American Express Partners in Preservation

"Launch days" are always filled with a strange mix of excitement, joy, relief, exhaustion, and - sometimes - a little bit of last minute panic. 

But in the end, as that project that you've worked on for many months goes from being seen only by a small group of people to finally, the general public, the satisfaction that you feel as a team makes it all worthwhile.

My favorite days at electricArtists are launch days.

Today, I'm pleased and excited to announce the launch of the 2007 "Chicagoland Initiative" of the American Express Partners in Preservation program.

Starting today, residents of the Chicagoland community are invited to go to PartnersInPreservation.com where their votes will help determine how American Express distributes a grant of $1 million to help preserve and protect local historic landmarks in and around Chicago.

On the Partners In Preservation site you can learn more about Chicago’s most meaningful local locations,  and also contribute your own stories, remembrances, and photos of those locations. By voting on the site, it will be the Chicago community that ultimately chooses the winning historic site from a list of contenders.

When we helped launch the Partners in Preservation program last year, it immediately became one of my favorite projects in the ten year history of electricArtists.  For me, Partners In Preservation is extremely significant in that it signals an important shift in how large corporations are using the web and technology. 

With projects like Partners In Preservation and Members Project from American Express, and Ideastorm from Dell Computers, we are starting to see how large corporations are now involving their customers and democratizing their decision making, while at the same time, using technology to engage the broader community of customers and prospects in a fun and interactive way.

If you're not yet familiar with the Partners in Preservation program, I encourage all of you to head over to  www.partnersinpreservation.com and check it out.

Be sure to let me know what you think.

Comments

[how2]

whats great here marc and with what you all have been doing that i love
is the level of participation meaning it is not just "intereactive" web 2.0 work but takes the product or subject and involves the users with the real world
in this case it is so awesome that more people might go to the open houses - to the actual places - get touched by the needs of the community and become engaged with the project beyond just clicking a yea or neh vote on another website

same with the travel tools there is a real world connection to the tools

yes yes bro
nice
my only question is
it might sound impressive but really how far can a million bucks go in doing preservation these days
ugh

[Marc Schiller]

Howard - Thanks for the terrific comments. Completely agree with you. In terms of the millions dollars, it's funny. At first I thought the same thing. But what American Express is doing is actually tapping into local locations that people are connected with, not big huge projects that need massive funding. For example, it could be a lighthouse who's light no longer works. Or an old movie theater who's classic neon sign is out. These are the things that need preservation on a local level. It's not about one big grant. For so many places, an extra $50,000 can be a huge difference. Amex is tapping into these passion points that are very localized. So on this level, the million dollars is better then 20 million. As 20 million wouldn't fit the tonality of the project. The money would overshadow everything else.