OCVP Orientation
Today we held the orientation for the first group of bloggers in the Oakland Community Voice project.
Tony started us off with a fantastic introduction. He told us about how he used to be a radio talk show host and spoke about issues in the community. He came to learn that just becuase people were “hearing it” didn’t mean they were “doing it” – working the solutions. He decided that he would be the change he aimed to make and began working on solutions to community issues. He explained that the elder citizens have a voice, a history, a point of view that is important to be heard in the community and blogging is one way to get their voice out there.
Tony also gave a blog example of a 94year old blogger: http://dontoearth.blogspot.com/ who has become quite popular given all the followers who are commenting on his blog.
The participants trudged through a survey and signing up for a new yahoo account and then got to the fun stuff…creating their blogs. Once they got it they were so thrilled that they could publish publicly. Many of them were inspired…and this was just the orientation!
Let the blogging begin!
The first of the Oakland Community Voice Project bloggers have launched their first and personal blogs.
http://eastmontoakland.blogspot.com/index.html
http://estellahavingfun.blogspot.com/index.html
http://singingthechoir.blogspot.com/
http://sweetcookie1.blogspot.com/
http://anorene.blogspot.com/index.html
http://joannsfaith.blogspot.com/index.html
http://godislove-shorty.blogspot.com/index.html
http://inclaudiaclassroom.blogspot.com/
Orientation Welcome
Welcome to the orientation for the Oakland Community Voice Blogging project. Today we will be talking about how you can join this project: come to a one-day training (meal provided), work with your fellow bloggers on identifying an important community issue, begin blogging and attend a public event around the issue. We are arranging this for you to become a blogger and express your voice around community issues you have identified as important.
Blogging is a very powerful channel to reach out and be heard. Today is not the training, but an orientation, but to give you a sense of what is to come each of you will create a yahoo account, a blogger account and begin a personal blog. During the training you will use the yahoo account for creating your community voice blog and for rss aggregation (more on that during the training).
Please join this project team in building the first blogger community from ECC for the sake of East Oakland.
Examples of Blogs
Political Blogs
Al Gore – he posts about his testimony on capitol hill
Citizen Ads - the “vote different” ad creator revealed on Huffington Post
Skeptical Brotha - Response from Barak Obama’s pastor to a NYT
Oakland Magazine – the “politics” tag
Community Blogs
East Oakland Community High School
People’s Grocery – Stop predatory development in west Oakland
Byron Williams blogs about crime in Oakland
Ella Baker Center – Wake up Oakland!
Celebrating Dia de los Muertos, Domigoyu’s blog about music and education
Journalistic Blogs
NPR – Rough Cuts with Michel Martin, “Mocha Moms”
CNN – blogs, topics of the day
Other blogs
Training Partner – Social Media Club and Brain Jams
We are thrilled that BrainJams will be offering social networking training for the Community Voice project. BrainJams is also a project of the Social Media Club founder Chris Heuer.
New partner – East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation
A while ago I met Gail McGuire, Assistant Project Manager, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation. Upon describing our ECC Connected! project, she was excited to help. She is working with Lion Creek Crossings, a multi-family housing development in East Oakland. As her organization is serving the same area as ECC we can work togther to identify key community issues to use in training as well as in developing the online civic action component. Very exciting and happy to have Gail and her project to work with!
