Some thoughts ...

Use political grassroots organization principles for documenting the LEW region, informing its residents about the positives of regionalism, and possibly raising money to become a political action committee that supports candidates that speak regionally.

Tools

• Monthly or bi-monthly or quarterly meetups (face-to-face networking) at the community or zip code level.
• Annual regional summit.
• Small online donations ($100 or less) for fundraising to pay for the annual summit, the PAC, etc.
• Feet on the street - visiting businesses, organizations, etc. personally.
• Web site - blog/wiki - for creating and organizing content, discussions, scheduling, alerting, etc.
  • Only costs incurred:
    • $10/month hosting fee.
    • Approx $35/year for domain name registration.
    • Technical expertise to design, program, and maintain site would be volunteered.
• Mashups.
  • Combine data with maps, such as showing all the brownfields, vacant buildings, etc. available in the region. Map real estate information.

Documenting the region

Brake the process down to the zip code level. Every zip code would be covered. At least one person would be assigned to document one zip code. If more than person wants to cover a zip code, fine. The individuals should coordinate their efforts to maximize their time. If a person wants to cover more than one zip code, that's acceptable too. But no zip code should go undocumented. And each zip code area needs to be thoroughly documented.

The documentation for each zip would include :

• businesses
• religious institutions
• parks
• hospitals
• non-profit orgs
• schools
• events/festivals
• vacant buildings and lots
• and anything else deemed important.

Upload photos and videos to sharing sites like flickr and YouTube. The images and photos can be imported into the LEW blog/wiki Web site mentioned above.

Contact

Employ ideas from Wisdom of the Crowds : Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.

Input is needed from a wide variety of people, including:

• business owners
• artists
• religious leaders
• historians
• educators
• technologists
• environmentalists
  • need to be good stewards of the environment
  • cannot develop every inch of land in the name of improving the region
  • strike a balance between new development and preserving habitat
    • reuse existing property and vacant buildings
    • buy land to be preserved for nature
      • if a wetland or a woodlot is destroyed by a developer, then that developer must by land of at least equal size or value elsewhere in the region that gets preserved from development. 50 acres destroyed here by a developer, then 50 or 100 acres saved elsewhere by the same developer.