Meeting Notes
Saturday, March 23rd @ 10:30AM online
Community Checkins
- @syd is thinking about @Jeff offering to make a WCMNCN movie theatre slide, the West Central Initiative Rural Futures dialogues, and the SNOWSTORM!!! Everyone is welcome to come help work on the 11 Elm St. snowfort if they wish.
- Joel was at the research and outreach center (ROC) retreat. He was thinking about stakeholder engagement (who are our stakeholders, what are their interests, how can different orgs or people capture those interests and move forward with them). There is a disconnect between what the UMN values and what the ROCs provide (UMN basis is on courses & teaching, but ROCs don’t focus on that - stakeholders in MN who are not students want to see research/values/projects come to life).
- @Susan_Gilbert is thinking about Ben Winchester’s (benw@umn.edu) talk at the West Central Initiative meeting on Thursday. She likes that the WCMNCN is a bottom up instead of top down group, we have a good (yet slow) ethos of chatting with our neighbors before taking action to do good.
Discussion:
- Money seems to be one of the tricky issues for projects in our area.
- Community garden project did not get RSDP funding. This is a good opportunity to talk more about it and have a well defined community engagement plan in case the ROC decides to submit it again in the future.
- Start working on Draft 2 of the Newsletter while draft 1 is being approved!
- We will have a story idea google form for folks to submit story ideas & finalized story submissions.
- Newsletter purpose: to inform community of what Morris Model/sustainability/resiliency work is going on, sharing stories, educating, to help people feel confident thinking about topics
- Newsletter at the farmers market!
- Newsletter list
- email it out to the Morris Model blog subscribers
- Other institutions share out to their lists
Newsletter Story Ideas:
- DO NOT BE AFRAID TO RE-COVER A TOPIC !! It is especially important and helpful to share updates for stories, help people feel confident long term
- Trying to approach issues with negative perspectives to re-frame and teach people about positive changes
- Electric Bikes
- Electrification of systems (ask Eric to write something)
- Neighbors with solar panels
- Nuclear power
- Solar power city buildings
- Recycling & composting update (the economics!!)
- Summary of research and projects from our research institutions (WCROC, USDA, UMM)
- Intro story, and then a follow up:
- batteries
- Heat pumps (include German intern in building this story)