I am currently interning with the Smithsonian Gardens and we are looking for a way to virtually map out various community gardens around the nation. It would be great to model this off a similar open source program (perhaps Ushahidi?), creating an interactive map where the public could share stories of how community gardens preserve their cultural heritage. This outreach platform would allow people to engage in discussions about the relationship between community gardening and history at a national level.
Smithsonian Gardens is also expanding its social media objectives. One possible project I could work on would be to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter in getting people to the gardens. We are currently designing panels to be placed in the gardens highlighting our newest program, Let’s Move! with Smithsonian Gardens. It may be interesting to see how people are responding to weekly challenges on Facebook and Twitter by having them visit these panels and use a provided text service to respond to the questions.