New Zealand Transition Initiatives Social Network

From oil dependence to local resilience

Deirdre Kent

This social networking site has a major decision to make about its future, please read

Transition Towns Social Network May be Moving House


Introduction

We have been informed by ning (the company that owns the transition towns social networking site we have been using for about two years now), that from July 31 we will have to pay for the ning service.

There are a number of paths we could choose at this point. Please offer your comments on this, by June 4th at the latest.

Exploring the technical options:




Some detail on the options
Keep the national Ning site and pay $200
This would mean setting up a widget on the front page of the site to attract donations up to $280NZ. Easy to do, has to be done annually, and would need to be done by July 31st. While there are cheaper options for having a ning site, their limitations would make them unworkable for our purposes. This same consideration (whether to keep or let go) is being had by a number of Transition groups around the country, who have active ning sites for their local region.

Use Facebook and their community pages
Timaru TT already uses it. Events are OK. Subgroups not possible but people connected to the main Transition Timaru group page, can be invited easily to join other groups that Timaru people want to setup as distinct group pages.

Content could not be easily imported into facebook - it would be an entirely manual process.

Facebook is extremely popular so many people already have an account and know how to use it - a very important point if we want to facilitate (make easy) the use of any social networking tool.

Can be quite busy - information overload

Some specific recommendations and guides would need to be written up, help people use this tool to advantage.

Upgrade the transitiontowns.org.nz site
Some automated content import may be possible but there could be some manual
copying over needed.

There are many social networking add-on modules that will get us 90% of the
functionality but some tidying up work may be necessary.

This web site is open source and not reliant on a profit making corporation for its existence so there will not be fees or similar problems cropping up again. Running costs still exist, but they are more under our control. Technically-minded volunteers are required to maintain the system and keep it running smoothly.


Build a new social networking site using Wordpress & the buddypress plugin.Would involve creating a whole new website. Buddypress looks promising and has nice pictures on it’s web site but it is somewhat of an unknown quanitity - we’ve never used it.

Similar to the upgrading of www.tt.org.nz (above), this is open source and not reliant on a profit making corporation.

Start using a new free social networking site
Wackwall allows importing of ning content. Still in beta. Might not be for free forever, either.


Please offer your comments on this whole discussion, by June 4th at the latest.

Tags: networking, ning, social

Views: 51

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Replies to This Discussion

Trii CadoganPermalink Reply by Trii Cadogan on May 17, 2010 at 4:10pm
Although I am on Facebook and understand very well how it works, I would fear Information Overload.
Therefore, my preference would be to Upgrade the transitiontowns.org.nz site.
mark skeldingPermalink Reply by mark skelding on May 17, 2010 at 5:12pm
Good conversation. Thames is on a Ning. I think we will stay with Ning, at least for a year. This is because we are focussed on a townwide site, and have just begun outreaching towards groups for whom the transition message is not recognised or understood. They do, however, understand events and food. So, rather than change horses so soon out of the stable, we will, I think, be sticking with Ning until we have established our community online. Then we may well be moving. If there were an alternative with the range of apps we want [marketplace; events calendar; group video conferencing; groups; appointments diary; rss links; slideshow] that worked as easily as this, we might move. We have, however, spent so much time working out how to avoid some of the irritating things others' have mentioned, and, especially, convincing people they can use it, that to shift now would be a major disappointment. We have found that it is important to have champions for different parts of the site, since leaving it to be developed by osmosis is very slow indeed.

All that said, the idea of developing the national site into a good social tool would be very good indeed, and ideal for people just about to launch into using the web this way. Facebook seems to be far too problematic. I'd suggest a slow transition for those who can afford the money,and want the range of options., and would encourage a very intentional development along the lines suggested giving plenty of time to iron out the inevitible kinks and develop really awesome functionality - in fact, I'd have thought that there was an international interest in a hot transition social networking site. Maybe there's some advantage in going global on that one!
Jamie BullPermalink Reply by Jamie Bull on May 17, 2010 at 5:32pm
I tautoko this response
Ruth MarshPermalink Reply by Ruth Marsh on May 17, 2010 at 6:00pm
HI everyone. In Bay of Islands we also use ning and will stay with that for the reasons outlined by Mark.

I don't know much about IT. However there is a wonderful organisation of amazingly talented graduates in media and design working with community groups to help them upgrade their digital media presence helping both the student gain experience and the community group learn about and have greater digital media presence. They have won many awards. It is worth having a little look at their website. http://challenge.ymedia.co.nz/
Miles ThompsonPermalink Reply by Miles Thompson on May 17, 2010 at 6:08pm
Rimu!

Let me just take this chance to say thank you so much for all your effort on that site which is an awesome effort.
Miles ThompsonPermalink Reply by Miles Thompson on May 17, 2010 at 6:49pm
Hello all,

Please don't get the impression that I'm in any way leading this discussion or anything, but I figured it would be useful to summarize (my understanding) of where we are at so far.

It seems that at least from a gut reaction perspective most people seem to favor uniting the 'transition Aotearoa' ning site (which we are using to discuss this) with the (older?) 'transitiontowns.org.nz' drupal site built by Rimu.

Nobody much likes the idea of porting ourselves into facebook.

Nicola, I guess I'm also quite excited about the idea of a more integrated site down the line but equally aware its going to be a lot of work to get there. I notice that you, Rimu and I (and some other techie folks) are all in the same city (wellington) however.. hmm interesting ? Also, there are more than a few technical people commenting on this thread around the country too.. so maybe.. maybe.. many hands make light work etc.

Rimu, very interested to hear your thoughts about the idea of creating a ning-replacement on top of drupal/on top of the existing tt.org.nz site? Does it seem like an awfully big project to you? if so, what are the main ways we can make it more manageable?

