Anarchist Leader, Age 4
As we cross America on our Startup Tour there are any number of assumptions I’ve made about both new companies and child behavior that are being challenged. My kids are clearly anarchists and determined to topple me from power for one. As for the companies, I’m amazed over and over again how little money it can take to start a good business and how many founders find themselves running companies almost despite themselves. A good example of both lessons is Front Porch Forum (FPF) from Burlington, Vermont.
Here is part of my interview with FPF CEO Michael Wood-Lewis. I’ll be back to say more when he’s finished talking:
“My wife and I moved to Burlington, VT from the big city in the late 1990s looking for a small city with a great sense of community. We landed in a neighborhood known for just that kind of thing. But in 2000, after a couple years, we still had yet to connect with the neighbors.
“One evening at dinner, we wondered “whatever happened to neighbors welcoming new folks with a plate of fresh-baked cookies?” Two years and still no cookies!
“My wife is a public school teacher and take‐charge kind of gal, so she baked cookies and took them over to several neighbors, and, at my genius suggestion, she used china plates instead of paper so when they returned the plates, we could interact again (maybe they’d even bring over more cookies!). Well… we never saw the plates again. Not entirely true… we found one at a yard sale the next summer. At 25 cents it was a bargain.
“Now these neighbors were not - are not - bad folks. It’s just that everyone was so busy and cultural expectations have shifted in this generation. We were just strangers who lived next door. There’s no social contract there.
“So, our second attempt was to create an online forum for the neighborhood.
“We used fairly primitive tools to build it, and made fliers and dropped them in 400 front doors. In short order, 25, 50, 75 households signed up and people started using it. Over time, it became obvious that we had something worth sharing. And at the same time, 2006, I was leaving my job, so Valerie and I decided to launch Front Porch Forum, offering an enhanced version of what we had been doing in our one neighborhood, but now across 100+ neighborhoods in our region.
“Today, Front Porch Forum (FPF) serves 25 northwest Vermont towns and 18,000 households subscribe, including 45 percent of the state’s largest city. People use it for the simplest things, e.g., finding lost cats, borrowing ladders, recommending plumbers, reporting car break‐ins, organizing block parties, debating local politics, etc. But it’s all done with clearly identified nearby neighbors, so it has a magical effect of turning familiar strangers into real neighbors over time and gets people more engaged in local goings on. More than 90 percent report becoming more involved civically since signing up with FPF!”
Wow, what a story! (This is Bob again.) Here we have a 10 year-old startup that was six years old before the founders even began to think of it as a startup. It has taken almost no money, has really primitive technology (text-only e-mail with three ads at the top of every issue), yet has greater market penetration than the local daily newspaper whose owners like to think their media property is worth millions, right?
Front Porch Forum isn’t another Craigslist for two vital reasons: 1) each edition covers just a single neighborhood averaging 300 homes, and; unlike Craigslist, FPF forbids anonymity. You are responsible for your words.
If only more Internet communication was that way.
There is a lot that could be improved about Front Porch Forum and I’m sure it will be, but the company’s strength has been its simplicity. No VC would wait six years to decided whether his investment was even an investment, yet — and here’s the clear lesson — that’s what it takes sometimes.
The tortoise doesn’t always win but he always finishes.
Wow, that’s quite a story — and quite an accomplishment for Front Porch Forum. I hope they have plans for expanding beyond their geographic region. I’ve found the exact same problem (lack of neighborliness) in other areas of the country in which my family and I have lived.
We are in Memphis now and though our neighbors were very welcoming, we find it harder and harder to stay connected due to everyday distractions. I really think web services can help bridge this gap.
Not since leaving Oklahoma City in 1998 have I felt like we knew our neighbors. Portland, OR (1998-1999) we knew one and she too was an “outsider” from GASP!, California.
Austin, TX was somewhat better. We knew the neighbors on either side of us and the guy who walked his German Shepherds. But 6 years later that is all we knew.
We’ve been in Knoxville, TN now for 5 years. Our neighbor across the street passed away. He was great. We’ve met the neighbor to the north of us and one neighbor 3 houses south, but no one else. Heck, in this neighborhood, there are people who SWERVE TOWARDS pedestrians with their cars and trucks so I’m not sure I really want to get to know them.
Growing up I knew most of the neighbors up and down the block. After getting married, I knew neighbors on about 3 houses either side of ours, including some back yard neighbors.
It is a sad state of affairs when neighborhoods break down to just living units and there is no interest or desire to get to know each other.
Personally, I think it’s because of the commuter lifestyle we’ve adopted on top of the constant bombardment of media (tv, internet, etc): we always think we have something we HAVE to watch or HAVE to read or some place we HAVE to be and forget there’s a bunch of people we could be being WITH right next door.
