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

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Permalink Reply by Liliana Santirso on May 29, 2010 at 6:31pm

Hello:

My expertise in not in IT but what you are saying seems more than reasonable.Just great. But for the Urgency,perhaps we can follow the idea of putting some money together in the mean time you have this prepared. Great and generous. Welcome

Liliana



lee0007 said:

Dear Deidre & Community Members,

Kia Ora, as some of you are aware our small team have volunteered our time over the past year to integrate social networking tools - groups forums & connecting - with a platform to help people, connect with each other based on their talents, skills and interests.

We do not charge for these tools. Instead, our social enterprise business model will enable us to support non-profit and charitable organisations though a "success fee" similar to Trade me, once we begin to connect people with paid work - i.e when we find you a local mechanic to fix your radiator or an accountant for your end of year tax return.

Like the Wackwall option we are still in Beta but better yet we are based here in Aotearoa, and would welcome everyone's input regarding future development.

I'm a member here because I share the belief that community resilience vs government dependence is the way of our future. We need people like you, and communities like Transition Towns to work with. In exchange I volunteer my talents, passion and years of web experience to provide tools that will help transform the way we all work together.

I see this time of transition as an opportunity for us to co-create a world class social enterprise. Please consider us as an option.

Kind regards,
Renee Lee
www.worknow.co.nz

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Permalink Reply by Liliana Santirso on May 29, 2010 at 6:34pm

Hi Rimu:

I have parcipated for five years in a Rsilience International Group organised in Drupal. Great. I'm not an IT person,but what our colleague says about her group will be interesting to be studied. At the time,it seems to me that the 10-20 dollars per person can keep us alive and working.

Thanks

Liliana

Rimu said:

How do people feel about chipping in $10 or so? Surely the community can raise the money.

However I share other's concerns about reliance on closed-source systems, run by foreign profit making corporations. Even if they are convenient.

I'm confident that transitiontowns.org.nz can be improved to meet most of the needs that transitionaotearoa.org.nz currently fills, and I am willing to help make that happen.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Kemp on June 11, 2010 at 11:22am

1 Pay the money to keep transitionaotearoa.org.nz online - $200 USD a year ($280 New Zealand dollars)
2. Use Facebook and Facebook's Community pages like Transition Timaru and others (in other parts of the world) are doing
3. Upgrade transitiontowns.org.nz to provide more/better social media functions. Some content may be able to be imported from the Ning site.
4. Build a new social networking web site using Wordpress’ buddypress plugin
5. Start using a different free social network creation tool, like Wackwall or one of the many others.

Hi Deirdre,

I have been following this discussion with a fair amount of interest. I work fulltime on open source projects / mostly WordPress and did the setup for http://www.greylynn2030.co.nz/ . BTW Suzanne Kendrick, Pippa Coom and ther others there do a great job on keeping that site flowing. You have a very actuve community here and making that easier is a great idea.

I'm also one of the organisers for http://wordcamp.org.nz which happens in Auckland on August 7th & 8th at Unitec campus in Mt Albert. Wordcamps are user community events for WordPress and best place to crowd source skills, idea dn energy.

Here are some thoughts.

1. Paying $ to Ning in the short term still seems like a good idea. If it was just $ that would be option a but really Ning doesn't seem to have some of the tools right and their roadmap doesn't look good for that in the longer term.

2. FB options. I'm not a fan of FB but can't ignore it and so use it as much as you can for those in your community who like it can be powerful.

3. Upgrade TT. I believe that is a Drupal project and while this can be done the effort is probably harder than it should be. Rimu and the other do a great job but have you thought about paying them the $5- 10k or so that it might take.

4. BuddyPress (BP). Because of my background in WordPress I like this idea but you still have to find people who will put in the time and energy to make it all happen. There are migration tools / however I'd say that migrating "outcome" content is higher priority than the older discussion which you can "cut & paste" or perhaps pay a fee to access archive on Ning till it doesn't matter so much.

As Wordpress has a community of 20m plus sites behind it anything that BuddyPress doesn't do now - it will and it will get better, faster because of that. Drupal also has a dedicated team behind it - however at this stage the learning curve is greater and just a smaller community.

