About 1,200 ideas submitted to the What If Greenville website show Greenville residents’ notions for what could happen to make their city better. Now the site’s creators want to take their project to new cities.
Posts to whatifgreenville.com are limited to 99 characters or fewer and remain permanently in the online clearinghouse. The crowdsourced ideas range from what if Greenville “had a fashion, media and product design school downtown” to “did not add toxic sodium fluoride to the drinking water” to “had a monthly cookout where elected officials and citizens got together to break bread.”
What If Greenville has been a collaboration between Web design firm OrangeCoat, which created the site and identifies trends among posts, and civic group Greenville Forward, which disseminates that information in regular reports. Cofounder Adam Gautsch said the site helped identify momentum around the Swamp Rabbit Trail expansion before it occurred.
The What If Greenville team plans to sell similar “Imagine that…” sites and aggregation services to other cities. In the past seven months the founders have worked on a more social version of the website and are identifying organizations in other towns to disseminate findings. They are specifically targeting young professionals’ groups and organizations similar to Greenville Forward that “have the energy and the budget to get the message out,” Gautsch said. Sponsoring groups are also important because most submissions happen in conjunction with some kind of event. Many entries have come from What If Greenville kiosks at the annual TEDxGreenville conference, for instance.
A website is expected to launch in Anderson possibly next month, and the team is also reaching out to Spartanburg. As cities are added, users will be able to follow ideas in multiple locations. The goal is 200 new cities.
“There’s probably a right size that’s not too big or too small,” Gautsch said.