So Bob, uh, when are going to start talking about Technology again. Seriously.
Mike, there is technology in this story. It may not be high-tech (email) but it is technology AND it is part of the Startup Tour.
I’m wondering what the neighborhood forum has to do with the start-up tour. Unless maybe this differs from all other neighborhood forums in the sense that it earns money like Facebook.
The “disintegration” of neighborliness has been happening slowly for decades and the causes are myriad. Hopefully what Front Porch Forum is doing will spread across the country and help stem the tide of “societal isolationism.”
We all should be more concerned with our neighbors and their well being instead of thinking that someone else will do it.
Cool story.
“Whatever happened to neighbors welcoming new folks with a plate of fresh-baked cookies?”… Stan says, “The ‘disintegration’ of neighborliness has been happening slowly for decades and the causes are myriad.” That’s true. I’m not sure about the causes. I just know that until recently my wife and I lived in a 69-unit condo building for 12 years and we never once were invited to another unit, nor did we ever invite anyone else in our building to ours. We saw our neighbors at the homeowners association meetings and if we ran into them in the hallway or in the elevator we’d (sometimes, depending on how well we “knew” them) stop and chat pleasantries and mostly talk about building-related issues, but weeks or months would go by before we saw each other again. My gut feeling is that many people today, in cities at least, just don’t feel the need to know and interact with people regularly simply because they live next to them. We’ve silently succumbed to the realization that we want better reasons to invest time in strangers.
Reading Bob’s story above made me think something else has happened though: with the advent of the internet and global real-time communications most people in the modern world have simply recognized subconsciously that making friends in person one neighbor at a time is just damned inefficient. I think it happens in reverse now. We start online to find communities of people who share our interests and as we discover those among the ranks with whom we connect the most and who are geographically closest to us we extend our relationships with those people into the real world. I’ve noticed this pattern happen in my own life several times now. I may not know my next door neighbor but do I really need to just because he lives next door? What if we have no interests in common? Don’t worry, I’ll still call the fire department if his house catches fire and I’ll still watch for suspicious people in his yard (in addition to mine), but I just don’t care about his obsessive gardening because I don’t care at all about gardening myself. Meanwhile, my virtual online neighbors, many of whom I met online in a special interest forum and all live within a 40-mile radius (that’s not far in a decent sized city), have become some of my best offline friends.
Why did we used to take freshly baked cookies next door to the new neighbor? Because when long distance phone calls were ridiculously expensive and we had no cheap, ubiqitous global communication system we had no other way of making new friends. You met people who lived on your street, worked in your office, shopped at your local grocery store, and went to your church. That was how you met new people, by latching on to the person who was physically closest to you, one person at a time. “Being neighborly” is now obsolete, or rather, it has been redefined and lessened in its importance, for many people anyway.
Well said, Chris.
Oh yes, anonymity is just the bane of our modern existence. I’m sure it won’t be long before the powers that be try to make it illegal to be anonymous on the internet. I mean, anyone who is acting anonymously must be up to no good, right “Bob”?
Bob is far from anonymous. As I’m sure you already know.
And yes, online anonymity does have a way of bringing some nasty cowards out of the woodwork, as does neighborhood anonymity. If you haven’t noticed the awful truth of this situation, maybe you should come down from your ivory tower and have a look around. Here ya go:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=4chan&st=nyt
Great post, Bob! I’m looking forward to hearing much more about the tour and all the companies involved.
>> Bob is far from anonymous. As I’m sure you already know.
Um, well… that’s an interesting question. See http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/cringely.html
How is Front Porch Forum better than a Yahoo group or a Google group? We have a Yahoo group for our neighborhood and it works great. It’s immediate — no waiting for the next issue — and easy. And free.
The difference is that Front Porch Forum forbids anonymity.
So that’s the clever idea that earns it the status of “start-up”? Really!?!
We know our neighbors and they know us. We invite them over for wine on our patio; go out to dinner with them; see shows with them; we’ve even gone on vacations with them. It starts by walking up to them and introducing yourself to them. Some people don’t want to go any farther and that’s okay. Once you’ve broken the ice others will open up and with a little luck become your best friends.
It is really quite easy and fun. Try it. You may be surprised at the results.
Neighbors today are people who sleep next door. They are never home. They are either at work or at play. Front porches were needed to beat the summer heat before Air Conditioning, TV and computers. When people spent their nights on the front porch they took an interest in what was going on in their street, It was a form of entertainment, Most suburban neighborhoods are empty of people outside their homes. They are inside looking at a screen (tv,computer, cell phone etc.), at work, shopping or eating dinner out.
