"Patching" Together the Rochester Community Network

In my first Patch article last week called “Patching Us Together”, I introduced myself and my vision of a best possible future for our local greater Rochester community. I suggested that the people that were in the best position to start to network together in order to achieve a regenerated local community were us retiring / newly retired baby boomer seniors, particularly those who had the time, energy, freedom and desire to do so, utilizing our local Patch media capability to help us.  (Note: I very much appreciate the comments of support that I have received since the article was published - Thanks!)

As much as my www.rochestermicommunity.net website currently contains a lot of my thoughts concerning envisioning a best possible future together and having an organized development program to achieve that future, just as its name indicates, I believe that the establishment of a tightly knit, caring, local community “social” network is not only the first means to achieving that future, it is also the primary goal of that vision. Therefore, it is my intention that this article outline how to begin to establish the Rochester community network.

Computer and Internet technology, of course, has allowed people living anywhere in the world to “connect” electronically. However, as is widely recognized, not only can doing so be dangerous for a number of reasons, instead of truly connecting people in a healthy and productive manner, it actually tends to reduce people's ability to form true face to face social relationships with others in the local community where they actually live. Fortunately, there is technology that is now coming available that can truly assist in the development of local community relationships, rather than hurt them.

For instance, a key technology may be the capability to create local community wireless mesh networks. I would, of course, encourage those with technical abilities to “google” this capability for details, but essentially, it allows for local community members to, in effect, establish a local, secure, “internet” amongst themselves without having the necessity for any central service provider at all. That is, network members link to the overall community network through short range wireless radio communications with their closest network neighbors. A little thought will quickly reveal a whole range of potential advantages for a local community to have this capability available to it. However, it will also reveal why it would take the cooperation and work of a significant segment of a local community to set up this technology and why centralized service providers would not tend to make it a priority for themselves to do it. Further, unless a community was truly committed to being networked together comprehensively, it would not be worth the investment that each community member would need to make.

Now, existing non-locally focused “social media” might be used to help develop local community relationships, if used judiciously, but, again, I believe that our local Patch media is the key tool to use, if only because community development is a major aspect of their mission. Conversely, we might help them by coming up with a new word(s) for what they are and even make recommendations as to how they could extend and improve the services that they provide in the future. Again, though, the most important immediate thing that we can focus on is encouraging as many community members as possible to sign up for the daily Patch email.

I also want to emphasize that the way that I would most like to help regenerate my local community initially is by helping the retiring / retired baby boomer seniors who may desire to become vital members of their community, but who may not yet have the time, energy and freedom to do so. I am currently working with such a man, someone who is particularly eager and capable, but who has a very significant disability that needs to be overcome first. However, he is also someone who, as a member of a team of community members, will be able to make a very significant contribution to our efforts.

Also, since I am sure there are very few seniors who may have had the same privilege and opportunity to prepare for this undertaking the way that I have, I would like to offer to assist a few others who may also need help to prepare to join us, starting with just helping them to learn to function in their new lives in the community, and outside the corporate world, something that may have found is much more daunting than they had anticipated.