Article: Recommendations

Tools analysis (from survey)

Pilots:
Local and regional presence: GA
Knowledge and Networking: JW
Training: NO

Recommendations: root defintion on what is web project page

The What:

Transition Network website: BB

Sharing Engine: Daniel Harris - dahacouk

Support and education: EM, GA

Currently as at the 'what is the web project page'

Presence and networking: Portals for regional presence: GA

The main recommendation is shaping up to support the creation of more regional networks, loosely guided by the Transition East model. We need to get information about ongoing needs and costs of hosting and maintenance and possible further development.

A secondary recommendation is to point to other regional networks, (lots on Ning, any others?) and to sources of help for people who want to go down that route.

Advise for local web presence other than joining a regional website. (i.e. setting up your WordPress/Drupal/html/etc. site) How was this going to be handled? EM: development of support network and space: connection of people with specific site choice as per the outline on 'what is web project page'

Knowledge: Theme-based knowledge sharing: JW

Food theme portal: extending functionality and range and open-ness of food pilot? building standard project template and introducing them with correct social aspects (experts, projects, facilitation resources)?

Knowledge: Training marketplace: NO

currently approved by board to run as pilot for one year in partnership with School of Everything

The How:
Hosting and software for core: GM

Current requirements as well as a longer term relationship keeping the possiblity of a 'big green server' (GA) open for the future - whereby Transition Network might choose a web host, build a relationship, recommend the web host for initiatives, then grow into becoming a service (partnership) in its own right...

Core vs periphery: GM

Identity management: GM

We want to find a way for people with an id on one transition website to be able to use it to log on to others. We start from the open id principle, but need to see how this applies to the existing and proposed websites around the network.

The Who:
Relevant staff/volunteers and process requirements

News for Transition site: BB, RH, other editorial roles to highlight activity from around the network?

Facilitation for building and managing user groups in support section

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A note about the recommendations:

The recommendations of this phase of the web project are intended to provide the Transition Network board with:

•    A strategic and tactical decision making tool with which to agree a way forward for the web project
•    Enough clarity of purpose and information for a 'call for tenders' from suppliers (technical and management) to move the project into its implementation phase
•    'Ballpark' expense estimates for the different project elements; these can only be confirmed by the actual suppliers once the implementation begins in earnest

They are not intended to be detailed software specifications as was the intention at the beginning of this project phase. This is because:

1. The project scope has evolved since this phase began, introducing new unknown elements and stimulating new approaches
2. The web project will not be a finished software product as originally conceived, therefore needs to adopt a modular, prototyping, engagement approach to delivering the software which requires different tactics from traditional software processes

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Very likely recommendations (at this time, tbd after ubergeek week)

Priorities (BB):
“At some point this will become mission critical” – ie importance of taking the web project very seriously – also importance of good practice (backups…)

1. TN Site (simple, clear, not noisy, dynamic balanced with standard info)
a. Draft outline accepted as on Wiser Earth

b. Likely looking at Drupal for core functions at this point; tbd in ubergeek week

2.   Aggregator/re-syndicator: sharing engine
a.   staged recommendation working outwards from RSS (news) to events, projects, issues…
b.   will require facilitation for launch and development of standards group in support network
3.   Projects database/theme portal pilot; run as public beta
a.   open and extend food pilot to wider audience as ongoing beta (given approval by Tamzin)
b.   Relationship to support network unclear but a definite recommendation (see VSM model described earlier by GA)

4.   Support network
a.   Technically – fora/wiki/file store combination
b.   Socially – supporting de-centralised peer to peer issue resolution and good practice exchange –
i.   launch and support of different groups (platform specific, generic stuff (e.g. standards, usability, reference models for sharing engine)
ii.   e.g. Templates for swapping uploaded/shared directly between peers – focus on enabling rather than directing specific downloads for different frameworks.
c.   Launch and facilitation: needs clear plan, including contacting the survey respondents, marketing plan for engagement, newsletters etc.

d. social media surgeries (e.g. podnosh) for web comms people - regional pilots for face to face peer to peer support. Possible connection with training?

