Looking into the future, by KaroliK

Some of our Metronauts contributors came together at the invitation of our friends at TRAC this past Saturday to discuss the future of Metronauts.ca.  Since our site activity dropped off in December, many have been asking the question – “What’s going on with Metronauts?”.  This post is a summary of how we got here and an invitation to our community to guide our future direction.

This site was originally conceived as a community space to discuss issues and plans contained within the Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan alongside its public consultation process.  With Metrolinx as a major sponsor, my role was to help create the platforms for community engagement, including this site, and to help steward the community. With that project completed (and with my role as a consultant to Metrolinx now done) it is time to reflect on what this place is, who we are as a community and what we might do together in the future.

I will retain my role as steward of the Metronauts brand and the metronauts.ca web domain, but I am looking for proposals and leadership from our community about what the future of the site could be. I intend to step into a supporting role for the best vision and plan for the future.

The role of Editor-in-Chief is now open. We are looking for proposals from the right person with the vision, energy, leadership and ability to help us realize the potential of this site.

There are several key assets and strengths we can build from:

• metronauts.ca domain and the playful and engaging Metronauts brand
• a beautiful visual identity and strong design direction from Alistair Morton of Peapod Studios
• a strong core of content with some talented and passionate contributors
• an informed and active community of commenters who engage in intelligent discourse about the issues they care about
• a strong readership: 16,675 absolute unique visitors, 69,691 pageviews and 1,324 comments since August 1st, 2008 (the Google Analytics graph below charts weekly site visits over this period)

We need your feedback. Please leave a comment and answer some key questions:

• (more…)

Today is the final day for official public comment on Metrolinx’ draft Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy.  Metronauts blog authors are submitting their posts, along with readers comments, into the Metrolinx Limehouse public consultation portal.

You should really take the opportunity to leave your comments on the Metrolinx site. The RTP and IS documents are there and a series of questions are open for public comment. The future of $50 billion in investment and a future of sustainable transportation are up for grabs, so the time is now.

If you’re a blogger that’s been writing on these issues for some time, I encourage you to submit a summary of your posts along with links to the originals. This appears to be the most efficient way to get your thoughts and the comments of your readers onto the official public record.

Metrolinx: Design your own transportation system, a consultation interface

The TransitCamp community and later Metronauts have used technology and open source thinking in many interesting ways to engage citizens in transportation policy.

Over the next few months, I plan to create content for the Metronauts site and carry out research simultaneously.  I will do this by sitting down and carrying out interviews and making some movies of Metronauts using maps.  By Metronauts  I mean any interested bloggers, participants at the ‘unconference’ bar camp events, and readers of this site.  I hope that some of you will be willing to let me screencast or videotape you as you tell me about particular transit routes in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas while using Metrolinx’s ‘Design your own transportation system’ interface.  If you participate, you can choose if the materials get used for research only or if they can be used here on metronauts.ca or in other places.

As a PhD student in the Faculty of Information and Knowledge Media
Design Institute, at the University of Toronto, I am broadly interested in how new media tools can be used within policy consultation and participation processes.

If you are interested in participating in this content creation and research opportunity please contact me:

Email:
Campus phone number: 416.946.5366 (shared line)

Further information including formal documents about my research are available at my site.

Metrolinx is conducting a series of public meetings around the region from October 20th through 30th. For more details and to register:

http://www.metrolinx.com/en/event.aspx

We encourage people to sign-up and learn the details of the plans for the future of Toronto region’s transportation infrastructure.

The Metrolinx Board will be meeting October 24th and November 28th, which is expected to be focused on the approval of the RTP.

What about the Metronauts community?

We’ve been eager to do another big unconference event for a while now, and I know many have been asking about it, but we haven’t been able to schedule one with Metrolinx’ support and involvement. I still hope we’ll be able to hold another major event soon.

Into the void, the indomitable Ed Drass has stepped up and got a weekly series of community meetings setup at Metro Hall in the coming weeks. We’ll be bringing a bit of that unconference magic to these, so we hope you can join us.

METRO HALL MEETINGS
55 John St. @ King St.
Room 303
Toronto

Tue., Oct. 14  5:45 pm  “What do you want to know about the Regional Transportation Plan?”
Tue., Oct. 21  7:00 pm   Topic TBA
Tue., Oct. 28  7:00 pm   Topic TBA

To be updated on these meetings, please send an email to Ed at

Join us for the conversation. We can use the TransitCamp.org Wiki to take notes from these sessions, so we’re looking for participants who can lead the conversation, ask good questions and capture the content of the sessions for sharing with the rest of the community. Volunteers with video cameras wanted!

Photo Source: Rannie Turingan

It has been just over a week since the relaunch of this site, and we’ve seen some fantastic growth in readership (over 3,600 visits) and comments (253 and counting) with new contributors volunteering. As the online community grows, we want to make sure it is a healthy community.

This post has a few principles and tips for how to add value to the conversation. It boils down to this:

• Be real
• Respect each other
• Find solutions for the future

Read more after the jump.

(more…)

Today we officially launch the new Metronauts.ca, a group blog of, by and for the Metronauts community. The content will be focused on the future of sustainable transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, but will also look at the best ideas from around the world on the future of transportation and sustainable city-regions. Please explore the new site and let us know what you think.

Looking for the old Metronauts site? It’s still available at http://oldsite.metronauts.ca/. Looking for the Metronauts Transit Camp event wiki pages? They can be found at http://toronto.transitcamp.org/METRONAUTS.

Follow and Join the Conversation

The Metronauts blog will be updated with new content daily. You can subscribe to new posts by email, by RSS, by Twitter or on the Metronauts Facebook page. Our comments are open, so please help us create a new conversation about a sustainable future for our region.

Be a Contributor

If you attended a past Metronauts event, followed the earlier conversations online, or are a new Metronauts community member with a passion for some aspect of sustainable urban transportation, we’re looking for you. Both experts and everyday citizens are welcome contributors.

Regular contributors get recognized on the Our Writers page, but we also welcome one-time contributions from members of the community. If you have a piece you would like to submit, you can register as a contributor or you can email for more information on how to get published.

Spreading the Word

Thanks to Spacing and BlogTO for their support of our project through media sponsorship and online advertising. Through these and other partners, we are looking to reach out to as many people in the Toronto region as we can. Help us spread the word by sharing this announcement on your email lists and web sharing platforms like Facebook and Del.icio.us.