Friends Nextdoor

May 5, 2019 by albertkaufman

How to land in a new place and create community

Ever since I learned about Nextdoor.com I have seen its potential to help people land in a new place more quickly and build a community around themselves. Most of the time when we move it takes a while to acclimate and find a new group of friends. I would guess the time it takes most people to arrive in a new town to be 2-3 years. What would our lives be like if that time was shortened to months or weeks, instead? I think they’d be richer and I explain below how this can be done by anyone, anywhere.

Using Nextdoor.com and other online tools such as Constant Contact* (email service provider + survey capability) and Facebook (for group functions), it’s possible to quickly build a list of people who live close by who share your interests. When one relocates, these tools can be used to create a new group of friends quickly.

I’ve been doing this in my local neighborhood here in Portland and it’s led to amazing connections.

Here are the steps I have taken to try this out:

Sign up for Nextdoor.com.
Created an email list for potential new friends using an email service provider, and set up a sign-up form that people can use to subscribe (or, just create a simple group in your email client like Outlook or Gmail). You can make more than one list for different interests, e.g., people who like to play chess, play music, or like to effect change to make the neighborhood more livable. A person can be added to more than one list.
I started conversations on Nextdoor around various list topic(s).*
Via private messaging, I asked people who seem interesting to you join my lists (provide the sign-up link) and I explained what I am up to and asked for their email address.
Once I formed a group, I invited group members to events. In my case I’ve hosted house concerts which is a favorite way I like to gather with people. I have also started a Facebook group so that the members of the group can speak to one another and possibly instigate activities themselves. The cool thing here is that you’re acting as matchmaker, and all of the connections are local!
Repeat the above until your social life is full of interesting people who live close by and may enrich your life.
Show others what you’ve done (we learn by teaching).

I’m always open to feedback. Have you tried something like this? What has worked for you? Please feel free to help me improve this concept in the comments section below or write me @ albert@albertideation.com.

As of 9.26.19 I have been doing this for about 11 months and I’m learning as I go. I have a list of 75 people in my Portland, Oregon, USA neighborhood who have been invited to various events at my house (mostly house concerts and an orphans’ Thanksgiving) and the experiment continues. I also just learned about fellow traveler Rachael Lynn’s new book At Home Anywhere, which looks promising!

* Another way to find people who share interests is by creating a survey (I use the tool in Constant Contact). That way you can find people who share your interests and ask for their contact information all in one effort. The link to Constant Contact above is an affiliate link.

Here’s some of my past writing about Nextdoor.com

Yes, Yes Marsha, also has some good thinking of the challenges of moving. to a new city and making new friends.

12.20.21 – article on the difficulty of making friends as adults.

Filed Under: Friends Tagged With: fighting isolation, finding one's way, friends, friends as neighbors, hiya, isolation, landing, meeting neighbors, neighbors, neighbors as friends, new group of friends, nextdoor, nextdoor.com, yes marsha, yes!

How to use Nextdoor.com to effect Neighborhood Change

June 25, 2018 by albertkaufman 2 Comments

Using Nextdoor to Effect Neighborhood Change

I posted an article about my love of Nextdoor.com and why it’s useful a few years ago. Since then, my thinking about nextdoor.com has changed and grown. I see Nextdoor as a much more powerful tool for neighborhood change than I did in the past. Here are some of the ways I’ve been encouraging my neighbors to make changes that may be for the better. Please read through these and give this a try – if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below or write me.

