If you've spent time on the Upper Valley, Norwich, Hanover, Thetford, or Hartford listserv the last two weeks, you've probably seen a post inviting you to take a news quiz put together by a group called We The People. It's an effort by two locals, Bill Miles and Kevin McCurdy, to build community engagement and civic health—by making it fun and interesting. The quiz part is mostly about things that have happened recently in the region or in those specific towns, but it also includes an opinion question: Should dogs be leashed in town? Should the old Canoe Club space become a restaurant, bookstore, or clothing store? How important is Dartmouth students' participation in Hanover town meeting?

Miles and McCurdy are both entrepreneurs—and brothers-in-law. Miles headed up Grassroots Soccer, then worked with McCurdy on building the Hanover-based consumer photo startup Picaboo, and now runs an education tech company that helps schools manage their various forms of media, including yearbooks. McCurdy's first company, which eventually became Bamboo.com, was a '90s pioneer in 360-degree imaging; he also created a digital publishing platform for magazines, before starting up Picaboo.

So... You're two weeks into this effort in public. How's it going?

Kevin: Really nicely. We had a few hundred respondents to last week’s news quiz, mostly from Hanover and Norwich, but also good numbers from Thetford and Hartford, and a smattering from other towns. And we've gotten positive feedback from people writing in and suggesting questions—there'll probably be 10 questions from users in this week's quizzes. They like the interactive format—it’s an easy way to digest the news and it gets people thinking and sharing their opinions.

Also, there's a researcher at UNH's Carsey School of public policy, the person who puts together the Civic Health Index for New Hampshire. She’s interested in what we’re doing, because they can cover the state level, but there is no data at the local level, so this might help build more understanding of the state’s health at the local level. So we’ll collaborate with them in some way, shape, or form.

I'm curious: Why are you guys doing this?

Kevin: We’re brothers-in-law, so we’re always talking about what’s going on in business and life, we've both lived in Hanover now for 10 or 12 years, and in the last few years with national turbulence in government, we started to talk more and more about what’s going on in our towns and the state. We came to realize there just isn't a very good way for us to keep informed about what’s going on, let alone share our opinions. Originally, we started thinking we might be able to do this at a national level, but we quickly realized the most value could be created at the local level: It all starts at the local level.

Bill: What’s relevant for me is that I'm an entrepreneur in the Upper Valley, I'm involved in the community through my kids and schools and sports, and I care deeply about our civic health. That’s the reason I’m spending my time on it.

Kevin: There’s so much news at the local level, the quiz gives people an easy, bite-sized way to see it. We were inspired by the New York Times weekly quiz, which is quite popular, and figured if we could do something like it at the local level, it would be a way for people to engage and fulfill a a way to build community and civic health.

I'm also curious about what you're finding with some of the questions you're asking. Like, you built off the fact that Hanover switched the date of its town meeting to July, which may have an impact on a Dartmouth student who's running for selectboard, and asked Hanover residents a question about students' involvement in town affairs.

Kevin: The question was, "How important do you think participation from Dartmouth students is at the Hanover town meeting?" And the choices were, Very Important, Important, and Not Important. It was interesting. Roughly 30 percent thought it's not important, but 45 percent thought it was important and about 25 percent said "very important." We really had no idea what people would say.

Bill: And at this point, those people are very likely not students, since everyone so far has been coming in from the listserv.

And what do people think about what should happen to the Canoe Club?

Kevin: We did that question for just Hanover and Norwich, and asked people if they thought it should be a bookstore, a restaurant, a clothing store, or if they weren't sure. Of the 136 respondents, 6 percent said a bookstore, 5 percent said a clothing store, 22 percent weren't sure... and 67 percent said a restaurant. So this week, we're asking Upper Valley-wide, "What type of restaurant do you think will do well in the Canoe Club space?"

This whole thing is evolving quite rapidly. Could you talk a bit about what you're doing, now that real people are using it?

Bill: For one thing, we've gotten a lot of suggestions for how to improve it — people want to know their score on the news quiz, for instance.

Kevin: So we've been doing the software development and hope to release it soon: It will show the reader the number of questions they got right, and their percentage score. Then also, on the "success" page, we'll show a list of every topic covered, with a link to the source publication.

The idea is that from a user standpoint, it’s a fun, interactive way to keep up to date, share your opinion, and stay informed, but we also got feedback that some users were really interested in these topics and wanted to dig deeper, so this will make it easy.

How about the answers to the opinion questions you're asking? I'd imagine all sorts of people — selectboard members, local businesspeople, curious townspeople — would want to know.

Kevin: That’s another feature set we’re thinking about developing, to publish the results. It’s more of an intense software development project for us, though, so we’ll scope that out. It probably won’t happen in the next couple weeks.