A Leap Forward For Intra-Neighborhood Communication

Part of what makes Durham a great place to live is its strong neighborhoods, whose residents epitomize so many of Durham's brand values.  Durham residents are caring, activist in nature, passionate about where they live, unpretentious, and community-spirited.

DCVB has always had an interest in neighborhood communications because residents make Durham such an inviting place for visitors; they are the ones on the street helping people locate landmarks, giving people directions, or just offering smiles, nods and cheery good mornings.  With about 80% of executives who are looking to relocate their businesses also experiencing Durham first as a visitor, the neighborhood experience is one of high importance.  

This blog, written by Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau President Emeritus and Durham blogger Reyn Bowman, showcases a new intra-neighborhood communication tool.  The entrepreneur (another one of Durham's brand values) who created it was a former owner of one of Durham's celebrated cuisine restaurants (Guglhupf).  He made contact with DCVB to get assistance weaving Durham's overarching brand into the new site.  Take a look and see if your neighborhood has its website set up.  If not, submit it!

Leap Forward For Intra-Neighborhood Communication
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Durham entrepreneur Hartmut Jahn has created the next generation in neighbor-to-neighbor or intra-neighborhood communication. Years ago Durham neighborhoods jumped on listservs as a way to communicate but now Neighborship takes listservs to a new level.

The new platform offers everything a listserv does and so much more including:

• A website for each participating neighborhood

• The option of a personal inbox and a method of sending emails for each participant

• A chat option in addition to email or digests for quicker exchanges

• A way to enlist and post recommendations for vendors and service providers

• A means to communicate alerts or information to immediate neighbors rather than the entire neighborhood

• The ability to get immediate notifications or digests of exchanges

• The ability to post announcements or events that hopefully will soon tie directly into the Durham Community Calendar maintained by DCVB.

• A map of the area covered by each neighborhood etc.

For an example of a neighborhood page, I’ve put a snippet of my Rockwood Neighborhood page as an image in this blog. You should be able to click on it to enlarge. Other neighborhoods will be visible after registration.

To register to use Neighborship, click here. To request that your neighborhood be added to the drop-down, email help@neighborship.com.

I haven’t heard back yet from the administrator for my Rockwood listserv but I know the emails can be pre-loaded to any neighborhood added to Neighborship to make the transition easier. Understandably, although ironically, some neighborhood that that were early-adopters of listservs may feel some reticence, even inertia when it comes to change.

That’s natural but the new platform is a great leap forward and Neighborship is rolling out to communities across the nation making it yet another reason to believe Durham is indeed where great things happen!