Parkology: An Open Online Community for People Who Love Parks

[mozfest-bot]

[ UUID ] c0c08964-07f9-41dd-8551-359145f33568

[ Session Name ] Parkology: An Open Online Community for People Who Love Parks [ Primary Space ] Digital Inclusion [ Secondary Space ] Openness

[ Submitter's Name ] Natalie Garcia [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] The Trust for Public Land [ Submitter's GitHub ] @garciajnatalie

[ Other Facilitator 1's Name ] Jeffrey Keefer [ Other Facilitator 1's GitHub ] @jeffreykeefer

What will happen in your session?

Parkology, an open online platform, seeks to mobilize local communities to access, utilize, and share resources to promote park creation and stewardship within a 10-minute walk of home. This session will present an overview of this platform and describe how we shifted to an active focus on user experience to promote community engagement as a result of our Mozilla Global Sprint feedback and discussions. This led to a pilot initiative to engage in partnerships with communities that face significant disparities in equitable access to close-to-home green spaces. We plan to integrate Parkology within our presentation to take participant questions and suggestions while utilizing the technology as a real-time open back channel to capture and share ideas.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

By the end of this session, we hope attendees will expand their knowledge on the benefits of parks, use Parkology resources and discussion threads to increase advocacy for local green spaces, and gain new user insights to better support open knowledge sharing on the local level.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

This session will need a projector and wifi; we will have our own laptop.

Time needed

60 mins

[jontutcher]

Hey @garciajnatalie and @jeffreykeefer. This seems like a great idea - I'll be keeping a close eye on the Parkology website!

Could you say a little bit about how your session ties in with Digital Inclusion?

Thanks!

[garciajnatalie]

Hi @jontutcher,

We've worked with three organizations - The Trust for Public Land, City Parks Alliance and National Recreation and Parks Association - that have reach across the United States as well as an advisory board of organizations that work in the parks and recreation field to create knowledge sharing resources that can help committed community members impact their local park ecosystems and enhance community cohesion, by leveraging knowledge to support others towards creating and steward parts within a 10-minute walk of home. Our hope is to use Parkology to engage local communities to utilize tech resources and provide opportunities to take responsibility and ownership of advocacy for local parks and greenspace.

I'm happy to expand further on how we plan to do this if you'd like!

Natalie

[jontutcher]

Thanks - will get back to you if we have any other questions!