Voices for the Lake is a timely and innovative ECHO initiative to inspire Lake Champlain Basin stewardship through social media; connecting people who care about the health of their watershed with shared stories and regional resources.
The Voices For the Lake (“VFL”) project was initiated at
ECHO in 2005, in direct response to the first State of
the Lake report, released that same year by the Lake
Champlain Basin Program. Conceived out of the clear and
urgent need to connect the public with issues concerning
the stewardship of the Lake Champlain Basin, VFL began
to research and test ideas on how to inspire community
members to make a difference in their local watershed.
Through 2006, VFL hosted a variety of public forums;
using participants questions and concerns to drive
discussion about the Lake Champlain watershed. In 2007,
three “brainstorming forums” — featuring major emergent
media experts and electronic voting devices for the
public participants — were challenged with looking at
how conservation, education, and technology might come
together in order to reach a wider audience with
information about water quality issues. What emerged was
the idea of using the growing online social media
networks to comprehensively gather watershed
information, and to connect people — through personal
storytelling — to take action in their own community. A
pilot project testing the impact of digital storytelling
was implemented in 2007 and 2008 with funding from U.S.
Sea Grant. Using a video capture kiosk on the exhibit
floor at ECHO, visitors record a video commenting on
emerging threats to Lake Champlain like blue-green algae
and invasive species. Videos upload automatically to the VFL playlist on the
ECHO
YouTube channel.
This foundational work helped VFL become the honored
recipient of a 2008 National Leadership Grant with the
Institute of Museum and Library Services. Throughout
2009, VFL has been building an online community using an
ever-expanding variety of social media tools. For
example, with Facebook and Twitter, VFL is experimenting
with connecting the online community with
the conservation community. Naturally, the core of the
project are the digital stories contributed by community
members; communicating their thoughts, feelings, and
stories about their watershed. Beyond the ECHO YouTube
channel and our social media network, these videos are
also shared through the popular ECHO Update
e-newsletter; all easily accessible to Basin residents —
and even to a world-wide audience.
In 2010, the VFL videos will be featured as part of a
Google Map “mashup” – i.e., a mixture of content or
elements from multiple sources – of the Lake Champlain
Basin watershed both online at our website and within a
new ECHO exhibit featuring touch-screen technology. The
VFL interactive watershed map will allow the user to
choose and explore a menu of watershed-focused
content layered in the mashup, including videos, photos,
current news topics, and local
activities. Two viewing and recording booths will allow
people to interact with, or even contribute to, the
map's content; through rating, commenting, or recording
a video.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of
federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums.
The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that
connect people to information and ideas.
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