Local Resolutions Part 4 of 29

This is the fourth in a series of 29 ways to help your local community online in 2010. If you missed it, you may wish to read the introductory post.

In this post, I suggest that giving stuff away on Freecycle is a great way to help others from (mostly) behind the comfort of your keyboard. I have already written about sharing traffic reports, inventing new awards, and responding to questions in Yahoo Answers.

Just because you’re doing something online doesn’t mean it has to be ethereal.

As Amazon made clear early on, the Internet is great for moving tangible goods. Craigslist and eBay underscore that lesson every day.

I know that I’m always astonished (and a little ashamed) any time I take stock of how much stuff I have. A lot of it has outlived its usefulness, but much of it still has a lot of mileage. Sometimes it’s just too much hassle to have a yard sale or to take what you have to a thrift store. Sometimes what you have is of no use to the customers who frequent either one.

That’s where Freecycle comes in. Join up with the Lancaster Freecycle Network online, read the guidelines for posting, and get going.

In many cases exchanges don’t even involve any face-to-face interaction. Just offer what you’ve got, allow someone to claim it, stick it on your porch, and wait for it to be picked up.

I’m sure Freecycle has kept thousands of useful items out of landfills, and that’s a benefit that the Lancaster waste situation could benefit from, don’t you think?

Local Resolutions Part 2 of 29

This is the second in a series of 29 ways to help your local community online in 2010. If you missed it, you may wish to read the introductory post.

In this post, I suggest that creating online awards, however trivial or lighthearted, for your local community is a great way to help others without leaving the comfort of your keyboard. (Part 1 was on helping within Yahoo Answers.)

Giving out awards is a great way to give attention to people and organizations who deserve the recognition. That’s why creating your own awards online is resolution No. 2 in this series.

Thanks to the Internet, creating awards doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t even have to print out certificates (unless you want to, which would be really cool). In fact, your awards don’t even have to mean a whole lot. The purpose is not to definitively crown someone the best at something; it is to let others know about someone or something terrific.

When it comes to awards online, you can choose the winners yourself or put it up to a vote.

I’m using this blog post as an example. In this case, I’m putting it up to a vote. For each category below, there can be only one winner, but within the nominees is there someone cool you’re not yet following? Doesn’t that awareness make everyone a winner? (Group hug)

I don’t think the idea needs to be explained in any more detail. Just come up with awards. Think of it as #FollowFriday on steroids, a chance to give a shout-out to someone and explain in a little bit of detail what they do that’s so great.

OK, let’s get on with it. I present you with your opportunity to vote in the first ever edition of the Lancaster Area…

Desert Island Tweeps

Imagine you’re stranded on a desert island, and because Zeus has smiled on you, he has given you a magic box that receives tweets.

In that highly probable situation, who would you choose to follow if you could only follow one person from each of the 11 categories below?

Voting ends January 31, when this blog series does. Winners get stickers. And, of course, kind words from me on this blog about why I think they won.

[Note: The order of contestants/nominees/victims is randomized every time this page is viewed. It’s the most fair lame voting competition ever.]

The Categories and Nominees

If you don’t want to vote, you can skip to the results.

Please remember that this is all in good fun and meant to celebrate some of the people from our local community who make Twitter fun and interesting for the rest of us.

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Flame away in the comments about all the good people and funny categories I missed.

And, keep up with the results as they roll in.

Local Resolutions Part 1 of 29

This is the first in a series of 29 ways to help your local community online in 2010. If you missed it, you may wish to read the introductory post.

In this post, I suggest that answering questions about your local community in Yahoo Answers is a great way to help others without leaving the comfort of your keyboard.

As a resident of our community, you know stuff. People ask you if you know where to find good sushi, what is up with impending electricity rate hikes in the area, and if you know who so-and-so is.

It turns out, people are not just asking these questions directly to friends. They’re also asking them publicly online.

And when it comes to asking questions online, one place rules them all:

Yahoo Answers.

People are asking questions about our community. Here are a few current open questions:

It doesn’t take much to see that three of these five open questions have to do with our particular Lancaster. It does require you to filter out questions about other Lancasters, but it’s pretty easy to tell the difference.

