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Twitter Chat Transcript: No More “White Elephants”

Posted on: September 12th, 2012 by Sarah Heffern 2 Comments

I learned something interesting on last week's #builtheritage Twitter chat: So-called "white elephant" buildings are not just an issue for preservationists in the United States. Historic building advocates from Canada, the UK, and Turkey all actively participated in the conversation. Happily, everyone seemed to have as many great examples of saves as they did of buildings in need of saving.

While much of the chat centered around the planned questions, there was also an active side conversation on the language we use when we talk about hard-luck buildings, and how we might be able to do better just by changing the way we speak about them.

Case in point: Rather than call the buildings "white elephants" -- which places the blame for a building's state on the structure itself -- why not instead call them something like "buildings in need of creative solutions," which empowers a community to think differently about them.

Here are some highlights from the chat:

There were too many success stories share to include them all in the slide show above, so here are links to more of them:

And, of course, there's a full transcript available if you want the complete scoop.

Save the date: Our next chat will be Wednesday, October 3 at 4:00 EDT. We’ll be chatting about window rehab with the Preservation Green Lab.

Sarah Heffern is the social media strategist for the National Trust’s Public Affairs team. While she embraces all things online and pixel-centric, she’s also a hard-core building hugger, having fallen for preservation in a fifth grade “Built Environment” class.

Save the Date: Twitter Chat on White Elephants is September 5

Posted on: August 30th, 2012 by Sarah Heffern

The Old Naval Hospital on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, c. August 2008.

For the first 10-plus years I lived in Washington, DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood -- and for many years before I arrived -- one of our most notable landmarks, the Old Naval Hospital, sat vacant, a seemingly unfixable white elephant on Pennsylvania Avenue, SE.

Various proposals bounced around over the years, including a brief period of time when it was in contention to be rehabbed as a mayoral mansion, but nothing really came together until a few years ago when a recommendation from the neighborhood-created Old Naval Hospital Foundation for a community center was approved. And at long last, the gorgeously (and green-ly) rehabbed Hill Center opened in late 2011.

The Hill Center, c. November 2011.

This is the kind of white elephant success story every person who has ever developed a crush on derelict building dreams of. But how to make it happen? Here in DC it took a coalition of concerned citizens organizing, but every story is different.

We'll take up this topic -- saving white elephants -- in our September #builtheritage chat on Twitter. We'll talk about how to rally community and financial support (for example: tax credits), creative ways to keep white elephants vibrant while awaiting a permanent use, and more. Please join us September 5 at 4:00 EDT.

How to participate:

1. Sign in to Twitter, TweetDeck or TweetChat. We (the chat moderators) usually use TweetChat since it adds the hash tag automatically and allows for easy replies and re-tweets.

2. Follow and tweet with the hashtag #builtheritage.

3. Watch for the questions in the Q1 format. Provide answers using the A1 format, and interact with other participants using replies and retweets.

Oh, and what we mean by the Q1/A1 format is this: Questions (we usually have four per chat) are posed by the moderators as Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 about every 15 minutes. We ask that chatters reply with A1, A2, etc. to help everyone stay clear on what they’re responding to. A lot of side conversations and such still break out, but it helps keep things at least a little organized.

Hope you can join us -- it should be a terrific conversation!

[10 on Tuesday] 10 Ways Preservationists Can Manage the Social Media Time Crunch

Posted on: August 28th, 2012 by Sarah Heffern 1 Comment

If there’s one thing I hear regularly from historic sites, small preservation groups, and other people working to save places, it’s “I’d love to do social media, but I don’t have time!”

And I get that, really I do, because even though now my entire job is working with social media, that was not always the case. I’ve spent many years with Facebook, Twitter, and other channels (remember MySpace?) as sideline work, sandwiched in between other responsibilities.

So, when I say you can build and maintain an engaging social media presence with just a small window of time each day, I promise it's tried and true. Here's how:

1. Plan, plan, plan. Yes, crafting a plan can’t be accomplished in a half hour a day, but a little extra time before you get started will make daily maintenance much faster. Check out this handy 101-guide to setting up a conversation calendar -- or, here’s an infographic, if you’re more visually inclined.