Ultimately I believe the decision is less of a technical question than one of time & skills from a few busy and hard working people. And yes some tech options are easier than others but I see the background notes on various legal and funding alternatives do need to be addressed. So its good to see some of that discussion.

I personally love working on non-profits because of the high motivation and commitment that you all have. My bank manager doesn't share quite the same enthusiasm and so look after your Rimu's & Dimitris as they can get burned out.

Option 5. Wackwall or smilar. I would think it might be a rerun of Ning & FB

I have looked at the BP site setup by Dimitri http://transition.puha.co.nz/ but is still a bare shell and harder to evaluate. Again less of a technical issue than a time one. All implementations of BP or Wp are not the same.

Might be good for members here to look at http://pro.gigaom.com/ and http://helloecoliving.com/ to get a better idea of what is possible.

I would think a TT migration would be a good project to brainstorm at WordCampNZ as we will have some of the sharpest local NZ and some AU, US and others here.

What do you think ?

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Permalink Reply by Miles Thompson on June 11, 2010 at 11:37am

Thanks for the very well considered reply, Jason. I'd have to say I think I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say here.

One thing I would add (though not exactly sure what you stand on this):

To be clear it doesn't make sense to do *both* a buddypress site *and* a drupal site. We probably need to choose which technology we go with and then move forward.

Given the considered opinions offered by others above who've had experience with both, I think buddypress does seem like the best option. The only question is - how are we going to actually arrive at a final consensus/decision on this matter, because I'd say a decision needs to be made in order that folks can move forward again.

Jason Kemp said:

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Permalink Reply by Jason Kemp on June 11, 2010 at 11:55am

Miles you are exactly right. Someone needs to pick an option and distill the real requirements - then maybe test effort & reward against a number of scenarios. This all takes time. So maybe you are in the ballpark but more detail is needed sorting through must haves from "nice to have".

There is no doubt it could be Drupal or BuddyPress or even a vanilla WordPress with some extra's. That could be a stage 1.

Just because people are willing to help doesn't mean that the community shouldn't think about finding some seed funding to make it easier for say a team leader kind of skills and knowledge transfer to happen. That could work.

On finding people to help out - my best guess is that its easier to find them in the WP community in NZ here and now but while that is important - inside knowledge of your current tech leader isalso invaluable.

Miles Thompson said:

Thanks for the very well considered reply, Jason. I'd have to say I think I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say here.

One thing I would add (though not exactly sure what you stand on this):

To be clear it doesn't make sense to do *both* a buddypress site *and* a drupal site. We probably need to choose which technology we go with and then move forward.

Given the considered opinions offered by others above who've had experience with both, I think buddypress does seem like the best option. The only question is - how are we going to actually arrive at a final consensus/decision on this matter, because I'd say a decision needs to be made in order that folks can move forward again.

Jason Kemp said:

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Permalink Reply by Susan Krumdieck on June 17, 2010 at 12:45pm

I don't mind paying for a service that is useful and what works. Remember, there is a hefty electricity bill at the end of the line somewhere where the servers are that let y ou connect with peple by the internet. You already have a presence here. You don't want to have people loose you. I'll put in $10 to be a contributing member of the TT network.

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Permalink Reply by Rachel Roddam on July 16, 2010 at 7:36pm

I am in Tassie and have been creator and administrator of various sites for Transition and other groups.
While some of us have decided to maintain our ning sites, I am very impressed by the capability of the "Wiser Earth" sites, particularly for networking, sharing events and resources. It also links to other "like minded" groups, and even has a list of "solutions" to modern challenges.
Definitely worth checking out.
One of the limitations, I have raised frequently with Ning staff, is that events must be input seperately for each network. For Transition there would be much value in adjacent groups, or groups in different "levels" being able to easily share event posting. WE supports this.
Finally, I did find it a little daunting at first glance, but given a few cuppa's it is a very straight forward site to work with.
I do feel now that much of the hard work has been done, with content already on existing sites ready to be transferred to the new site. The big question is "Will our members follow?" and I think that once the decision is made a gentle "boot out of the nest" may be in order.
Here is a sample site I have thrown together.

http://www.wiserearth.org/group/Molesworth

A group of us in tassie assessed what demand there was for which capabilities, and came up with WE as the solution. If you would like to see our dialogue you are welcome - you may find it saves you going through the same process.

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