [image credit: Helen Liggett]

This past weekend, we held our second of two workshops guiding grant recipients through the process of documenting their projects on this site. We had a great turnout and all of the grantees did a great job of learning the technology and thinking about what documentation means, both for their own projects and the Re-Imagining Cleveland project as a whole.  Lilah Zautner, Bobbi Riechtell and Walter Wright of Neighborhood Progress, Inc. described the importance of documentation for promoting the project and the city, attracting sponsors, donors, and volunteers, and for fostering communication between and among the grantees and project coordinators.  Mark Tebeau of the Cleveland State University  Center for Public History and Digital Humanities described the oral history component of the documentation effort, encouraging grantees to meet with Center staff and CSU students to record oral interviews for long-term archival storage as well as for posting on the site.  Helen Liggett of the CSU Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, leading the photo documentation effort, encouraged grantees to post their own pictures to the site, and to communicate times and dates when the CSU photography group can visit their sites to document the important work they are doing.  As with the oral history interviews, the images collected will document individual projects and neighborhoods as they evolve over the life of the grant, contributing to an ongoing public research and outreach resource.

As the architect of the site, I led the hands-on training session, guiding the grantees through the process of online project documentation.  Without getting into great detail, I would like to leave grantees with a few reminders that will help them get started using reimaginingcleveland.org.  This should be helpful as well for grant recipients who could not make the workshops but who would like to use the site.

To sign up for the site, use the link in the sidebar to create a profile.  After completing your registration, you will need to check your email for an activation link.  Once you activate your account by clicking the link, you will be able to sign in and begin exploring and posting content.

If you are a grant recipient, you will want to join a group based on your project type.  For example, if your project is a Community Garden, join the Community Garden Group.  This will give you access to the group blog and the group forum.  To post to the group blog, you will need to be promoted to “moderator” status.  You can achieve this by contacting the group admin listed on the group page.  Please note that you will only be granted posting access to the blog if you are registered as a grant recipient with NPI.

From here on out, there are no hard and fast rules.  We want grantees to use the site in whatever way makes sense to them.  As long as each grant recipient is posting something on a fairly regular basis, we are all coming out ahead.  However, listed below are a few of the best practices we would like to encourage, as a way of helping to frame and organize user content on reimaginingcleveland.org.

At the workshops, we discussed how status updates and other posts on he site can be thought of as addressing three distinct audiences or goals, known conveniently as the 3 P’s .  A profile status update is PERSONAL.  Posting to your profile (via your profile page or the activity page) is one way to communicate your own brief thoughts, feelings, and ideas in short form.  A group status update or forum post addresses your PEERS– others involved with similar projects.  Each grantee has joined a group based on their own project type so posts to the group will be read primarily by other group members who will be familiar with the needs and goals of your project.  Blog posts are distinctly PUBLIC.  Blog posts will typically be more thoughtful and detailed (and possibly longer) and may include links to other resources, as well as embedded audio, video, or images.  Your blog posts are featured on the homepage, making them the most public face of your project and the most likely way that non-project users of the site will find out about your work.

Another helpful tool for you and for your readers, tags help to establish relations between posts. Anytime you see a box for entering tags, be sure to enter your Project name and number.  For example, if I was posting a blog entry for a project titled CSU Pocket Park, and designated #67 by NPI, I would tag it “CSU Pocket Park #67.”  This will help NPIand the rest of the Re_imaging Cleveland project staff to keep track of your project, and will give readers a better understanding of what you are writing about, and will create a link for anyone to see all of the posts about your project in one spot.

If you like, you may also make friend connections with other grant recipients, institutional representatives, and community members.  Simply click on a profile and choose “Add Friend.”  Once your friend request is accepted you will be able to send direct messages to that user.

As you get started using the site, you will find a number of other features to use and explore.  I cannot emphasize enough that the best way to learn how things work is through trial and error.  You cannot “break the site” and you can always undo anything you’ve added in error, so feel free to experiment and become familiar with how things work.  Should you have any questions or concerns, do feel free to contact the Re-Imagining Cleveland project team by phone, email, or direct message.