Calling all Hampton Roads Bloggers!

Are you a "citizen journalist"? Are you willing to link your blog with Hampton Roads SmartRegion.org and gain access to a national / global audience?

If you write at least one post per week, then send us your "blogger resume" ... which consists of a link to your blog and a 1-2 sentence byline.

Not a blogger now, but interested in sharing your local reaction to national news AND local reflections on categories of national interest? Perhaps we can help... read on:



Background: On April 4th, the first Hampton Roads Civic Engagement Summit held by the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement (HRCCE), in cooperation with the Hampton Roads Partnership, WHRO, The Planning Council, and the Future of Hampton Roads, presented us with the beginning of a conversation about where we are, where we want to be, and what will be required to get “there” as a region.

The results of HRCCE’s Batten Survey were released at the Summit and reveal that in Hampton Roads we have:

• Opportunities…civic capital in Hampton Roads is plentiful…our job is to cultivate it and capitalize on it, as a region;
• Disconnectedness…citizens say they are somewhat or very interested in working with others to solve regional issues, yet they don’t feel invited; however, civic leaders say they want citizens to educate themselves, participate more in civic matters when invited, and let their views be known;
• Paradoxes…we agree on major issues such as the economy and transportation and want to solve our regional problems, but as a result of this survey, citizens say we lack a mean by which to come together as a region to work on these problems, together. Furthermore, while citizens follow news about local government and public affair somewhat or very closely, a majority of respondents say there is no reliable source or don’t know if there is a reliable source of information.

Citizens in attendance working in small groups at the Summit had these solutions to recommend for better civic engagement:

• Increase trust, honesty, transparency and the flow of information;
• Provide more regional emphasis by governments and media;
• Decide who/what organization is the regional voice;
• Develop a region-wide blog involving issue experts and citizens;
• Develop a regional website with links to each government agency and organization;
• Use information technology to increase citizen’s access, to educate/improve conversation between citizens and elected officials to make representative democracy work better;
• Provide an information portal, a common shared repository for data, information and opinion, accessible to the public in a variety of ways.

SmartRegion.org could be a means to that end, that ONE reliable source of information, a portal to connect all of Hampton Roads’ organizations, citizens and civic leaders alike, and to present Hampton Roads to a global audience as well.

Hampton Roads’ SmartRegion.org has been selected as the new “Military Bastion” for Patchwork Nation with the upcoming re-launch of the project on the PBS NewsHour’s website. The NewsHour, in partnership with WHRO, joins the Christian Science Monitor's Patchwork Nation project to provide coverage of local economic impacts as a way to build a local-national
collaboration model incorporating citizen journalists (bloggers).

With the pending re-launch as an expanded, multi-faceted, truly regionally-cooperative blog, SmartRegion.org will be the face of Hampton Roads to the nation and beyond.

Expanded Categories:

About Hampton Roads
Arts & Culture
Business Community
Economy
Education & Workforce
Government & Citizens
Hampton Roads History
Military Bastion
Research & Technology
Transportation & Planning

Organizations all over Hampton Roads are being asked to pool valuable resources and join this effort to provide blog articles (i.e. “posts”) and broad distribution of a regional electronic Newsletter, similar to (and replacing) the current HRP e-News.

The idea is NOT to create more work for each organization but to work smarter, not harder, to offer access to citizens and outlets for information like never before, to answer our citizens’ call for ONE regional focus, ONE regional resource.

Next steps? Contact HRP Communication Manager, Missy Schmidt, today at Missy@HRP.org or (757) 625-4696 for more information and/or to be a part of this unprecedented effort.