Announcing the Focus and Design

The Vineyard Voice is a community-building site for our island. The Voice will make it possible for Islanders to easily find people and places, market things and services, to build groups and to publish ideas online. For example, it will be easy to build a group of Island farmers or local historians, or to publish your ideas about local housing, or publish your personal essays and photos. If you want to list a ride off-Island or to create an exchange of building materials The Voice allows simple creation and organization of local listings. Through The Vineyard Voice we can more easily exchange ideas, goods and services and grow as an interconnected community.

The Voice is a home-grown initiative to help us connect through simple ways of communicating. For example, the site will help us find someone, and once found we can also discover the groups she is in (if public), or the photography he has published. By connecting Islanders with what we are doing we can more easily exchange ideas, learn from each other and discover connections we may not have known.

Since we are both very private and very public, it is important to know that information on the site will be secure, and personal publications or entire sections can be selectively public or completely private. Each person or group decides how public their information is.

The Vineyard Voice is being designed and developed by Patrick Phillips, who lives in West Tisbury. It will be launched in stages, beginning at the end of April. For more information contact him at patrick@vineyard.net.