A group of us working on ideas for a better Shreveport-Bossier meet regularly to talk. I'm Dr. Loren Demerath, Associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology at Centenary College, and I've hosted our first meeting and started our blog.
This time, e-mail me (ldemerath@gmail.com) if you're planning on coming, so I can give you the exact locale and give the total to our house host! (It's right near the Centenary Campus by the way.)
We welcome all who would like to contribute. If you think you'd like to do so--by offering ideas, gathering information, sounding out people you know, or just by being a sounding board yourself--we hope you'll consider at least sitting in on a meeting.
- Dr. Loren Demerath
4 comments:
Blanc et Noir Marching Society is a model - not completely realized, to be sure - that we hope to see duplicated. Would a $500 seed grant help others get going with a similar project?
BTW, we'd love to get that kind of help ourselves - to aid expansion of B&N.
The brass band costs $800. At the current rate, you'll only see us marching once a year.
A good friend sent me this blog site today, and I think you have created a new opportunity for folks to participate. I wonder how well this will work?? Will you need/have dedicated "editors" or "facilitators" to steer this from merely becoming a string of forum comments? Will you have a committee? I've heard others describe the "silos" within Shreveport-Bossier. I hope your blog will help connect these groups. I'll keep reading.
This is quite intresting, the more I visit Trudeau's blog I keep finding more and more blogs run by Shreveports bent on improving the city.
I would have loved to attend tomorrows meeting but alas timing conflicts with a 9 a.m. meeting.
How often do you meet?
In response to the above:
- RT: Love the B&M Marching Society; it could be helped through these ideas both in creating pedestrian public spaces for marching, and creating networks for people who want to participate. (BTW, I'd love to see wide enough spaces dedicated to pedestrians that run through neighborhoods. Then you could have regular musical strolls inviting any and all to join. Sounds like a nice happy hour to me!)
- fm: Leia Lewis and I were talking about just that yesterday over a working lunch.
There are a few of us sharing roles of facilitator and editor at this point, but tomorrow we'll work on establish clear structures and processes. Optimally, leadership would be shared, rotated, etc., using the team's consensus, but done so transparently.
As for connecting silos, there's software that maps network connections and helps people better see who knows who, and who's doing what.
- matt, we'd love to have you. is that time always bad? how about late monday afternoons or thursday evenings? it'd be nice to find another time we could use once in a while.
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