Franklin MAtters Weekly

Monday, October 22, 2012

Busyness time of year

Middle of October, things are getting busy now. Only a few weeks left in the campaign before the Nov 6th election. The last date to register to vote has passed. Voters can still get absentee ballots from the Town Clerk's office. The candidates have their final days to continue to get their word out. Voters also have their final chances to obtain the information needed to cast an informed ballot.

The week ahead is busy. Tuesday has a number of events happening:

The YMCA is getting 5% from the purchases at the Whole Foods Market in Bellingham.
The School Committee meeting Tuesday evening reviews the school improvement plans for the elementary schools among other items on their agenda.
The second 10th Norfolk candidate debate occurs at the Horace Mann Middle School
The Taste of the Region is held at Tri-county Regional Vocational Technical High School.

Wednesday is an early dismissal day for the schools.

Thursday has the second in the series of school tours scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM. This tour will cover the three schools in the complex of Oak St Elementary, Horace Mann Middle School and the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC).

Friday has the next to last Farmers Market at the Town Common from noon to 6:00 PM.

10/21/12

10/20/12

10/19/12

10/18/12

10/17/12

10/16/12

10/15/12

Week ending Oct 7, 2012

Catching up to the summary for the prior week.

10/14/12

10/13/12

10/12/12

10/11/12

10/10/12

10/09/12

10/08/12

Monday, October 8, 2012

A milestone reached!

On this Columbus Day, I want to share a little bit about what I have explored here and the results of those explorations. The Franklin Matters webpage achieved a milestone of sorts this week when the 7,000 post was published. A nice round number! There is a whole lot of data here. Actually, not just data. A whole lot of information. The chart here shows the yearly growth through October 7, 2012. Thus far this year we have already exceeded last years totals with the remainder of Oct, and all of Nov and Dec to report on.

The green bar shows page loads. A page load occurs when a single post is read. It can be found via a Google search, a click through from the newsletter, from Facebook or from another post on the site.

The blue bar shows total unique visitors. There is another stats that shows repeat visitors. Because that is based upon cookies, I don't rely on that one. Total visitors is a more accurate count.

What do regular readers find here?

Live reporting from important Town Council, School Committee and other meetings. There were over 50 meetings reported on live per year for 2008, 2009 and 2010. This dropped off during 2011 and 2012 to over 20 per year as I spent more time working with the Franklin Food Pantry.

Pictures: There are hundreds of photos of meetings and events in and around Franklin.

Original analysis and record keeping. The override history and attendance tracking are two good examples of information made available for the Franklin voters and residents.

The volume of visitors has continued to climb as shown in the chart above. The number of subscribers to the daily email newsletter is over 200 and growing. The number of Facebook friends is over 870 and growing.

This webpage, newsletter and Facebook page is all part of my public service effort for Franklin. I can use your help. How can you help, you ask? If you have an interest in Franklin and would like to explore the use of social media tools to create and share information, we should talk.

If you have an interest in covering any of the meetings, for example, the Planning Board, Conservation Commission and or the Zoning Board of Appeals, please let me know.

And as always -

If you like this, please tell your friends and neighbors
If you don't like this, please tell me.

Thank you for reading!

10/7

10/6

10/5

10/4

10/3

10/2

10/1

The week that once was

has come and gone. Overcome by other events, the update I could have shared would no longer make sense. The summary still stands and that can be shared. I hope to be more consistent as we go forward.

9/30

9/29

9/28

9/27

9/26

9/25

9/24