This special day is sponsored by the Erie Community Foundation who is putting up $75,000, and GE Transportation is adding another $25,000 to do a partial and proportional match to what an area NPO raises in 12 hours Tuesday:

Erie Gives, which will take place on Tuesday, August 2nd from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., is an opportunity for you to make ONLINE gifts to your favorite nonprofits. In turn, The Erie Community Foundation will match a percentage of each donation that you make…The more donations made to a nonprofit, the more matching funds that nonprofit will receive from The Erie Community Foundation.

The minimum gift is $25, which is a perfect starting point for someone, especially a young person, to give to charity. This isn’t lost on the charities both big and small, who are engaging their networks through traditional advertising, mass mailings, e-mail blasts and Twitter and Facebook, to push for gifts. The Non-Profit Partnership even gave it’s members tutorials on how to launch a Facebook page or to get going with Twitter.

There are big hopes for this unique community-wide fundraiser. If the non-profits together can raise $100,000, they will receive a dollar for dollar match, and that will make a huge impact.

You can watch how things are going all day long live by following @eriegives on Twitter. And if you make a donation, tell your friends about it on your Facebook and Twitter page as an encouragement for others to get involved.

"Summer Afternoon, Isles of Shoals" - Frederick Childe Hassam

On Sunday afternoon, WYNE/North East’s self-described “one-man-band” Dan Geary began a Facebook group “Save the HASSAM !!!”, pulling people together to stop the proposed sale of “Summer Afternoon, Isles of Shoals” by Frederick Childe Hassam, which is owned by the Erie County Public Library and is on display on the second floor of the Blasco Library adjacent to the Heritage Room.

Geary in his first post on the FB group explains the backstory:

This page has been created to make the Facebook community aware of a pending action that will change the rich art history of Erie County….forever. The County Executive has recommended that the painting “Summer Afternoon, Isle of Shoals” by Frederick Childe Hassam be offered for auction and be replaced with a print.The piece was “gifted” to the Erie Community by the original Erie Art Club 106 years ago.It was purchased in 1904 for $1,000.00 and the funds were secured by selling 10 cent tickets to art shows in Erie.The effort was spearheaded by Lovisa Card-Catlin. The painting has hung for 5 generations and survived @ World Wars, the Great depression, Epidemics, the Millcreek Flood and countless government financial crises. Please contact your County Executive Barry Grossman and members of County Council and express your opposition to this band aid auction. Hurry County Council is scheduled to vote to allow this at their August 2nd meeting. Do it now before it’s going….going….GONE..FOREVE​R.

In under four days, the group has expanded to over 550 members, with a petition drive at local galleries and at Thursday night’s Downtown Block Party, with the goal of 999 signatures to be presented to County Council at their meeting August 2nd in Corry.

What’s interesting about this particular group is that it is made of not just elite art benefactors, but a strong cross-section of the Erie populace. Chalk that up to the dynamic personality of Geary, who is Erie’s quintessential Master of Ceremonies, and for decades has brought our far-flung community together, spinning great tunes and sharing good humor.

So, can the power of social media deflect the strong current of expediency and visions of dollar signs? Only your County Council men and women can answer that.

Screen grab for The Jennings Secede from the South, Oct. 2009

Four years ago, a newly-married young couple left their roots in the Deep South to travel to a place only known by its dot on the map on the Weather Channel getting plastered each winter by lake effect snow. These Baylor grads were coming to Erie, PA for medical school, and Camille Jennings started a blog to chronicle their time in Erie for family and friends such a distance away.

Little did she know that in the process that through her blog, “The Jennings Secede From the South,” thousands of readers from her new town and beyond would be delighted by her charm, big heart, and sharp wit. Through “The Jennings Secede,” Camille shined the spotlight on Erie’s goodness and weirdness, while she and her husband Adam lived life; meeting new friends, first big snow storm, eventually pregnancy and having two boys filling their home with joy.

The Erie era for the Jennings ended last week as Adam completed medical school and started his residency in Texas. Between the unpacking of boxes and caring for the children (and Powers, the wonder dog), Camille took time to answer a few questions for Press and Tower:

P&T: You obviously wanted to blog while in Erie to keep your family and friends up-to-date on your lives while away from home. Were you surprised at the attention and following you received from Erie folks?

CJ: Initially, the Jennings Secede blog came about as a communication tool for our friends and family in Texas & Louisiana as we moved to Pennsylvania for Adam to attend medical school. In fact, on the 23-hour maiden voyage to Erie, we made our first blog post and, within a few hours, I had received several comments from locals. So, from the start, many Erie residents were welcoming, encouraging & quite communicative. This caught us quite by surprise as we assumed that no one would care about our blog and, secondly, that people from the north were not super-welcoming (read: cold). During our first two months in Erie, Adam hadn’t begun medical school and I hadn’t found a job so we explored Erie and blogged our findings. Erieite-readers were eager to inform and comment on everything from summer festivals to local eateries to dog-friendly parks. I found that Erie bloggers and readers were extremely helpful and warm.

