Social Media, Virtual Community, and Real-time/Real-space Conversation

by hans peter meyer

Facebook recently announced the next social medium:

face to face, real-time/real-space conversation.

(from a posting on Twitter)

I usually write about real-space community and the things that make it tick: land and any or all of the many things related to how we use and/or conserve land, the relationships that are built through our various place-based involvements, how we strengthen (or weaken) the experience of this desirable but vague notion of "community." A recent conference, however, is pulling my thinking in a seemingly unrelated direction: the tension between narratives from real-time/real-space, and those emerging in virtual space.

In May of this year, about 55 "media makers" gathered for the 10th annual Media that MattersHollyhock Leadership Institute on Cortes Island. A productive tension broke out early in conference: a faceoff between "old media" folks (most participants are documentary film-makers) and "new media" people. The latter were digital to the bone. Irreverent. Making it up as they go. The film-making crew: crafters of story, used to tightly connected collaborations, focused on a unifying goal: a story that hangs together. When faced with the seeming Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)-driven cacophony that the new media generates, they asked, "Whither the narrative?" (MTM) conference at the

A lot of what happens today in real-time, feet-on-the-dirt small towns looks a bit like this faceoff: We have an attachment to a story of who and how we are in "our" place that is being shaken by the kinds of things happening around it. Rapid growth or the death of a primary industry: these change the texture of rural and small town living. A 15 minute wait to cross a bridge becomes a sure sign that we're on our way to the hell of big city living, and many scramble for old-mode fixes (like a big shiny new bridge or highway) as if it'll resuscitate a story of place that isn't doing so well anymore.

That was one of the keys to Mike Littrell's presentation at MTM: What is your story? Where is breaking, not working anymore? What can you learn from the broken place, to become stronger?

In our small places, the locales that are near and dear to our hearts, we need to "tend to the story." Specifically, we need to be aware of where it's not working anymore, and we need to open up to new stories and new ways of telling the story that will sustain the deeper meaning of who and how we are in place by mending the broken place. Ironically, in the crazy-quilt ADD world of new media I'm finding ways of story-telling and connecting that are, in some real-spaces, mending the narrative and creating shared meaning between folks who live on the same street, not just at on the same Facebook group.

MTM was rich with these examples. Here's a handful: Rebecca Moore's work through the Google Earth Outreach program: supporting "nonprofits, communities and indigenous peoples around the world in applying Google's mapping tools to the world's pressing problems..." Another example of "virtual space meets real-space" the stuff Irwin Oostindie is doing through W2 in Vancouver's downtown eastside: "breaking the digital divide in the inner-city." Mike Sheehan is engaging youth in real-space/real-time about "diversity, inclusion and solutions for healthy living" using place, rap music, video, etc. Kevin W. Kelley is integrating a wide range of media to connect with real-time/real-space: "where we came from, where we are and where we might go."

Does this sound too far "out there?" If you're under 25, maybe not? If you've got kids younger than that, and you're paying any attention to the way they're connecting and creating relationships, you know you've got an inside track. If you're not paying attention to your kids and how they're constructing their reality – PAY ATTENTION NOW. Take advantage of what they can teach you. And, engage in the real-time/real-space conversation with them. This, as the Facebook announcement indicates, is where real meaning in this life starts.

My experience with social media gets closer and closer to how I experience and understand my life. Yes, it's cacophonous. But I'm seeing the patterns, the story-lines emerging. Yes, I miss the days when my story was fairly simple: work, marriage, family, rural community. None of these stories is what I thought it was going to be. There are several "broken places." Each of which has given me the opportunity to get deeper, to really notice the juice that flows through me and through my relationships with others and the world I live in. There's no question of reviving the old stories; there is only the question of whether I can connect with the juice, learn something, connect with others, and keep creating.

