The Portland Passport is a system to make it easier to find new communities that matter to you and to gain new, enthusiastic members for your own community.
How it works:
Communities register by joining the Passport Network, creating their own stamp (or logo) and explaining how you can find and join them.
Citizens connect to these communities by putting their stamps in their own custom-made passports or using simple online tools to join. Your passport and the optional, online Passport Network will be your unique record of where you belong and what you do.
What good is it?
For Citizens
If you and people you meet have passports, you can share them or a visualization of your network online. This gives you a quick, meaningful way to see what interests other people and compare it to your own interests.
If you find yourself at a new cafe, event, or neighborhood — or a familiar one — you can look them up on the Passport Network and see who they’re attached to. This gives you a picture of the different communities and people that overlap where you are, and you can explore them to find new things to do, new friends, or new ideas.
For Communities
If you register on the Passport Network, you’ll won’t just get a list of people who are interested in what you do — you’ll get a whole network showing all the different communities that connect to you. You can make special offers (what we’re calling Visas), team up with other communities, or just learn about what your citizens care about and where else they go.
The Portland Passport is the culmination of Research Club's 2 years of thinking and experimenting about communities in Portland and beyond.
Our one major project for 2012, we're creating the tools for communities and projects across Portland to benefit from a pattern proven to be successful by multiple organizations.
Fun Times Ahead!
Starting with our first event on March 7, Wild Combination, Research Club will be hosting bigger and bigger events to connect the creative community of Portland to the network. We're going to host three major, interdisciplinary events comprised of some of the most amazing projects from all the many communities of makers and thinkers in Portland. We’re reaching out to the food, drink, music, art, dance, science, tech, advocacy, self publishing, and education communities to create events and experiences which combine their amazing talents to show what happens when you cross boundaries and find out what your neighbors do.
Read the abstract or watch the short introduction video to learn more.
Get involved!
We are already in the planning stages, and this is a massive project. So if you're interested, email us to find out how you can get involved.