P&T: What was your greatest surprise about living in Erie?

CJ: My greatest surprise about living in Erie was how doable living in the snow was. I had no idea what to expect moving to a new city with months upon months of snow, save a few Dickens’ novels. However, Adam and I were able to scrape, shove, and actually drive (gasp!) ourselves to work in the fluffy white stuff and even the icy white stuff. We even enjoyed cross-country skiing and walking Powers around the neighborhood. The snow wasn’t really an issue until Henry (our oldest son) arrived on the scene and then I struggled more with getting out of the house and keeping a toddler engaged during frigid temps.

P&T: What happens to “The Jennings Secede”? Do you change the name and keep blogging or was it for this season or planning on starting a new blog?

CJ: The Jennings Secede will live on! I have considered renaming the blog but keeping the URL. The Jennings Reaffiliate? Fort Worth is a new city and, this time, I will have two little boys to help me discover all the jewels within it!

P&T: You have gone through a whirlwind of change in your family over the four years living in Erie. Describe what kind of place this will be in your memories?

CJ: I will always have a soft spot for Erie. Adam and I came here after one year of marriage and spent four years here as he attended LECOM. we welcomed two sons into the world at Saint Vincent’s Hospital. We were loved and cared for by the people at Grace Church. We attended more festivals than I knew existed. With family living over 1,200 miles away, our new friends became our family here. Erie has more to offer than many locals give it credit for. Presque Isle, free concerts and diverse festivals are just the tip of the iceberg. I love Erie and the people who call it home. It was a great adventure.

Camille has started her Fort Worth blogging already with the new title “The Jennings Rejoin the South.” I’m confident that the Jennings will have a similar and amazing impact there as they did here in Erie, PA.

The first effort of this network is the Erie Observer, a weekly e-mail news blast that lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. The first arrived last week, and readers are getting excited. Mike and Peter agreed to give our P&T community the inside scoop on this new venture:

P&T: The idea of the Erie Observer had to come from somewhere…how did the concept come to life?

Peter: This is something I’ve been wanting to do ever since we started GlobalErie three years ago. I believe that you can’t build a good online community with just a blog or a Web site. You need to be able to reach people in a number of ways — online, through e-mail, and through social networks. And e-mail has been a missing piece for us — largely because I haven’t had the time myself to get this off the ground. The idea of being able to do Erie Observer in partnership with ErieBlogs means we can build a much richer conversation since we’ll be engaging people from both of our audiences. We can pull in people who have relationships with both Web sites and, if we do it well, we can get them to interact more on both sites. It’s about strength in numbers. And it’s also about being able to make the most from limited resources. Neither I, nor Mike and Richard from ErieBlogs, do this full time. So if we can share the load, we can accomplish more.

P&T: How has been the reaction to the Erie Observer since the launch last week?

Mike: Good, so far. We’ve had good reactions via email, a good number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Maybe the most important metric is that more people signed up after we sent out the first issue, which means word is spreading. I think it helped for people to get a taste of what we want to do before they subscribed. Now that they’ve seen the first issue, they know what to expect and will sign up.

P&T: Considering all of the different outlets where people in Erie can get news, what niche is the Observer attempting to fill?

Peter: I see Erie Observer as a way to help people organize everything that’s out there. If Tosh.0 tries to chronicle the funniest stuff that’s happening online, Erie Observer strives to point out the best of what’s happening about Erie online. I don’t think we’re competing directly with anyone. In fact, I see it as something that can help these myriad sites stand out from the crowd. If they have have meaningful ideas — hopefully we’ll be able to give them some additional light and drive more traffic to them. People see the Web as a competitive environment, but those who are most successful are those who share.

Mike: I think the email newsletter gives us the ability to dig down deeper into a topic that a regular news outlet can. TV news does 30 seconds on a story – we can do a thousand words and, more importantly – can have an opinion on the topic or talk about what we see as solutions or direction on a particular topic.

P&T: The two top independent Erie news websites are run by people who no longer live in the area. Why do you still do it? Being out of town, are you afraid of losing your “voice”? Why should those still here listen to you guys?

Mike: I still do it because I love Erie. I was born there, grew up there, and came back after college. Thanks to things like the web, Facebook, Twitter and more, I don’t worry about losing my voice. With family and friends still living here, I’m back often enough that I’m still in touch with what’s going on. I think actually being out of Erie is good sometimes because we can more closely see what’s going on (In DC for Peter, Cleveland for me), what’s working and not and take those experiences and relate them to things going on in Erie.

