Why a Kinder Maplewood Community Forum?

Although the reality tv business model may attract and even increase viewership, we decided that the type of community dialogue that we are interested in developing is one of spirit making rather than spirit breaking.  When Engage Maplewood initially surveyed over 300 individuals we found that approximately 68% of those surveyed found out what was going on in Maplewood by reading Maplewoodonline.  After reading and engaging on Maplewoodonline, we felt that it may be beneficial to try a different way of communicating on line.

So, here is the Engage Maplewood blog.  If you're interested in watching a personal attack, questionable behavior or basically a train wreck within this community, you won't find it here.  Here we hope to discuss current developments and issues without attacking the individuals. Yeah, agreeing with each other sounds pretty boring these days, however, this blog is not intended so that we all need to agree.  There has been disagreements between the founding members of EM, and between the members of our core crowd yet overall the dialogue has been interesting and productive.  We've been able to reaquaint with old familiar faces and make some new friends as well.  And we've recommitted ourselves to being active participants of this great community.  

As a matter of fact those of us who have joined Engage Maplewood are proud of this inclusive and diverse community and welcome differences of opinion from which we can learn from each other.  So please feel free to add your comments.  We are hoping that if we can create a dialogue within this blog, that we can then entertain the possibility of expanding to a more expanded online chat.  Engage Maplewood hopes you will find value, inspiration and community spirit in these posts.

The Engage Maplewood survey also told us that most people do not go to meetings, want yo search through websites or still have local newspaper subscriptions so for now, this appears to be the best way for us to try and help make this amazing place even more amazing.