[Imc-alternatives] questions about indy-alt implementation

[Jay]

Hi,

At 12/29/2008, john duda wrote:
>On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 12:54:50PM -0500, Jay wrote:
>
> > -- "Network" which is our "social justice networking" area where
> > individuals and organizations will have profiles and use tools we
> > provide to organize their own projects and collaborate with each other.
>
>it would be helpful to know what these tools are.

We haven't fleshed out a detailed list because in discussions I think 
we've always talked about those features being something that would 
have to come in the future.  If pinning them down sooner is helpful 
I'm all for it.

For organizations we've talked about tools that would enable them to 
use the alternatives site as a potential home base. The word that has 
come up time and again is USEFUL.  We want the alternatives site to 
be useful for organizations in a day-to-day functional way.  Some of 
these features may be in the distant future, but the general idea is 
to give organizations tools that would both allow them to 
both  communicate with the public -- a profile page, a friends list 
(co-conspirators :), a way to allow people to sign up for updates 
(either frequent "this is what we're doing at this moment" updates or 
something like a weekly newsletter), a calendar, a basic blog, open 
forums about their issues, etc. -- and ways to communicate 
internally.  The internal functions could include wiki pages to allow 
them to collaborate on projects and post meeting minutes, non-public 
forum spaces for discussion about internal decisions, 
decision-making/vote tracking software that would enable them to come 
to on-line decisions (does this exist?  maybe we've just dreamed it) 
and anything else an organization may need to help it stay internally 
organized.

A lot of these functions exist across a variety of sites, so maybe 
one way we could operate, rather than reinventing everything, (I'm 
just thinking aloud here) would be to come up with a way to enable 
organiations to use their alternatives-imc home page as a way to 
organize their information -- their riseup e-mail lists, their 
radicalendars, their google docs, their facebook updates, their 
google spreadsheets.... I have no idea if this is possible.. 
certainly more so with open source or open-sourcey sites.  Still, the 
goal will be to have the alternatives site be useful for 
organizations, rather than reinvent anything.  We should aim to 
provide or aggregate functional tools in service of the day to day 
work these organizaitons need to do to be successful.

For individuals we should provide a chance to open their own profile 
pages with information about their interests and the work they do, as 
well as ways to link to friends and network with them based upon 
shared work.  The word useful applies here too, though with a little 
fun added in for good measure.   I don't know exactly what that means 
in function.  We'd have to find some way to strike a balance.

I certainly don't think the Alternatives site should aim to be a 
place for activists to do their primary social networking...let 
people tell all their friends where they're going for dinner on 
Twitter or go on Facebook to yak about their favorite types of 
cheese.  I do think we should try to become a place where 
organizations and individuals working in worldchanging projects want 
to have a presence in order to join in this particular community of 
activists.  Sort of like each band nowadays really has to have a 
presence on myspace.  Myspace is useful for bands because they can 
post their music and their tour schedules and communicate with their 
fans.  The Alternatives site should be useful for organizations and 
individuals in a similarly functional and therefore indisepensable way.

Does this make sense?  It's ambitious and of course may not 
work.  But maybe it will.


> > Because of the way he categorized it (and maybe, if we add an
> > opportunity to tag articles, depending on the tags he chooses), the
> > article page would also offer links to News articles on the site
> > about Solar power, articles in the Knowledge-base offering
> > step-by-step instructions for building DIY solar projects, and to
> > profie pages of individuals and organizations from the Network
> > section who do solar work.
>
>ok, there's definitely going to be tagging. in fact, i just added
>tagging to the site.  still need to make the related content show up,
>but it's a start.

Tags.  Yes, definitely, tags.  The 12 topics/categories we've chosen 
will give the information some editorial structure, but tags will 
enable the articles to connect to each other in more satisfying and 
specific ways.


> >
> > >do we want
> > >these pieces to be "structured", i.e. more like books with chapters,
> > >or just plain flat articles?
> >
> > Hmm.  I say we should steal liberally from the structure of WikiHow,
> > Instructables and other similar things.  Whatever works for them,
> > that's what we should do.
> >
>
>hmmm...wikihow's editing interface is kind of intense.  i like the
>structure of steps and warnings, but somehow it just seems like a
>wikimedia hack.  i don't think users should see the syntax...just add
>steps.  i'll play around with this and see what i can do.

Great.  Obviously we don't need to be wedded to any way anyone else 
does anything.  We should take the good, drop the bad and come up 
with something as straigtforward and functional as possible.

> >
> > The idea of what actually will appear on the "network wire" is still
> > a bit fuzzy, but I think it would inculde a list of the most recent
> > or most recently updated profiles, and maybe posts from forums or
> > from an eventual "wants/needs" section (sort of like a
> > craigslist/classifieds section for alternatives projects).  I like
> > the idea of the smiling faces of the most recent people who have
> > posted profiles appearing on the main page as well as on the 
> networking page.
> >
>
>so basically, what we're starting with here is user profiles.

That's the first building block, definitely.

>  we can
>offer blogs and forums here as well, but maybe we should also ask
>user/orgs for an existing blog url feed, and we can grab content they
>are posting elsewhere.

Right on.  We're thinking along the same lines.  There's no reason to 
force everyone to drop their current way of communicating to use 
something we create.  My sense is that lots of small organizations 
find tools useful across many different sites in a way that's kind of 
scattered and overwhelming.  Our goal is not to build a proprietary 
Alternatives IMC empire, but to enable activists to more effectively 
change the world.  If a group doesn't blog and if they think that 
will be important for them we could provide them with a way to do it, 
but if they already blog in one place, have mailing lists in another, 
have forums on another...maybe we could give them a way to build a 
home base on our site that enables them to make sense of the way they 
connect with the world.  Again, just thinking about what would be 
most useful.

>it would be definitely cool to have the organic groups here, so you
>could do things like make a network of infoshops part of the
>alternatives imc.

Yes!

>also, maps! lots of maps!

Many maps.  Maps and maps and more maps.  Maps of maps of maps.

Jay


>-john
>
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