Peter: It’s always been a challenge to write about Erie from afar — but I don’t pretend to be someone who is on the ground in Erie every day. Instead, I really see GlobalErie as a place where we raise questions, start conversations, and give people who care about Erie a voice. For those who aren’t familiar with the site, we started it as a way to give people who have moved from Erie a platform to share ideas and examples of what’s working in their new communities as a way to help bring new ideas to Erie. Our slogan is “Putting Erie’s Brain Drain To Use” — and I hope we are able to accomplish that goal. We can do that from anywhere, actually. The key is making sure we continue to stay connected and that we are upfront about who we are and what we’re about. People should listen to us because good ideas are good ideas — no matter where they’re from. If I see something that’s working in Columbia, Md., and it fits well with Erie, why not share it with those in Erie?

P&T: If there is one community imitative currently or potentially in play locally that needs to get accomplished in the next 18-24 months, in your opinion, what is it and why? Will you use the Observer to wave that flag?

Mike: The biggest initiative: Jobs Jobs Jobs Jobs Jobs. Then, create jobs, mix with jobs and bake with more jobs.

It’s the most important thing that the leadership in Erie needs to figure out. Keeping a company like GE in town is important, but they’ve also got to sell Erie as a place where there’s access to transportation, technology, local higher education and lots of fun stuff to do.

Attracting small and medium sized businesses will be key – not only will it keep jobs local, but it may keep some of the brain drain from happening. After all, it happened to me.

I hit a ceiling in my career and the only place to move up and continue to grow, professionally, was in a larger city, in my case, Cleveland. I would love to still be living in Erie or Meadville, honestly, but this was where the job that best suited me was.

We’ll definitely wave the flag for this – our local leaders could learn much by looking south to Pittsburgh to see how they’ve transformed themselves from a manufacturing steel town to one of the upcoming technology corridors in the nation. There’s no reason that we can’t be that. People are already doing it – look at Jim Berlin and the folks at Logistics Plus, we need more businesses and leaders like that.

Pepsi Refresh Project

I can’t imagine that other local projects across the country get the type of local media attention that Conneaut Lake Park and the Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation before them have received in their quests for Pepsi Refresh votes and grants.

A quick Google of “blue streak pepsi” found articles from all over the region from blogs and news sites including Youngstown and Pittsburgh as well as Erie and Meadville. ErieBlogs.com has been running a daily vote reminder, and the TV stations in town mention the CLP’s efforts to win a Refresh grant very frequently.

Going into the last weekend of voting, the supporters of the renovation of the classic wooden coaster the Blue Streak have made the cause continue to be #1 in the nation for the $50,000 category. They are using not only local media, but strong social media efforts such as a Facebook page to fuel the fire.

Being in the top position attracts voters seeking votes for their own proposals, but also a few detractors. However the rancor is self-policed and all in all, support is strong and positive.

To help the Blue Streak successfully sweep into the station and finish the voting competition well, you can go here. Remember you press “Vote For This Idea,” sign in through Facebook or your e-mail address, then press “Vote For This Idea” again.

Blue Streak - Conneaut Lake Park

To get $250,000 for the Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation, it took a huge community-wide effort fueled by enthusiastic support by Erie’s traditional and new media.

After a two-month break from voting, it looks like the area is ready to get behind another “idea” for the Pepsi Refresh project: the relaunching of the classic Blue Streak roller coaster at Conneaut Lake Park in Crawford County. The trustees of the park have entered the coaster, built in 1938,  in the competition for a $50,000 award this month, with the goals of:

•Raise funds to proceed with restoration
•Replace timbers, realign track, restore trains
•Reopen coaster
•Support local economy by attracting more visitors to the area.

As of this writing on Tuesday evening, their efforts have placed the drive in 19th place, with the top 10 get $50k each. Stories aired again tonight on WICU & WSEE, and reports on the voting have appeared on WJET/WFXP, in the Erie Times-News, and on All Things Erie on WQLN-FM, in addition to the jock chatter on the radio waves, and the blog mentions. If the Kanzius case study is any indication, a flurry of media activity in support of the social media engagement could help the Conneaut Lake Park cause quickly move up in the rankers.

Couple additional thoughts: I wouldn’t expect the kind of trash talk and controversy that was encountered in April by the Kanzius supporters, as the stakes were much higher with $250,000 going to only two victors. If CLP can make it into the top 10, there’s still nine others that will see cash.

If successful, CLP will need to prove itself worthy of public support by moving quickly to put the other gears in motion for getting the Blue Streak rehabilitated and online.

Finally, this is a good opportunity to express appreciation for the other local amusement park; one that hasn’t been in financial turmoil for decades, with its owners operating a community treasure with diligence and respect for the patrons it serves: Waldameer Park. It’s a testimony to the Nelson family who have made the investments needed to keep the dream alive, even to the point of delivering on the decades-old promise of a world-class coaster in Erie, The Ravine Flyer II. The community’s efforts to encourage our friends to the south do not negate the gratitude we feel for what Waldameer means to Erie, our economy, and our families.

To vote for the Blue Streak in the July Pepsi Refresh Project, go to refresheverything.com/conneautlakeparkbluestreak

What do you think? Is $10 a month for TV worth the same as $9 a month for DVD and streaming movies?

This media stuff for the consumer is getting expensive!