<blockquote>The Civic Commons is a new way to bring communities together with conversation and emerging technology. We provide the place and tools for citizens to connect with and inform one another and to take action. It's a bit like a virtual pub or coffee house, where citizens and officials can gather to talk about community issues, brainstorm solutions, coordinate plans --  and maybe even have fun and meet new people along the way.

We take some of our inspiration from Clay Shirky’s book, Cognitive Surplus, which explores how communities of people can pool small amounts of their spare time, say 10 minutes a week,  to accomplish great things.  With this in mind, we’ve constructed our website to enable our community members to leverage their efforts into collective greatness.  Wiki-greatness, if you like.

We want to make civic involvement easy and fun, something you can do after you put the kids to bed or get home from the gym. Something you want to do as much as checking Facebook or -- checking Facebook again." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://theciviccommons.com/pages/about ">The Civic Commons</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>We'll be experimenting with ways journalism can be participatory, where those who were traditionally informed readers and writers of letters to the editor can be involved in reporting, writing and analyzing the news. That means readers can decide what stories get covered--because with the right tools and training, they can report them. Our region has some incredible citizen-led journalistic efforts going on already. The Civic Commons doesn't want to compete with any of them. We want to collaborate with all of them, bring their work to an audience across Northeast Ohio, and make the hyper-local regionally significant." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://theciviccommons.com/pages/faq">The Civic Commons</a></blockquote>