The Sound Green

I spent the morning picking out tiny pieces of Styrofoam out of Lincoln Park's beach.  I was truly enlightened, today!

My morning began at Camp Long, where one other straggler showed up for a work party advertised on greenseattle.org.  I called the number that I saved from the website, to find that not only was the coordinator running late because of a family emergency, but the work site had been moved to Lincoln Park beach.  Running through my head: "Communication need #1: a need to update live changes as they happen on the website."

At Lincoln Park, I met another coordinator, Gretchen, and chatted with her as we searched the beach, trash bags in hand.  It turned out, she just got approval from the City of Seattle (she was with Parks and Recreation) to set up social media for Camp Long. A volunteer had set up a Facebook, but it turned out all wrong and they were just waiting to figure it out.  Is this divine intervention, or what??  I volunteered my services to create a social media strategy and fix their fanpage.

I am so excited for this project!  I am still meeting with Andrea W. from the Green Seattle Partnership, who oversees volunteer outreach for all of their work sites, to see if I can help out with that; but for now, I think I can set up a great model with the Camp Long strategy.  I've written out some ideas like creating a manual of appropriate subject matter to tweet out/post on Facebook, how to use Tw/FB for public outreach, and what to do to get followers.

For the last hour at the beach, Gretchen took some of the volunteers and I out on a nature walk, searching for marine life.  She had so much knowledge about all of the slimy wonderful critters that were hiding under those rocks at low tide!  Also, as we were picking up the drifted litter, she explained how certain things got there, and expressed hope that by doing these volunteer projects we would think about where all of our trash goes.  It certainly worked for me! All of the tips she had were translating into fun tweets or updates in my head.  I think that her social media page would do really well if it was updated with cool tips and wildlife to look out for.

...just a start