Back in 2009, I wrote a guest post on Tenth to the Fraser entitled, “Taking the plunge into community involvement”. I’m hoping at the end of this post I can convince one of you to take the plunge. It’s a topical subject, with Briana’s recent New West Wednesday’s topic asking about people’s involvement (or not) in their local residents’ associations. Commenters are discussing their experiences and I’d have to say mine’s been overwhelmingly positive, which certainly makes me a bit sad about moving away.

A little less than two years ago, I went looking for an online community of New Westminsterites online. The virtual version of New West was a pretty lonely place back then. I found a few bloggers. A few more on Twitter. A handful of Facebook groups.

I was thinking of launching a blog about life in New West, but when I saw how little local activity there was, I wondered whether anyone would even read it.

This is a guest post by Marcy Koopmans, who recently moved to New Westminster. This is her take on our most recent Tweetup.
As Jocelyn mentioned in her post on Friday, a large part of what gives New West its sense of self is its sense of history.
Moving here, Wes and I were surprised and, I’ll be honest, a bit amused by what to us seems such an unusual preoccupation with the past. But perhaps this is only because we came from a city which one Twitter user called a …

Last night I presented a two-hour program at the New Westminster Public Library called Blogging Basics, to help people get started creating their own blogs. We had a great turnout, with 60 registered and only a few empty seats in the auditorium.  It was a very lively crowd, full of questions and comments – I barely made it through the presentation in those two hours!
Hopefully I was able to answer some questions and even inspire some folks to start blogging themselves! We also disussed using Twitter and Facebook to promote …

The mayor’s dream of citywide wifi notwithstanding, New Westminster is not a town that fetishizes digital culture. Until recently, we have not even had a visible local blogging presence (most local bloggers mark themselves as being in “Vancouver”). So you can imagine my surprise when four people in the small crowd at the recent Royal City Farmer’s Market AGM  told me they were on Twitter.  
Only about 1% of online Canadians are on Twitter, according to recent ComScore stats, but the service is growing incredibly quickly. According to Compete, Twitter grew an astonishing 752% in 2008, …

I am delighted to announce that I [Briana] will be speaking at Northern Voice (the blogging conference in Vancouver) on the topic of hyperlocal blogging. The title of my presentation is Passionately Local: Blogging about your own backyard.
Here’s the synopsis of the talk:
Blogging may be an opportunity to reach a worldwide audience, but with Tenth To the Fraser, we’ve narrowed our focus considerably to cover only issues and ideas that relate to the city of New Westminster. 
In this talk I’ll share the benefits of hyperlocal focus to both blog authors and …