My team and I designed goCapeBreton.com to help solve community problems. But, we are also users of the site just like you.  After all, we live and work in Cape Breton too.

And, there have been some interesting changes in behaviour that I, and other frequent users of the website, have been experiencing.  I would like to share our observations.  

Of course, it has only been a short time since the soft-launch of the website at the end of May 2015, so there is much more to observe, and perhaps I will continue to add to this post as we go along.

Observations

(1) We feel good after spending time browsing the content on goCapeBreton.com.

Many of us spend time on news sites, shopping sites, Facebook, etc.  But they just don't seem to be as fulfilling any more.  With news sites, it is difficult to find much local news, particularly now that nearly all the major publishers charge for subscriptions. When we do find local news, it is peppered with advertisements and national and global stories, that sometimes may be interesting, but generally do not add value to our daily lives.

Facebook allows us to connect with friends, but much of our browsing time is spent watching unusual videos, browsing musings and weird or inspirational images, and generally wading through unwanted posts.  We do feel some emotional connection with the people that we share with, but much of what we see is not local.

Twitter .. well, that just seems to be lots of talking without much listening.  And, shopping sites, just get us into trouble.

But spending time on goCapeBreton.com seems different.  The content is local.  The people are local.  The events are local. The posts are more thoughtful, and they are well organized.  Everything seems more personal ... and with less TMI (too much information).  We learn about people, places, and events that are new to us.

Simply put, the experience seems more MEANINGFUL.  Spending time on goCapeBreton.com doesn't make us feel like we are just PASSING time; instead, it makes us feel like we have INVESTED our time to learn more about our community and the people that make it special.


(2) We feel like we have a voice.

I've had my writing published and my work profiled perhaps as many as hundreds of times in local, regional, and national media.  Yet, I have never felt like I had a voice in my community.  By voice, I mean the ability to communicate my intended message directly to our local citizens.  Whenever I issue a business news release, it may or may not be picked up by the media.  When it is picked up, the message is often changed by a reporter or editor.  If I want to express a personal opinion, the only choice is perhaps a letter to the editor, or a short comment at the bottom of some post on the Internet.  Maybe it will get published, or not.  And, if something is published, it might get some attention for a few days, until it gets buried by fresher content.

Recently, I published an article on goCapeBreton.com entitled, "The EPIC History of the Tech Sector on Cape Breton Island."  Within days, it had received wide local attention and many people were contributing comments and their own stories.  Prior to goCapeBreton.com, I never considered writing such an article because I had nowhere to publish it.  It is far too long and opinionated for the local media.  Posting it on a blog or Facebook might get a few reads from my friends and then disappear to the bottom of their timelines within hours. Yet, I was compelled to write this article because I think it contains history that is very important to the future success of our community.  And, goCapeBreton.com provided me with the platform to do so, in my own words, unfiltered and unedited. It was my story, as I chose to tell it.  Not only that, I was able to receive meaningful comments from others, which helped me continue to enhance the story. On goCapeBreton.com, this history is properly organized, easy to access, and becomes one of many archived resources in our growing community library.

Of course, you may have absolutely no interest in hearing what Mathew Georghiou has to say, and that's ok.  You can choose who you want to hear from and you can share your own voice too.

(3) We feel an increased sense of community.

Today, we have the entire world at our fingertips.  But, the reality is that we live our lives locally. The people that we see and the places that we go influence our hearts and minds more than anything else.

With goCapeBreton.com, we have discovered people in our community that we probably would never have met otherwise.  More than that, these people were able to share their personalities and passions with us, creating a greater sense of community in our hearts.  Take, for example, how Andre Desjardins invited us into his home to watch him teach his children The Mi'kmaq Honor Song.  The experience is memorable, much because it is local.

My wife, Joanie Cunningham, shared this story with me after she had been using goCapeBreton.com for a few weeks:   While waiting for our car to get serviced, Joanie was reading a local newspaper and an international magazine.  She found herself surprisingly disinterested in the stories and she wasn't sure why because she would have previously enjoyed reading such content. She later realized that it was because many of the stories were not local and the ones that were local were diluted.  Diluted meaning that the stories were written by a reporter who was objectively and dispassionately reporting the facts while adding a couple of quotes from the people in the story.  The stories lost the personalization and the passion behind them.  And, they lost Joanie's interest and diminished the sense of community that comes from local people telling their own stories. This happened only after Joanie had experienced goCapeBreton.com.


(4) We feel like we are able to contribute to our community and help the people within it.

This certainly happens frequently on Facebook too, but the problem with Facebook is that it is generally a closed network, so local issues do not get much traction (bad news and harmful rants seem to get the most attention).

Rory Andrews posted a story on goCapeBreton.com describing his positive experience with downtown Sydney (What Does Downtown Sydney Really Need?). The story was read by many people outside of Rory's personal network. The next day, the business with the tasty Black Bean Burger that was mentioned in the article had hundreds of customers.

At a recent Startup Cape Breton event, the ideas and discussions were easily posted and shared on goCapeBreton.com for the entire community to see - no special memberships or logins needed.

With an increased sense of community, we find ourselves more inclined to share meaningful personal stories and to reach out to people we may or may not know to offer a word of advice, a hand up, or other type of encouragement or assistance.


(5) goCapeBreton.com is actually replacing other Internet activities as part of our daily routine.

We find ourselves eager to discover someone or something new about our community every day.  We feel good learning more about our community and investing in its success.



These are exciting observations and we hope to continue to unlock the power of goCapeBreton.com for the benefit of our community.