Thursday, March 26, 2009

what's up the pike: third time this week

I'd really like to run these "what's up the pike" updates more frequently, as the JUTP inbox regularly fills with information on local meetings/events/cool stuff that should get publicized, but often is lost in the shuffle. I'm thinking about putting together a JUTP Calendar of local stuff (not unlike the amazing calendar at A Parent in Silver Spring), but there's still an issue of getting information from my inbox to the calendar. Sigh. Maybe when I graduate I can figure out a way to make this a job, right?

Anyway:

- As always, check out my weekly column in the Diamondback, U-Md.'s independent student newspaper. This week, I'm writing about cul-de-sacs - which, as you may have read, will soon be banned by the state of Virginia.

- Skaters in K-Town cleaned up the makeshift skate park in Kensington entrusted to them by the county this week after reading in the Gazette about neighbors' frustration with the site's lack of upkeep. We wrote about K-Town last week, noting that a lack of accountability in who 'owns' public spaces can make them hard to maintain.

- The redevelopment of a portion of Falkland Chase was approved by a County Council subcommittee, though two-thirds of the New Deal-era apartment complex at 16th Street and East-West Highway will be historically designated. If the full council approves the project, developer Home Properties plans to build a high-rise apartment building on the North Parcel of Falkland Chase.

2 comments:

Thomas Hardman said...

Dan, for now it's probably best to keep it reserved for Candidate Forums and Civic Association meeting announcements, etc., but there's always the calendar function on the District 4 Wiki. I seem to recall that you have an editor account there, so feel free.

It's also possible to just start a blog along the lines of "MoCo Event Calendar" and have a variety of people as editors who each would collect and feed a calendar app there. Or just go to google.com and click the "more" tab, and select Calendar... you'd probably really like their spiffy Mobile features.

Jessica McFadden said...

I use a Google calendar and I like to monitor what people put in there because of the focus on children on A Parent in Silver Spring. So I manually update the calendar as a one-person gig, sometimes missing stuff or forgetting to enter info from emails even if I lurve the events.

However, you could upload a Google calendar and allow/invite any up the pike org to enter their own events! You could receive spammers, but you could do it Wiki-style and allow users to delete spamm-y events they see.

Or get one of the emo kids with nada to do in DTSS to be your intern.