New Cincy.com update
We're working on the relaunch of Cincy.com and hope to have the new look and the first 21 neighborhoods online in the next week or so!
A long time labor of love, we've been working on it and meeting some wonderful new friends along the way. Great writers, photographers and more!
Cincinnati Neighborhood Summit
The City of Cincinnati Neighborhood Summit is an annual event in its 7th year. Today was my first time, and I'm glad I got to be there.
Attended by hundreds of people from many of the neighborhoods in the tristate, particularly the 52 neighborhoods within the city of Cincinnati, the event is open to all, free to attend and offered several hours of presentations, booths and conversations.
I found it inspirational and encouraging.
One could almost infer from the news announcing it that the event focused largely on reducing crime, dealing with abandoned property and otherwise addressing the problems of our neighborhoods.
In fact, the gathering of people were, overall, so enthusiastic about their communities and the work they are doing that I was drawn into several conversations about Cincinnati's unique history, architecture, neighborhoods, parks and more, with speakers and attendees ranging from architects to recreation commission staff to directors of fair housing programs.
I'll post more about it later tonight or tomorrow after I've had a chance to process the experience a little more.
I'm just so glad I was there to experience the engagement of so many of my neighbors across the tristate.
Here's a link to the Enquirer story
Exploring our neighborhoods: Hyde Park
First Impression: A trendy meeting place for young professionals, a thriving business district and a favorite area for joggers, Hyde Park is a clean, upscale neighborhood with a good balance between offering a cozy, village feel while at the same time supplying all the amenities of a modern commercial area.
Exploring our neighborhoods: Covington
First Impression: Covington is difficult to box – on the one hand, it is a blue collar neighborhood with tattoo parlors and biker bars, and on the other hand, it is the home of the classy Northern Kentucky Convention Center and The Ascent condominium, which sells units for millions. The city boasts a little bit of everything – excellent dining, active night life, arts and culture, unique independent shops, and both a healthy business district and diverse residential neighborhoods. All of Covington’s offerings come with a strong dose of personality.
TweetScan: Watching a word
Back when I was new to Twitter, I used to track the words CINCY, CINCINNATI and CINCI on my mobile phone, just to see how often people mention these versions of our fine city's name in their Twitter messages. I'd get 1, 2 sometimes 5 messages a day on my phone -- posts from total strangers saying they're just landing in cincy or have a meeting next week in cinci or are watching cincinnati get beat by cleveland, that kind of thing.
That was when Twitter was not so fabulously well known, before it grew into TWITTER!! (apparently along with its own Saturday morning cartoon, Twitter breakfast cereal and full line of twit-hero action figures --some items sold separately)... After a while, my phone blew up all day long with all those interesting (and not so interesting) tweets containing cinci, cincy and cincinnati, and drained my battery before lunch, so I stopped tracking them (I know, I know... what kind of moron programs his life with such useless distraction in the first place? "Don't Judge Me...").
Anyway.
Now there are a number of swell online tools for "Twitter-Tracking", one of which I like for how easy it is to embed in a page.
The column on the right has a live feed of 20 recent "tweets" containing the word "cincy", and I've added a simple scan interface to the top, so you may also "scan" for "cincinnati", "cinti" or "cinci"... or any other word you like, using the input at the top.
If you're a twitter user and you use CINCY (or the others) in your messages, your brilliant micro blogging will show up here for all to see, at least for a few minutes or hours... Since embedding it today, I've seen posts about local job interviews, weather, the Bengals and the usual headline twits from WLWT and The Enquirer. It's at least marginally interesting (to some of us, anyway).
The feed example here is made possible by Tweetscan.com.
Twitscoop is another good Twitter scanner.