Ruth, the link about ymedia is very awesome. Looks like we should definitely have someone apply to that - on behalf of transition towns Aotearoa as a 'non profit' that they might build a website for. Deidre, maybe you or James or someone should do that? (here )

I guess, technically the project would be basically be just to build us a replacement for this site here, hopefully also incorporating the work on transitiontowns.org.nz.. Looks like it would be awesome to get set up on that soon. Don't want to get into a religious war but it might be possible to incorporate/leverage existing social media stuff like google buzz, or twitter, or yes, maybe facebook, whilst still making a 'home' for ourselves on a different site..?

lee0007 your offer of help from the time_trade folks is also really interesting. Any ideas how you could see that work? Also/perhaps related I wonder if you folks familiar with Drupal and/or PHP? (As for me, unfortunately I've not used php for quite a while - but I guess I can't claim total ignorance ;-)

Coactivate http://www.coactivate.org/about as mentioned by Tim also looks pretty interesting. For what its worth CoActivate is 'powered by' openCore which is a Plone based CMS.. Not sure I fully understand how that all would work for us in terms of getting off of ning/what would be required.

FWIW It seems that quite a lot of other transition sites are also here on ning, are stuck with the same problem and on the whole most (or at least some) of them seem keen to just stay put for now. As noted below the actual migration off of ning is *not* going to be a very pleasant experience..

--

My own thoughts..

Worth making very clear that, technically there are going to be a lot of issues with exporting data. ning does make it possible to export the member list, but that is a pretty minimal set of data - it doesn't include things like passwords (so people would have to re-register) profile pictures, lists of who has 'friended' who. And that is just the member list, the actual content is another more difficult issue, all the pages with discussions and content to date are other real issues. I'm guessing that the most manageable option would be to put a button on this site, that, when people click it, it helps to register them on the new site (and take as much data as possibel across with them), but you'd lose a lot of info and discussions no matter matter how you do it. It's going to be a pretty painful transition (in terms of confused users and lost data, however) no matter how you cut it.

To be clear I don't think the support for 'importing' your ning content into Wackwall, is not going to be a whole lot better than the options for exporting/importing from ning into a range of other systems. for example for drupal.. http://www.funnymonkey.com/migrating-from-ning-to-drupal . Even if you went with wackwall people would still have to re-create a lot of content and re-register themselves, etc
RimuPermalink Reply by Rimu on May 17, 2010 at 7:13pm
Thanks for that summary

It depends on what people think of when they say "Ning replacement". Some people will have quite high expectations there, while with others all they think of is groups with discussions in them and a photo next to each person's name. ;)

Basic functionality can be had with an afternoon's work - install a bunch of relevant modules and then configure their settings. After that, tidying up and integrating things nicely can take as long as a piece of string :) I think it would be a matter of finding out what was most important to people, what was least important and then starting at the top. Over time, things get better and better

On data migration: Yes it's likely to be messy, at best. All the more reason to get out and stay out of walled gardens. But data migration does not overly concern me, as much content in social networks is transient - it's relevant and important at the time, but once it's over it's over and there's no need to come back to it ever again. If everyone who did care about old content were to manually copy the things they find important then the task might be crowd-sourced nicely... Copy+Paste is not especially technically challenging so it can be done by everyone.

People migration is the main hurdle! Everyone will be a bit confused for a while and will need to adjust to new ways of doing things
Ron SperberPermalink Reply by Ron Sperber on May 17, 2010 at 8:02pm
No to Facebook
No to Ning - never liked it

Yay to transitiontowns.org.nz

If we apply what TT is all about to IT then an open source website built by the people for the people is the logical conclusion. It's been great being able to experiment with "free" stuff (which always has a price of some kind).
We have the skill, ingenuity and even financial resources between us to make transitiontowns.org.nz work.

Our website should walk the talk, plain and simple. Thanks to those who offered alternatives, and let's strengthen the ties and support each other, but TT Aotearoa needs to stand on its own legs. IMHO.
Helen MarshPermalink Reply by Helen Marsh on May 17, 2010 at 8:12pm
I have found Ning less user-friendly than any other internet social or activism networking I have used.
Deirdre KentPermalink Reply by Deirdre Kent on May 17, 2010 at 8:59pm
Great summary by Miles.

My thoughts are related to what Rimu just said If everyone who did care about old content were to manually copy the things they find important then the task might be crowd-sourced nicely... Copy+Paste is not especially technically challenging so it can be done by everyone.

So before we go much further in this discussion, let's look carefully at the ning site and look at groups for a start. Some are small local groups started but not used much. Maybe they went off and started a ning of their own, or another website. But some are active.

There is a group called Transport to the Ecoshow, served its purpose, no longer needed. I wonder if anyone would scream if I deleted it?

I suggest that all the creators of a group look carefully at what is happening or not happening on it. Each creator of a group could work with the members to decide what needs to be retained and what can be discarded.

Discussions are another issue...
Jay RobinsonPermalink Reply by Jay Robinson on May 17, 2010 at 9:40pm
I would support Renee Lee's social networking efforts. At least we need to compare it in the same manner as the others.

Barring that, I could go for integrating the two current TT sites in NZ into one (thanks Rimu for your previous work as well as your offer here).

I am not a Facebook fan, decidedly for the reasons others have noted here.

best,
Jay
Joel HildebrandtPermalink Reply by Joel Hildebrandt on May 17, 2010 at 10:57pm
I don't think we should pay for the Ning (where would the $$ come from?) and I don't do Facebook. So I prefer one of the other options.
However, I don't use it a lot so I'm happy to go with what others think.
Joel

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