Be the one who starts the conversation. If you want to move the needle on an issue it’s important that you be the one to initiate the conversation on Nextdoor. This allows you to choose which neighborhoods (just yours, others around you or “anyone”) are part of the conversation. For instance, if you’re missing a kitten – you’d want to alert just your neighborhood. If you’re trying to show people a better way to park, the further the reach the better. And, if you’re trying to raise funds to save a theater or movie store – working with friends in other parts of the City is a great way to get maximum coverage. Also, by starting the conversation – you can clearly explain in detail what you’re hoping to achieve and you can provide clear action steps for people to take. You can also moderate the tone of the conversation and possibly edit the original post once new information is added to the thread.
Something is broken on the internet. Eventually, or possibly right away, someone will pooh-pooh your idea or disagree with it, or go off-topic. There’s a wide variety of responses people have when they’re presented with information asking them to change their behavior. I started a conversation recently on why loud motorcycles are not such a great thing. You can imagine the push-back – everything from “having a loud bike saved someone’s life” to “freedom!”. You just toughen up and get used to it. It’s not necessary to respond to every comment in a thread – and, if someone is mean or posting irrelevant information you can “mute” them. I don’t recommend this as a common practice, but it may make your life a little less stressful. I think in the 5 or so years I’ve been active on Nextdoor.com I’ve muted 2-3 people. I often will write the person directly and try to get a discussion going. The key thing is to stay on message – you’re likely trying to make things better for your neighbors – stay with the original topic and don’t get too concerned with off-topic rants.
Nextdoor is different than other social media platforms in a number of ways. If you’re going to post anything on Nextdoor – esp. within a conversation – take a moment to make your point. Longer, careful explanations of your thinking beat short retorts (which also may end up out of order and make no sense at all!) Snarky comments – or questions that don’t exactly follow the stream may get ignored and the person posting probably will end up looking foolish. Don’t be that person – tell a story. Take a moment to educate and illuminate your point.
Spelling, grammar – double-check… Providing links to back up your comments/points – are probably all good things to consider.

Like with all social media – you’re potentially speaking to a large group of people. Take a moment and review what you’ve written to make sure it makes sense – and try for clarity. Sarcasm, and wittiness can easily confuse people.
Remind people about the issue every once in a while. If you have new information to share or you just think it’s time for the 1,000 NEW people who’ve joined your neighborhood group to learn about why it’s not a great idea to beep your car to lock it – add a new comment to the conversation. This will add your thread to the digest version that many people receive daily and thus keep the conversation fresh in peoples’ minds. (This also works in FB groups – if you post a new comment to a conversation, that conversation rises to the top – it doesn’t matter how old the conversation is!) You’ll be surprised that new people will join the conversation whenever you raise it again often adding valuable information to the neighborhood hive mind.

What’s a way that you’d like to see your neighborhood grow and change? Want to start community potlucks? Get more people to rip out their lawns and plant gardens? Encourage people to use less pesticides? Whatever it is, take the plunge – give it a try. I think you’ll be surprised that if you can start with a positive tone and stay on topic, you’ll actually have your neighbors listening to you and possibly following your suggestions which will improve life where you live. I’ve tried this with everything from some of the above to issues like gun control and trying to stop fighter jets from using residential neighborhoods for their flight path. All of the conversations are still there waiting for me or someone else to continually add to them. To me Nextdoor.com is the best tool ever invented for local organizing. It’s not perfect (where’s the ride-share app? Neighborhood dating match-up? But as it is, this is quite a powerful tool and I recommend giving it a try where you live in the way I have outlined above.

Happy activating!

Albert Kaufman, 5.25.18

PS – If Nextdoor.com is not popular in your area, hop on and get started. It likely will grow and like many things – it’s good to be involved early. Perhaps you have something similar where you live – use the above guide with whatever platform is available.

PPS – Here’s my next Nextdoor.com article. It’s about how to use Nextdoor in combination with other digital tools to build a local friends/cause network. Check it out.

This article was updated on 10.17.19, and again on 3.28.22

Filed Under: nextdoor.com Tagged With: caring, community change, making a difference, nextdoor, nextdoor.com, you can do it

NextDoor.com – The Future Is Here

February 21, 2015 by albertkaufman 1 Comment

NextDoor.com – A Great New Way to Meet Your Neighbors and Build Community

If you’ve been anywhere near me in the last year or two, or have been reading my newsletter, you’ll know I’ve been doing my best to spread the word about NextDoor.com.

