I’m giving a shout out to my friend Patrick Phillips at The Vineyard Voice today. I strongly encourage you all to check out this incredible platform for sharing information and activating change in your community. In his own words, “As a community publisher, The Vineyard Voice is an advocate for individuals, businesses and local nonprofit organizations. Through its issue-based investigations and stories written by and for islanders, the Voice builds conversations about how we can strengthen human, economic and environmental resources on the island.”
The following video from The Vineyard Voice documents a collaboration between UMass Amherst, Martha’s Vineyard’s Island Grown Initiative and the island’s Brazilian community as they work to bring Brazilian crops to local island farms.
Patrick is a seasoned and celebrated journalist, who happens to be a Drupal and design expert; he created The Vineyard Voice as a platform for our phenomenal Martha’s Vineyard community to share, document and feature the life that happens here. Blogs, written content, images, photography, audio, video and syndication pair with Drupal’s user-friendly, module abundant and search engine loving platform to construct a total win-win for the community.
The Voice has been and continues to be recognized for this achievement in bringing stories of the people and by the people together, forward and in the direction of a stronger community. One of Patrick’s many goals is to share this model, and to that end he offers consulting to communities looking to create a cohesive, utilitarian online presence – Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS) and available to all. He’s even consulting with the Knight Foundation in an effort to support local, community news sites.
I’m proud to work with and know Patrick. Combining my writing, web 2.0 passion, blogging and marketing expertise with his branding, design, open source technology savvy and his progressive mind, we are taking web and social marketing to a different level – content specifically created for the social web in a framework that not only supports, but invites community interaction and growth.
Check out The Vineyard Voice, contact [email protected] and tell him I sent you.
Update: A great interview with Patrick by Ron Miller was just posted to DaniWeb – check it out.