RIPPLE
RIPPLE showcases the views and voices of the rural Northwest and provides a platform for rural people to share resources and speak out about issues that affect them.
RIPPLE is RDI’s award winning community website. Whether you are interested in the "Rundown on Rural Broadband," "Discovering the Elusive Farmer Blogger," fueling economic development in a rural community, or learning to market your small rural business, RIPPLE is the place for you. Though the topics are continually changing, if it is of interest to rural folks, you are likely to find it on RIPPLE.
The idea for a community website came from the need to strengthen connections between rural people and ideas separated by geography and to increase the opportunity that the internet affords. RDI's goal is to bring the underrepresented rural voice to the internet, and most importantly, create connections between the people we work with by providing a place for them to share information and ideas.
What is an online community?
An online community is a social network of individuals who interact through a website, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. The mutual interest we all come to RIPPLE to discuss is rural life and community building.
What are the RIPPLE success factors?
A successful virtual community has many of the same characteristics of a successful physical community. In most ways, the site must work for the people who use it, just like a physical space must work for the people who live there. It must be easy to get around the site and beautiful to look at. Community engagement is also essential to a vital virtual community. In a community, knowledge isn’t disseminated from the outside in. It flows organically between people; community members share their opinions and experiences. We hope that RIPPLE users will share knowledge and resources with each other, so they can do more for their physical communities. We also hope that folks who visit the RIPPLE community gain a greater understanding of the lives that rural people lead and what kind of unique opportunities and challenges rural life has to offer.
How did we choose the design and features for the site?
We released the new version of the RIPPLE site in December of 2009. The redesign of the site was based on feedback from the people we work with. Most people emphasized a desire for simple functions and an easy to navigate design. We stripped RIPPLE down to focus deeply on the content while keeping the site design simplistic and shallow. Users can access most parts of the site in one or two clicks, and can quickly and easily post their comments or resources. Since the redesign, RIPPLE has won an Informational/Educational Webvisionary Award, an award which honors the most visionary and daring talent on the web.
How can you become a member of the RIPPLE community?
All are welcome; visit the RIPPLE website at www.ripplenw.org. Once on the site you can join the discussion around recent blog posts, post shared resources and events on a community bulletin board, and learn about success stories around the Northwest. RIPPLE has a core group of community bloggers who regularly write about rural community building issues. If you would like to join our team of bloggers, contact Alison Cassin at RDI: acassin@rdiinc.org.