So, how do you find these questions that you can answer?

3 easy ways to watch for new Lancaster-County–related questions

Because I want people to actually help our community in this way, I’ve taken the time to cook up three ways that you can follow Yahoo Answers for questions about Lancaster County.

1. Follow LancQuestion on Twitter. New questions with “Lancaster” or the name of one of our county boroughs will appear as tweets from this account.

2.  Grab this RSS feed and add it to your iGoogle homepage or your favorite RSS reader or aggregator: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lancanswers.

3. Get a daily e-mail by subscribing in the box below:

Why do this at all?

Many people use Yahoo Answers as a way to build and demonstrate expertise, especially because there is a nice system where you can advance in rank and recognition the more questions that you answer helpfully.

More importantly, you’ll be helping people who live or visit here.

Have you ever asked a question on Yahoo Answers that you couldn’t find the answer to elsewhere on the Web? Are you already an active answerer?

By the way, if you’re on Yahoo and would like to connect, here’s my Yahoo profile.

Shut up about yourself. That’s my recommendation for your 2010 new year’s resolutions.

Instead…

Resolve to help your community

I’m sure you’ve seen smart people already saying that 2010 will be a year of

• mainstream social media,
• a local emphasis on information and commerce, and
• entrepreneurship.

Combine the three and you get my recommended new year’s resolution for you. Repeat after me:

I will use my influence in social media to support my local economy by sharing information and supporting other local go-getters.

If you think you’re small in the social media scene, you’re wrong. By being an active user, you’re a member of an elite. You can shape the course of our local community forever.

Improve your community to improve yourself

Most new year’s resolutions are about self improvement. That’s OK. It’s also small-minded. Think of it this way:

• If you want to eat better in 2010, improve your chances of success by improving the chances of success for locally-owned restaurants that serve healthy food.
• If you want to exercise more in 2010, ask your public officials to make the place you live more walkable and more bicycle-friendly.
• If you want to get out more in 2010, support people who organize fun and worthwhile events.
• If you want to make more friends in 2010, start online, where it’s easier, then find a chance to meet up IRL (in real life).
• If you want to receive more of the professional recognition you deserve in 2010, help foster a culture of appreciation by recognizing others’ unique skills and contributions. Publicly.
• If you want to find a better job in 2010, make choices that will benefit local entrepreneurs whose success will mean more good jobs.

That’s just common sense, right? Make it easier to be a good, healthy, successful person by doing your part to shape where we live into a good, healthy, successful community.

Like many of you, I’m bursting with ideas here. There are so many ways to improve the community we share. It’s hard to find focus. That’s why I’m bringing you this series of

29 Ways to Help Your Community in 2010: The Online-Only Edition

If it’s not something you can do while sitting in front of a computer, standing behind a digital camera, tapping on a iPhone (or Droid, or Blackberry, or plain-jane cellular telephone), or in some other digitally-mediated way, it’s not going to appear in this series.

Part of the reason I will be writing one entry a day for the rest of this entire month on this topic is that I’m tired of people referring to all online activities as a time-suck.

When you write a glowing review of a new restaurant on Google Local, hundreds or thousands of other people see that. Some of them will be moved to check out the place and spend money there. You’ve just helped a new business succeed, in a very real way. How is that a time-suck?

When you spread the word to your Twitter followers that a child is missing who was last scene in our region, how is that a time-suck?

When you help a gifted but unknown local artist get more attention than a lazy local TV celebrity, how is that a time-suck?

And so, I say to you,

Let’s resolve to hang out online in 2010

For the good of our community. For the health of our families. For the sustainability of our local economy.

I’ll be sharing my ideas with you, one at a time, in detail, every day for the next twenty-nine days. I hope you’ll join me and share your own ideas, dreams, and plans.

Whatever you do, please share with the rest of us when you give one of these ideas a shot, so that we can celebrate our success together.

Who’s in? Will you hang out with me on the Internet this year for the good of our community?

Photo credits: Calvin, Tim Morgan (Flickr)