A recent draft wireframe of the Know Your City app
We’re making good progress on our Know Your City: Portland’s Social History App project. Recently, we mailed all of the Kickstarter thank you packages – even the ones to Switzerland and Australia! We wanted to take a moment to thank each and everyone one of you for supporting this project over the last couple years. Whether through making a Kickstarter pledge, contributing a great idea, suggesting a location or expert to feature, or telling other people about the project – it’s all come together to make this possible. Thank you!
Last week, we held our first program committee meeting since we achieved full funding. We’ve held about a half dozen of feedback meetings over the last year or so, but this one felt different, because rather than discussing opportunities for support and fundraising strategies, we were able to spend all our time on how we’re going to make this project happen. Participants in the meeting included Portlanders from a variety of fields: history, mapping, architecture, technology, and cultural tourism, and each shared some terrific insights and offered specific support.
A key area of discussion was the lists of locations, speakers and communities that we will explore and present in the app. For each community, we will include a brief introduction, illustrations and/or archival photos, and several audio clips from interviews we’ll conduct in the fall, edited into 2–10 minute segments.
Every time we have this discussion, the list grows – there are just so many fascinating aspects to Portland’s history! To make sure that we cover each location and community well, we plan to focus on about 15 topics in the initial release, and we’d like your input. Take a minute and cast your vote on this quick poll!
Have a great suggestion not on this list? Drop us a line here.
In the meantime, the project team will be meeting again soon to refine the information-gathering process, plan the interview structure and questions, identify community resources for stories and photos, and continue the design of the app and website. We aim to have all this bundled together, tested and released by the end of the year. Along the way, we’ll continue to share our progress, and post glimpses of what’s happening behind-the-scenes. Stay tuned and thanks again for your support