2. Keep a list of resources. You may not always be able to answer questions -- or be the right person to respond -- so as part of your plan, make a quick cheat sheet of resources. I’d recommend keeping basic social info (website URL, Facebook page, Twitter handle) on hand for local and statewide preservation organizations, local government agencies involved with preservation, and your State Historic Preservation Office. If you find you’re sharing the same info -- like a tip sheet, for example -- over and over, save it somewhere you can get to it easily, like Evernote.

3. Don’t try to be everywhere. As I mentioned in my post about getting started with social a few weeks back, it’s better to have one or two strong social channels than a bunch of semi-dormant ones. This kind of focus is especially important if your time is limited.

4. Make it a habit. Because social media works best when it’s a two-way conversation, be sure to participate regularly. Even if you can only engage briefly, you’ll build a following faster if people know you’re reliable.

5. Set a timer. It can be all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole with social media, so set yourself a time limit and stick to it. You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done in even 15 concentrated minutes.

6. Talk about what you’re already doing. A lot of the resistance I hear to participating in social is around having to “create” one more thing. Don’t -- there’s no need. Social media works best when it’s immediate and real, so talk about what’s already going on. Tweet a photo of a cool building you see on the way to work and ask your followers to do the same. Share a news clipping about an ongoing project and ask your fans to share their opinions.

7. Let Google help you. Not sure how you’ll know when there’s a news clip about your work or an interesting preservation story on a local blog? Google has terrific -- and free! -- tools to make this easy. You can subscribe to blogs using Google Reader and stalk your own projects by creating Google Alerts, which you can have emailed to you or added to your Google Reader account. And Google even makes it easy to share directly to Facebook or Twitter from Reader.

8. Let your fans/friends/partners help you. Follow/friend people who are involved in projects in your community and look at what information they’re putting out. Re-tweet or share interesting things that you see, follow their hashtags for more leads, etc. And let your community talk among themselves -- keep your Facebook wall open to posts and comments from fans. We’ve found that questions often get answered a lot faster from “the peanut gallery” on our Facebook page than we can get to them.

9. Use free scheduling tools. Facebook lets you time your posts in advance, so users with limited time can pre-load their big stories, and then use the rest of their time to answer questions/engage with users. Likewise, a tool like HootSuite can be helpful for pre-scheduling tweets so your account isn’t a once-daily “data dump” as you share articles, photos, etc. in your designated time frame.

10. Make it simple for people to connect with you. It’s easy to lose enthusiasm for social media if there’s no conversation going on, and it’s easy to blame “no time to do it right” when that happens. Making it simple for people to connect with you -- by linking to your social channel(s) on your website, business cards, and email signature -- can expedite the community building that makes social fun (and useful)!

What tips about social media time management have you picked up in your travels? Share them with us in the comments!

What’s Old Is New Again: Senior Citizens Calling Their High School Home

Posted on: August 13th, 2012 by Sarah Heffern 3 Comments

For nearly a dozen years -- ever since the Bastrop, Louisiana became a Main Street community in 2000 -- the goal of finding a new use for the one-time Bastrop High School building loomed. The 1927 building had seen its last students in 1998, but its location a couple of blocks from downtown made it a key target for revitalization.

It took 10 years and 12 kinds of funding to get the project underway, but the grand opening of the Bastrop Historic High School Apartments -- a state-of-the-art senior community -- at the end of 2011 made it all worthwhile.

With many former students now as residents, the developers went out of their way to make the building new, but also familiar:

"Tenants who walk down the corridors, which were kept at the original dimensions -- 12 feet wide by 15 feet tall -- can see the old lockers they used to keep their books in. With the original doors intact, every classroom has been converted into an apartment unit, and each contains a section of the original chalkboard so residents can scribble notes to themselves. The aforementioned gym, in its unique central position in the building, has retained the stage and one side of its bleachers."

In addition to maintaining many of the historic attributes, there was also a goal of modernizing the building's systems:

"They installed the largest residential solar system in all of Louisiana on the building’s spacious roof -- 430 solar panels that generate up to 106 kilowatts of power daily.

When asked why the team decided to put in the new technology, [developer Tom] Crumley replied, 'I loved the idea of combining modern technology with a historic property. Back in the twenties when this building was built, it was state-of-the-art, and now what’s state-of-the-art is this kind of stuff.'"

Read more about this amazing transformation in the Main Street Story of the Week, Hope Rewarded in Bastrop, Louisiana.