Most of my story unfolds, breaks, and mends in the particular real-time/real-space of the Comox Valley. It's been home for most of my almost-50 years. At times my family, the dearest thing in my life, has been dispersed. Kids in Vancouver, Fort McMurray, Victoria, even just down the road. My Mom in Kamloops. Texting, Facebook, "bookmarking" through Stumbleupon and Delicious, photos on Flickr, Youtube videos – these allow me to maintain real-time connection with my family. Through myriad "small pieces, loosely joined," they tell the story of my family. It's a cumulative, mosaical approach to narrative. It's only when I stand back, when a week or a year have gone by, that I can see it.

The same thing is happening in our communities. Talking to pollster Angus McCallister* and sustainability guy Mark Holland I hear about "cultural precincts" and "communities of interest connected through activities." Yes, these are to some extent place-based communities. But they are also not bound by space. Increasingly, they take shape and connect through social media like twitter, Facebook, text messaging – not to mention an old stand-bys like telephone. For those of us working with community and transition issues the new social media can be very effective tools. There is a growing conversation on LinkedIn about non-profit groups using social media for a wide range of purposes. Fire departments and emergency services are increasingly turning to twitter as an alternative to 911. The Real Estate Foundation recently created a Facebook group. And then there are the examples of the Obama campaign and current events in Iran.

Social media can help people connect around common activities, interests, and issues. It can create positive change in our communities. Or, it can be used to organize against changes that a community of interest sees as threatening quality of life. These are not alternatives to real-time, real-space conversations and actions; but they can enrich those interactions. For stewardship groups, local governments, and others in the broadly-defined land-use practitioner community they enable incredible opportunities for learning and expanding the effectiveness of sustainable, quality of life knowledge and practices.

And here's where old school meets new school: us "old-schoolers" have the wisdom of experience, of knowing that no story ever runs they way we think it should. Whatever your story, whatever your narrative about your community, it will be "broken." Economic changes (growth as well as decline), development, population shifts – these transitions mark the "breaking" of the narrative that residents have created and become accustomed to. If we are mindful, our communities and neighbourhoods can become richer through the transition: it affords us an opportunity to think about where we want to go. This is the kind of work that people like Carole Stark and the Chinook Institute are doing with communities in the Kootenays. In a conversation with CIT (and posted as part of an article on sustainability) she talked about this "scenario planning" activity. Faced with challenges, a community begins to imagine the various "scenarios" or "stories" for the future. Our gift, as long-time residents and "old-schoolers" is that we, with patience, can bring a sense of perspective and "where-we've-come-from" to the fragmented, willy-nillyness of today's frenetic story-making, whether it happens in virtual space or real-space.

How our communities are changing or how our communications media (and hence, our kids and our families) are changing is frightening for many. Most of us have enjoyed a fairly smooth story. But the bumpy, broken story is more "normal" for us as humans. War, famine, disease, industrialization, education, economic opportunity/colonialism, development, even conservation – these have always changed how we live, where we live, who we see ourselves to be. The new media don't change this. Neither does clear-cutting the neighbourhood forest. What matters is what we do with these changes or threats of change. Ultimately, we are left with the starting point of all change, all social media: the real-time/real-space conversations between you and me out of which all "community" and meaning is born.

In the meantime, jump into the change. Play with it. Imagine the conversations and the communities you want to have. Follow some organizations worth watching on twitter. Join Facebook groups related to your concerns. And, keep your ears and eyes open for new ways that others are re-animating the conversations about community in and around you. Me, I've got a little project that may use some of the things I heard Rebecca and Irwin and the two Mike's talking about at MTM. Watch this space... (And thanks to: Sarah and Naomi at MTM for prompting me to keep thinking and writing on this; and to Kris Krüg, Leif Utne, Darren Barefoot, and Julie Szabo for their insights into social media 101.)

*Editor's note: The CIT Information Resource will feature an interview with Angus McCallister in an upcoming posting.

A version of this article was in The Island Word, June 2009. It was also published online at Development-Issues: Land, Community, Sustainability. A number of comments have been made on that site.



