Parkology will be the open, online community to share ideas, tools, and resources for people who love quality parks within a 10-Minute Walk from home.
Thank you for visiting Parkology: An Open Online Community for People Who Love Parks. This work is part of our participation in the Mozilla Open Leaders, Round 5 initiative.
The problem: Barriers exist in the ability for people to advocate for local parks. These include lack of knowledge, limits to resources, and the inability to collaborate and share best practices with other park advocates in the community. Parks professionals already have their own communities, networks, and access to resources, though local grassroots members of the community do not have these resources currently.
The solution: An open, online platform to strengthen communities facing disparities in a fair allocation of resources.
Two of the proponents of Parkology who are focusing on its being an open platform are Natalie Garcia and Jeffrey Keefer. They are both advocates of these practices of working open:
- Communicating simply
- Listening to participants
- Organizing community events
- Sharing leadership tasks
- Documenting our work and ideas
Natalie's appreciation for the environment and enthusiasm for creating fun and relevant content has led her to her current position as a Senior Web Content Editor at The Trust for Public Land, where she serves as the community manager for Parkology. In her spare time she’s chasing the marathon majors, indulging in good food, and exploring new places.
Jeffrey is . . . Director of Training & Knowledge Management + Educational Researcher + Professor + Poet + Wikipedian = Liminality + Actor-Network Theory + Open Education
Our hope for Parkology is that all members of urban communities will be able to share ideas, tools, and resources to be empowered to promote access to a quality park within a 10-minute walk from their homes. We hope to attract local community members across the United States who are passionate about improving access to and quality of green spaces in their neighborhoods.
We can really use your help in our goal of helping to empower members of the community to work towards achieving a park or quality green space within a 10-Minute Walk from home. We especially need assistance with:
- Community feedback on our Parkology website. Please take a look at the site and let us know what you think. Can you navigate around the site? Are you able to find resources?
- Community engagement on our Parkology website. Can you join our online community and check it out? Can you post or respond to a question or comment? Can you find other park advocates or community members near you? Can you find or suggest resources based on your interests?
- Global Sprint. We are hoping to share and engage with community members during the Mozilla Global Sprint and would value your feedback whether we should apply to be a site host in New York City where we can work on Parkology and other local projects together.
If you think everyone should be within a 10-minute walk of a quality park, then please check out our code of conduct and our roadmap to discover how Parkology can help us all with local, community-based parks.
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please email Natalie or Jeffrey. Likewise, you can also Tweet us at @garciajnatalie or @JeffreyKeefer.
You may be interested in these open resources that inspired our work:
- Open Leadership Training Series: Best Practices Working Open
- What does it mean to ‘Work Open’ in Hive NYC? A Vision for Collective Organizational Learning Hive Research Lab (October 2014)
- Open Leadership Practices: Open Leadership 101
Links to our project documents:
- Our Open Canvas (helps focus and define the project needs, goals, and strategy)
- Code of Conduct
- Roadmap