I was at the Political Innovation unconference organised by Slugger O’Toole on Saturday and attended a few sessions. There’ll be a post on the Belfast Skeptics website about our own session on critical thinking, but I took a few notes on the hyperlocal session. It was hosted by Will Perrin of the Kings Cross Local Environment site in London. What he suggested was to just throw something on the Internet and get writing! Write about local things that are happening, then if there are problems just send the information on to local councillors for help. Will has said that once the local politicians realise that the intent of the website is positive overall, they are eager to get involved. He has said that anyone can be involved in generating content, including politicians and that this is mediated by the golden rule: no party politics on the site. With that in mind, people are very cooperative. Examples of hyperlocal sites include:

For resources in setting up hyperlocal sites, check out Talk About Local, which appears to have a huge amount of resources for starting up hyperlocal sites. In addition to this, OpenlyLocal.com has a ton of information and a map of loads of hyperlocal sites as well as information on local government. Anyway, if you want to add more, do so in the comments below.