©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

In Conversation with Tim Pringle about the May 2009 Northern Sustainability Summit: Rural Revitalization in BC's North

by hans peter meyer

Tim Pringle is the Director of Special Programs at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Tim was in Smithers, BC on May 28-29, 2009 for the Northern Sustainability Summit: Our Communities, Our Future. The Summit was hosted by the Town of Smithers, with support and sponsorship of a wide range of organizations, including the Real Estate Foundation of BC. The event attracted 88 registered attendees from across the north, from the Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii to Prince George. I interviewed Tim shortly after his return from several days in the Smithers region.

hpm: What was the purpose of the Northern Sustainability Summit?

Tim: It was organized as a way to engage leadership of that region from the perspective of how they could implement strategies to help them with the transitions they’re experiencing, socially and economically.

hpm: What are some of these transitions?

Tim: This area of BC has been stable or declining since at least the mid-90s. By one measure – population change – there have been some ups and some downs, but overall it’s been stagnation or decline. Whatever recent building and development activity that has occurred is due to demographic change: The population is aging; household sizes are getting smaller. There is also a rise in “mailbox incomes” – investments and pensions. This indicates not just aging, but also the likelihood of households relocating within or into the region who don’t need a job. That’s not to say there aren’t entrepreneurs or others who come into the region.

There is a subgroup within the region that is growing, the aboriginal population which makes up about 20% of the total population. They have a positive birth rate. From a housing and land development perspective, the impact of this growth is hard to see as this population is traditionally scattered rurally. We are, however, seeing more aboriginal persons relocating to the market towns of the region. These would be Prince George in the south, and Smithers, Terrace, and Prince Rupert to the north and west. It’s in these centres that we find greater diversity of housing types. You’re not going to find condos in the rural areas, for example. You might find a duplex here or there, but you’re not going to find multiple unit developments. These will be in the larger centres.

This begins to paint a picture for certain kinds of migration. Elderly people who no longer want to maintain a single family dwelling (SFD) will migrate to the centres where there are more housing options. It's part of a range of changes going on that are not unlike those facing non-metropolitan areas in southern BC.

hpm: Why has this region experienced population decline?

Tim: The economy of the region is primarily built on resource extraction, which is subject to world markets. We all know about the softwood tension, how BC is affected by that tension with the US. The impact of the mountain pine beetle is starting to be felt, and it will be a long term impact. In the short term, of course, there has been some increased harvesting activity. But in the long term there will be less fibre available. This will have an impact on the manufacturing in the region. Mining can be a strong employer, but it’s cyclical. Minerals have been strong, but have recently weakened. Communities in this region are therefore looking for a strategy that is more “place-based.” They’re planning for future well-being based on the kinds of assets and skill sets they have. They’re asking, How can we attract new households? How can we build on what we have? Framing these questions is, to a great extent, what the Northern Sustainability Summit was all about.

hpm: Why is the Real Estate Foundation involved in this kind of an event?

Tim: I'll give you some background. Land use and housing issues are a primary concern for the Foundation. As I've mentioned in an interview on the REIBC research on northern housing issues, retaining and attracting households has a significant economic multiplier effect in communities. It also has an impact on the social heritage or social capital assets in a community. From a real estate industry perspective, these contribute to community quality of life. In 2004 the Foundation launched the Communities in Transition (CIT) as a way to look at these and related "transition" issues. Our focus with CIT is on the non-metropolitan areas of BC.

This Northern Sustainability Summit was one of a number of projects we’ve been involved in over the years through CIT. Specifically, it is part of a series of community and regional forums that are part of a larger project looking at integrated sustainability planning and rural revitalization in north-central and north-west BC. It includes some housing research recently completed for the Real Estate Institute of BC, case studies of rural development projects that have been in operation for a number of years in Scotland, Maine, and Kentucky. It also involved the large regional conference that took place in Prince George in October of 2008, Reversing the Tide. The Smithers event is one of a series of events following up on Reversing the Tide. Others have been held in Barriere in the North Thompson area, in Clinton, Kamloops, and then Cranbrook. All of this has occurred in the context of this larger project that the Real Estate Foundation has been involved in.


hpm: You said you’ve already had some feedback about the conference. What are people saying?

