create many local nings?

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Permalink Reply by Hirini R on August 23, 2008 at 2:55pm

Kia ora Rimu
Yeah localised sites are OK. Though I cannot see the problem with having a one stopshop ning like this one. Just use the localised links. There are numerous transition town groups already linked to this site. Why I like this central site? It keeps me informed of broader happenings, new faces, strategic issues etc. Not just in my local area. If the shit hits the fan as you allude to then I have my whanau, iwi, marae, friends and local networks already in place. I dont to need a ning for that. That is a different kaupapa. Some people are already starting up their own nings. Only one or two members. Not much happening in some of them

Just my thoughts

Hirini

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Permalink Reply by Laura too on August 23, 2008 at 6:00pm

Whangarei has started their own ning right from the start.

We have a Hub group in Whangarei and the first local group on the Tutukaka Coast. It is envisaged that all the groups that form out of the cluster group meetings on the public events will eventually post their minutes and findings, strategies, working bees etc. on the Whangarei ning. That way we can all keep in contact and can also see what is happening where in the district.

The general ning here is a great way to share ideas which will be of value NZ wide - how do I grow potatoes for example - so that I actually get more out than I put in.
Or I would be very interested to see a little write up about the skype tuition thats going on about how to let journalists, councils etc know what we are doing. Since not everybody is skyping just yet (and many haven't even got internet access), it would be good to post these things as well here on the NZwide ning.

What do others think?

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Permalink Reply by Johanna Knox on August 31, 2008 at 8:32am

HI Rimu - I quite like that idea. I do like the centralised ning site at the moment, for seeing what other people are thinking and doing around NZ, but I can see value in localised ning sites, especially in the long term.

The groups here are good, but, as far as I can see, don't provide the full range of social networking features that an entire ning site does - so I don't think just a group on the main site aids social networking in a *local* community as well as an entire site would.

From my perspective, there are two ways that I think social networking will continue to be valuable to me as we move into the future:

1. With a wide range of people in my immediate geographical area.

2. With people who I share very specific interests with, scattered across a much wider geographical area.
(I don't want to stop networking with people around the country - and the world - that I share specific interests with until I'm absolutely forced to. There are too many valuable ideas and bodies of knowledge out there that I want to learn about.)

I can imagine this central ning site - and its groups - as being really useful for No 2.

But for No 1 - the local stuff - which is perhaps often more personal than ideas-based, I would be all for a separate ning site. (Until the plug gets pulled on us all ...!)

Johanna

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Permalink Reply by Deirdre Kent on September 5, 2008 at 4:17pm

I have just been to a Wellington conference called Engaging Your Community where I was used as a speaker illustrating the use of ning. Other speakers mentioned it too and it transpired that they discovered it either from ours or from this site created by Megan Hosking of Intersect after she had joined ours and seen its potential. At the conference there was great interest in social networking with talk of the significance of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Ning and Linkedin for both community groups and corporates. They also predicted more social network sites will emerge...

I believe we as a movement have a very unusual combination of two excellent tools, a ning and a drupal. We just need to get them doing what they do best and not cause confusion.

However in the context of Transition Towns I can envisage using ning locally. It would be a great thing to have met someone online before face to face because you sort of get a headstart in the relationship. Also you can choose from being online which ones you are going to search out when you get the face to face opportunity.

I also think there is huge scope for using Skype conference calls for local groups, especially when accompanied by a "public chat" which stays open and is ongoing. I did a 15 minute presentation of this live with a big screen at the conference and Les Squires has managed to teach a lot of us how to do it. It will be better when our broadband is more reliable in NZ of course.

Meanwhile we can probably grow our own social network here and get it to work even better. There must be groups on Facebook on climate change, and plenty of other online people who could benefit from joining ours.

I think we can use the friend of a friend of a friend function better. I know I am not using it enough myself and that is one strength of a social networking site.

I agree with Johanna that it is good to have a nation-wide social network and certainly don't want to stop until i am forced to. There is so much expertese here and a search on a topic usually brings good results.

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Permalink Reply by paul bruce on September 17, 2008 at 7:59pm

Hi Rimu,

I was wondering if we could use a Wellington based ning for our "Pathways to Resilient Communities"
instead of creating a new website?

WIll have a try.... but you might have some suggestions.

regards
Paul Bruce

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Permalink Reply by Rimu on September 17, 2008 at 9:56pm

Go to http://www.ning.com/ and follow your nose :-)

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Permalink Reply by SeanK on September 20, 2008 at 9:11pm

My view is that the Internet in general is good for maintaining a virtual network of people for the purposes of sharing information, thus your point about strangers from far away being of little use when travel becomes difficult is not one I can agree with.

IMHO, sustainability is a matter of scale. Although fundamentally local (the main premise behind TT is that most global systems aren't sustainable), some things happen at varying levels of scale, if that makes sense. For example: I can compost most of what I need within the boundaries of my property, but I probably can't provide all of my food needs on the size of section I have - that takes a bigger boundary (although it's still best to be "local"). I can socially interact with the people within my property (my family) but this isn't really sustainable either - we need to have social contact with people from further afield as well. Over time as travel becomes more difficult this will increase in importance - if things are really bad, we might see our close friends in Tauranga very seldom, whereas now it's achievable to see them more frequently, I can't be employed within my property (although there's plenty of work to do!), and currently can't easily be employed in my suburb - employment requires a boundary that includes the Auckland CBD, and my customers are from further afield yet. Much of our work to advance sustainability consists of shrinking these boundaries for our key life processes.

These are all physical processes, though, so more vulnerable to relocalisation triggered by peak oil. The Internet is inherently less so. In a Olduvai scenario where the grid fails, a lot of stuff won't work, sure; but it's intrinsically more resilient, so maybe we might get the service level of a third-world power grid: intermittent but still functional. So, someone in Kinsale, or Otaki, or Invercargill or wherever could be very helpful over the Internet - in fact, the Kinsale people and others already have been! The weightless economy might be just so much b.s. but we can still use the Internet to communicate effectively over long-distance.

In any event, the idea of separate nings or other sites is not that huge a difference to me - everything on the net is one hop away, so clicking on a link for a local group on a central site is the same as clicking on a bookmark for a separate site. Ignoring a group you're not interested in is as easy as not visiting a site for the same group. Multiple nings to me would be a bad thing because it would just dilute the community - it's tough enough at present having the ning site, the org site, and sometimes other options like Google groups as well. The internet is all about critical mass, after all... Perhaps having lots of people signing up and getting on board with the central TT ideas is more valuable than the minor distraction of having some groups to ignore?

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Permalink Reply by Simon Tegg on October 12, 2008 at 10:03pm

Hi Paul,

The John Boyd (military strategist) conference is on right now. As it happens Resilient Communities will be one of the key topic. Also as it happens, they have a ning site.

Simon

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Permalink Reply by Deirdre Kent on October 12, 2008 at 10:31pm

Thanks for posting this Simon. Intriguing. All sorts are using ning sites these days. We have Australian Transition Towns starting up soon. And Colorado and South Africa already linked up here I think. It is ideal for developing community locally and as Rimu has suggested can be done easily. Our local group may approach lots of prominent local people with a view to getting them to endorse this before we start one for Otaki. We are going to need all the tools for community building we can muster for the rough times ahead of us. Who knows what the sharemarket will deal to us all next week...They are so easy to use these sites.

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