Join our new DMM Forum

We need ALL of you to join us in new discussions about our city and our region - right here on the newest Dayton Forum...

For almost a year and a half, we've had this blog going - along with our Dayton History, Dayton Neighborhoods and Dayton Scene blogs.  It has been an interesting journey...  We've received countless emails from people who get what we're doing and enjoy reading our posts (and sometimes even commenting on them).  Our site's readership has gone from a few hits a day to almost 1000 hits a day.  And I've gotten to know many people in this community because of this site - from elected politicians, organization leaders and regular folks like me.

And now I'm on the Creative Region Initiative Task Force with many of the region's leaders and hope to be selected as a community catalyst that will work with Richard Florida's Creative Class Group over the next year.  I had always planned on blogging about the experience, but I think there is an even more effective tool that will get EVERYBODY involved in the discussion - regardless if you are an active catalyst or simply somebody that has something to add to the conversation. Because after all, if this Creative Class thing is going to be successful, it is going to have to welcome EVERYBODY to the table. That is what being a Creative City is all about - embracing not only a diversity of people, but a diversity of ideas.  And if you don't think you can make a difference, think again.  Because the discussions on this site are already making some serious waves in this town.  The ideas you share WILL be read by many people - some with the authority to move on them.

So I welcome all of you who would like to get involved in the conversation to join our new DMM Forum. It is  powered by open source software called Simple Machines and will require you to register (even if you have registered on DMM or TypePad - sorry for the inconvenience).  But don't worry, the forum and all member data is stored on our own host server so you don't have to worry about your email address getting hijacked and spammed.  And we only ask you for a username, password and email address on the registration anyway - you can remain as anonymous as you want.  Register Here

The benefit to belonging to this new community is that ANYBODY can begin a conversation - which makes it different than a blog (where only a few of us can create a topic).  The forum will be moderated so you don't have to worry about some of the morons that like to spread their ignorance on other forums (like the DDN's).  And it is a very powerful yet very easy to use communication tool that can really inspire some great discussion.

Of course, a new forum is exactly the same as a big empty room - not very inviting or interesting until a bunch of people show up and start commiserating.  I've seen some forums created in the past that simply bombed because they only had a few people involved (a reason we never created one ourselves until now).  So I am asking ALL of you that read this blog - even if you are not one to comment, we NEED YOU!  Please consider signing up and getting some discussion going. 

Thanks!
-Bill Pote
MostMetro.com

Comments

[Phillip Ranly]

Bravo!

[Growth Advocate]

I do believe that our city/region is able to be saved. I know for a fact that we cannot save it as the dozens of municipalities that exist today. Although I know it would be a monumental task, the only way that our City/Region can begin to compete for jobs and amenities is to act as one entity. Not just put up a front of "regionalism" behind branding. It is going to take sacifices from many of our "comfortable" politicians with personal interest, both liberal and conservative to see that we need to put aside our petty turf wars to benefit the greater good. It is time for all of us to understand that Louisville, Nashville, and Indianapolis got it right and Dayton can too. I wish that the people of Dayton/Montgomery County could all come together and form a metro government so that we speak as the city of 500,000+ that we are. I know that some will say that the suburbs don't want the ills of the City and others will say the city doesn't want people in the suburbs running the city. Well to both of those arguments I say, the ills of the city have now reached some of our inner ring suburbs and will continue to spread, if we are all one city then people in the city will be running it. I know many of you will say that this idea is outrageous and could never work, and I say to you that it is outrageous to not seriously consider it because what we are doing now is clearly not working. The key is making it economically advantageous to the masses so that it would be outrageous to not want it. Hey why not us? That's my question.