While not universal in the US (yes, I do have personal experience), this represents a significant decline which has little or nothing to do with the Internet and air-conditioning. It’s symptomatic of a deeper change, in which usans no longer see themselves as one body of people. Instead you are fractured into smaller groups, almost fearful of one another.
Now here in NZ, we don’t have a cookie ritual, but I know and interact with almost every one of my neighbors on the street and around the corner. We talk about important things, like our families. When my Dad was dying, my neighbors were a huge support. After I told one neighbor, the whole street found out, because they all cared.
It’s almost impossible to go for a walk without bumping into a neighbor. From these interactions flow work opportunities, gifts (not exchanges) of excess from the garden or from the sea, sharing of resources, all the things that make life more than just a struggle for individual survival.
This is so true, Dave. The decline in civility is much more deep-seated than circumstance or convenience (the internet and air-conditioning); the very fabric has been corroded. As one that came to America almost two decades ago I have seen the undoing of this fine clothe.
Michael and his wife were following the human urge to know and be known. It sounds like NZ still has this human fabric in place. We have a thread if it here in Wisconsin. All the neighbours know who we are. We have block parties twice a year. We are invited to most functions. They are sorry to see us go in one month and we wonder and pray that God will lead us to where the societal warp and woof can still ease us in to a meaningful community.
Well…this place never fails in surprising me man.. LOL.. Hoping you are all doing good today. Enjoy the day, and always keep smiling. Then stab someone in the chest as you continue to smile. LOL.
Thank you Bob for a great piece. I moved to the US from Italy exactly one month ago today. I am living in Jacksonville, FL where I haven’t seen the smallest hint of a community of any sort. It is terribly depressing. I am trying Meetup but, after 10 days, the results are disappointing.
I am glad to see other people perceive this as an highly important issue and are trying to do something.
Thanks Bob… great to meet you and your budding family here in Vermont. Best wishes with your tour… goodness knows. 10,000 miles in an RV with small children!?! All while trying to work? But if your visit to Front Porch Forum is any indication, you’re all up to the task.
Glad to read the comments here too. FYI, Front Porch Forum was a recent recipient of a 2010 Knight News Challenge award (http://bit.ly/cSkqAP)… so we aim to expand across VT and then beyond our state borders in 2011.
Happy trails.
Michael Wood-Lewis, CEO
Front Porch Forum
Interesting read – But, I have heard it before. I am physically located in a neighborhood served by FPF. I left the service for one simple reason – SPAM
Did you ask for sample messages? Not the snippets that Michael shares, the actual emails that are sent. For every small snippet of neighborhood news, there is 1-2 advertisements in the message. There are artificial boundaries set for the neighborhoods (There are houses I can see, which were not on my list).
FPF is doing well because of the efforts of Michael, as a moderator, guide, overseer, ombudsman and gatekeeper. The model has value, but will lose its luster outside of key areas. I understand the idea of hyper-local and it does add value there, but often at the expense of local (my small town has 6-7 segments)
Never heard of this before – and my neighborhood is served by FPF. (I just checked.) I guess I have to sign up and take a look – though I’ll also keep an eye out for spam, as Mitch Liebermann warns, and be ready to leave. There’s a lot of current controversy in the neighborhood about sidewalks, bike paths, the difference between them, and the right-of-way they require. So I’ll have to see what’s covered.
Hope FPF proves a good fit for you, phred14. Of course, we can’t please all the people all the time, but we’re doing our best. Here’s a few hundred local folks who’ve figured out how to make good use of our free community-building service…
http://frontporchforum.com/testimonials
I have been working on a similar idea for our neighborhood. We live in a 40 old non mandatory HOA neightborhood and have a pool. Without mandatory HOA fees the pool relies on membership and a connected rental hall to survive.
I am setting up a site in Drupal with groups. I had decided that anonimity is not an option. The only other thing to deal with is blocking people that do not get along. There are people in the area that do not agree on everything and are not adult about it.
So do you allow people to block interaction with people that do not get along?
I know everybody in the closest 16 houses to me plus others in the neighborhood. This in part due to involvement with the pool and also because we have one neighbor that pushed everybody to know each other. I hope to do similar activities with lost animals etc.
Glad to see it working for others.
Great article Bob.
This is becoming ” Mobil Front Porch Forum” It’s become Cringely driving around the US looking for work Blog. It’s not what it use to be. Bye Bye.
[…] Front Porch Forum: Bob Cringely drops in on a Burlington VT start-up that aims to connect neighbors and does. Nice bootstrapping story. […]
good blog 😉
Lovely kid
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