High-Tech Community Volunteerism |
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One of most beneficial aspects of the evolution of the proverbial information superhighway is the potential to help communities help themselves. The public good is served when information concerning the public’s welfare is available in a timely and thorough manner. To help serve community projects in this area the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has awarded $78 million dollars since 1994 for innovative projects serving the public good. This year’ grant total is $18.5 million (must hurry though, applications due no later than March 27th).
But aside from the infusion of grant money there are many resources presently available to help link different community segments and effectively shrink the time and distance differences among them. The technical wherewithal to do this is at hand but what is mostly needed is the mindset and attitude to make the links work.
More businesses are incorporating Internet technology in their business culture. The nature of competition dictates that they do so for the bar is being set higher and higher as new competitive tools become available. For the most part the non-business sector has not been driven by as strong a competitive environment. Charitable and civic organizations that depend on membership fees and numerous fund-raising initiatives typically are slower to adapt to mainstream business technology but stand the most to gain by it. Two examples I am familiar with are the local chapter of the American Cancer Society and the Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce.
These two organizations have a dependency on good-will and volunteers to help sustain their operations at minimal cost. Both of these organizations have very strong needs to communicate to a large target audience (chamber is over 1200) for many different reasons. The capacity to make this communication more efficient is growing. With more people using electronic mail to augment their communication requirements the potential to minimize the use of more costly methods (e.g. fax, mail) is at hand. Web pages help post announcements and other items of interest. What is left to do is to create the connective thread that makes this means viable.
There a some volunteers who have incorporated technology to help weave this thread. What do Mert Wagner, Gary Lignon, and myself have in common? All of us were honored by our chambers this year and last year for significant contributions to the chamber. Mert and Gary are great photographers that have given their all for their chambers and other volunteer efforts. Their products, photographs of chamber members and activities, helped build the sense of community connectiveness. I kickstarted the chamber’s Silicon Beach exposition and developed a web page to promote the American Cancer Society’s Bachelor Charity Auction coming up Mar 7th.
So with our little gadgets Mert, Gary, and I (there are others as well) are doing what we can to help forge stronger community programs. There is room for many of the other talented people in the community to use their technical know-how to help us forge ahead. The local Internet Service Providers have try to do this with their community web pages. But these people have provided mostly the framework for these virtual online communities. It is left to the individuals and their volunteer spirit to put it into action.
Putting information technology (and I include photographic imagery in this category) to work for the community helps weave the community tapestry. When a volunteer spirit can make this technology work at its potential we all benefit. It is notable that the Board of County Commissioners recently released a Request For Proposals to build a county-wide Intranet (essentially a semi-closed Internet) with Internet access and a World Wide Web presence that will fortify the communications infrastructure for the county and increase efficiency in the conduct of county business. Whether by a volunteer effort or a visionary public initiative we have a tremendous potential to increase our communications capability and mitigate the physical distances among us.
This article was published in the March 1997 issue of Coastlines, a publication for the Fort Walton Beach (FL) Chamber of Commerce courtesy of the Daily News.