I have been a fan of local all my life. I love the idea of the 20 minute neighborhood – being able to walk to everything you need in 20 minutes – which leads to less car use and having a lighter impact on the Earth. It leads to a lot of other benefits, as well. Not being in a car means you use other modes of transportation such as walking, biking and roller-skating. And while you’re out you end up meeting your neighbors and catching up – sometimes learning important news that you wouldn’t find out any other way. Knowing who lives around you also creates safety as everyone can keep an eye on things. This is what life used to be like in village days of yore. We’ve lost much of this familiarity as the United States has developed suburbs and we’ve designed our world to fit the car rather than what’s best for our thriving.

Enter the internet and social media platform, nextdoor.com. Nextdoor is a combination of social media worlds that many of us are familiar with (particularly, Facebook). Once you’ve signed up (which is a simple process where you, a real person, living at a real address are verified) you suddenly land in the neighborhood you live in on-line. There’s a newsfeed where you can see what your neighbors have posted, and you can also view the feed of your surrounding neighborhoods. For me, that’s North Richmond, Portland, Oregon = 200+ members, and the greater area about 2,000 members. I can connect to the people on my block, or to all the people in about a mile radius around me.

What I’ve seen so far is a mixture of things. People use NextDoor to offer each other extra of what they have (fruit was popular last Summer), kind of like Freecycle, which I helped jumpstart in 2003. The conversations are about everything from people seeking recommendations for home improvements; bodyworkers; tech support; local events; to neighborhood-watch type notifications about break-ins; missing pets and the like. There’s also a fair bit of discussion about how our neighborhoods are developing. Currently, in the neighborhood I live in there has been an increase in old houses being torn down to be replaced by much larger scale buildings and that’s led to a lot of discussion of where we’re headed as a neighborhood and city. These type of discussions used to happen on community discussion lists and at neighborhood council meetings, but this new forum provides an opportunity to use collaborative technology at the neighborhood level. Without ads! Then, there are the yardsales and notices from the City and other odds and ends – things for sale; re-posts of Craigs List ads; homes for sale or rent; and new groups forming (the first of these I have seen is a local singles group).

There are many reasons why I am so gung-ho about Nextdoor.com. As someone who has been involved in high-tech for years, I am always excited when I see something come along that will help on a local level. I see this as that – a way for us all to get closer – to build community resilience through locals being in each others’ lives more. To make local bonds rather than keeping up networks that take a lot of fossil fuel to maintain. NextDoor also dovetails with another passion of mine: Farm My Yard. Farm My Yard is an effort to connect homeowners who have sunny yards with those who have urban farming skills and would like to grow food, but are lacking the space to do it. I also see Farm My Yard as a possible youth employment/business opportunity. In my dream I see teenagers using the Farm My Yard agreements and walking their neighborhoods to find a few yards to farm. This can and does lead to real income; vegetables for all; and less trips to the grocery store for everyone.

So, for me, it’s all coming together – and, I hope, we’re coming together. I see these types of developments leading to something fantastic in the future. Nextdoor.com is not perfect yet – it doesn’t always correctly identify neighborhood boundaries; the tech support can be iffy; disputes are left up to neighborhood “leaders” who sometimes make questionable calls; and I’m sure there are other imperfections, as well. That said, for now, this is one horse I am betting on! And, I recommend, if you’re not a member yet that you give it a try and see what you find. If you have comments, please leave them below.

For a better world,

Albert Kaufman
February 21, 2015

Update: 6.25.18 – Here’s a new article about Nextdoor by yours truly – about How to use it effectively for neighborhood change

March 4, 2015 NYT Article

9.24.15 – My neighbors pulled together via a great conversation on Nextdoor.com to preserve some giant trees and build community at the same time in Portland, Oregon, The United States.