Tim: Responses from attendees’ evaluation form were almost all “good” or “excellent.” One telling remark came from Nathan Cullen, the MP for the area. He was the closing speaker for the conference. Cullen acknowledged and understood the need for a regional approach to the issues. He was impressed by the number and range of sponsors for the conference – this included local governments, provincial ministries, private sector interests, financial institutions, among others. He said that the program was excellent, and he supported the notion that communities in the North have the expertise and the ability to “reinvent” themselves - not his word - that in the conference room there was the confidence to get through the challenges facing the region, that have stymied them in the past.

As well, there is a group that has been active for some time on these issues in the Prince Rupert-Queen Charlotte area. Members of this group participated in the Summit, and reported back positively about how helpful the event information was, and also about the quality of the contacts they made. They found David Beurle, a consultant from Australia, particularly helpful. They’re already working on a larger regional approach, as opposed to a community or sub-regional approach [editor's note: see CIT interview with Victor Cumming on limits to community and sub-regional econ deve approaches], so their activities, while not a direct result of the Summmit, are in line with kinds of things the Summit was proposing. It’s good to see this kind of quick application of the Summit’s outcomes.

There were two speakers who stood out for me. One is Kim Fowler. She’s an experienced planner and has been working for some time as a consultant, helping communities with their sustainability planning and strategies. She’s worked for Victoria and Port Coquitlam. In Pt. Coquitlam she developed an extensive “sustainability check-list.” At the conference she provided a very practical, applied perspective on what tools and policies local governments can use to become more sustainable.

The other speaker who stood out was David Beurle. He’s very experienced in working with rural communities, looking at what their assets are, what their landscapes and people have to offer. His interest is in using these assets as levers for revitalization. David has developed “The Futures Game” to help in this work. We “played” the game in the last afternoon of the conference. Table-teams are given information about the landscape – at the summit David used a case from Southwestern Australia as an example. Teams are given the characteristics of the landscape and a card with events at specific updates over a span of 20 years or so, starting in 2008 with updates at 2012, 2020 and again at 2030. Table-teams make decisions based on each set of information, but not knowing what the next set of cards describes. So they make decisions based on the 2008 information, and then are given the 2012 information, and so on. At the end, the tables see what the decision-tree looks like, at the kinds of things they might have accomplished if they’d made different decisions. The endpoint or end analysis has the table-teams assess whether they gained or lost population, whether the landscape is healthier or more degraded, what happened with the economy – those kinds of things.

hpm: This sounds fascinating, very engaging.

Tim: Yes, it is. And it’s easy to do. Very intuitive to people. It’s what you’d be doing around the kitchen table or in a local government context if you were worried about your future.

hpm: This sounds like a fun way to engage people if your community is doing a Regional Growth Strategy or a Sustainability Plan.

Tim: Yes, it would be. It makes sense to everybody. The thing is that you’d have to do a lot of work, assembling the data, before you could run it in a community. The game needs intelligent information to work properly.

hpm: Anything you’d like to add about where the conference might go?

Tim: I think it was very successful in helping people understand their own capacity for self-determination. I’ve noticed over the years, and this is a good example, that there is less expectation that a senior level of government will be able to come in and “solve” things. Instead, I’m seeing communities saying, “We need to do this, and if we need senior levels of government to make policy changes, we’ll work on that. In the meantime, lets work with what we’ve got.” This can include existing provincial or federal programs that can be accessed for funding. There are some regional organizations in place for this. The Northern Development Trust, for example. This is a fund that supports community economic development, although it’s broader than just CED. There’s also the Nechako-Kitimat Development Fund. These are all examples of sources of funding that can be used for certain kinds of projects. And they’re locally based. What impressed me....I liked the emphasis on self-determination.

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©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.