5.   LRP: pilot: run as public beta
a.   Offer up to 5 more ‘LRPs’ off Plone platform (retaining and leading platform agnosticism) – tbd after ubergeek week
b.   needs analsysis in ubergeek week – *if* we are using Drupal for core, should we use Plone for LRP?
c.   Need to consider ownership of code, quality of commenting and design, location of hosting, relationship with developer, product roadmap
d.   Possible outreach to Python community (as well as ubergeeks to find supporters)
e.   Need to support the standards outlined in the sharing engine

f. EM keen to develop longitudinal surveying for assessment as with other pilots

6.   Training pilot: run as public beta
a.   Up and running on School of Everything; year long pilot approved by board
b.   EM keen to work with Nick Osborne to develop longitudinal surveying for assessment; would like to see this across all pilots (food, LRP, training) and core (support)

7. Knowledge and Networking pilot: run as public beta (food focused)

a. linked into the Transition Network site

b. announced and marketed with a call for widest participation in and around Transition

c. EM keen to develop longitudinal surveying for assessment as with other pilots

8. Facilitation to launch and support whole thing: Community engagement/web person role

a. support for technical development

b. governance model, criteria, management communications

c. marketing and attraction - community building and engagement for launch and beyond

i. outreach to collect URLs for sharing engine

ii. outreach for pilots

iii. outreach for support network

9. Technical delivery and support: Technical deliverer (combined with self-project management with support from community engagement role)

a. refine recommendations as part of prototyping/build process

b. ...

10.   Other issues:
a.   GM: sees as one development project
b.   Identity management – open id vs other system: going to need login transfers from old site, and same login for database, support network, sharing engine, comments to news etc. All agreed to promote open id but will be a long term project element; in the meantime; need to consider login/vs not login areas for core functions
c.   URLS: going to need to retain URLs with migration
d.   Current initiative sites on wiki: need clear plan for migration or offering alternative
e.   Longer term business models: e.g. funding vs marketplace (GM’s suggestion to look at paypal equivalent)
f.   Long term surveying (?EM)
g.   Long term maintenance costs (including back ups) and staff requirements
h.   Issues around running different platforms/frameworks: pros and cons (for ubergeek week)
i.   Putting job out to tender: how to proceed?

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External findings to add in:

Forrester report just out shows our findings are in line with corporates too...:

"Despite understanding the limitations of using methods such as face-to-face meetings, email attachments and phone conference calls to collaborate, many are too unsure of, or uncomfortable with, newer technologies to rely on them....

"We believe that collaboration tools are most effective when they allow users to work in the way they want to, without requiring everyone to adopt them to be successful."

(VNUnet article)

Energy Bulletin article (thanks Pete Lipman!)

"There may well still be an internet a quarter century from now, but it will likely cost much more, reach far fewer people, and have only a limited resemblance to the free-for-all that exists today"

Clay Shirky quote from conference (thanks Steve Bridger):

"... losing control is yesterday's battle"

Clay Shirky quote from Online Information conference 2008 (from Ed):

"If someone presents one million dollar idea, suggest they take a walk around the building. And lock them out. Don't let them back in until they have 10 100,000 pound ideas; no; scrap that; 100 10,000 pound projects..."

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Research patterns high level

(from interviews, workshops, survey and web-based discussion)

1. Face to face engagement is the most important activity for initiatives

•    Not a surprise given Transition’s focus on locality
•    The web project should support this and not assume priority
•    Regional support is key to effectively supporting this pattern
•    There may be training implications

“IT structure needs to be secondary to people and overall decision making… open space needs to be reflected in IT… first decide the governance, second decide IT to support that model…” (Bristol interview)
"Frankly we are trying to build community and I just like to talk to people" (Survey)
"it’s easier when you've met that person and they are already there." (Norfolk workshop)
“the use of I.T. can be divisive within a group.” (Survey)

2. Locality and diversity is key: initiatives have different contexts and lifecycles

•    Initiatives vary in context, resources, ambition, cohesion, maturity, and more
•    There is no ‘one size fits all’ model for the web to support
•    There are plenty of contradictions in preferences toward the web

“Local personal interaction is vital to local site design” (Sydney meeting)
“I don't think anyone should be dictating what system Transition Initiatives go for individually, but its does help if they all choose for a small selection of a very good bunch.” (TT fora)
“Uniqueness of locality.. what’s right for your place…” (Norfolk meeting)

3. The web project needs to fit into local social processes

•    Initiatives’ needs change with maturity; their want of the web will follow suit
•    There are suitable tools for different activities in specific contexts when required; it is not possible to prescribe a formula in advance
•    There is a role for a web person in initiatives to support these needs
•    There is a role for a wider support network to support these needs

"… it is fine to have these tools if there are people to manage them, or it becomes the people such as me who end up managing the content when my job is to set the system up…" (survey)
“We have just started and are trying to focus on practical activities, letting the further organizational happen when a few more local people get involved.” (Survey)
"… weekly working parties at our CSA site, which involve discussion as well as digging etc" (Survey)
“Transition works very well without electronic communication by word of mouth, meetings, posters, etc, but there is a need for 'simple' coordinated web based communication.” (Survey)

4. Support is needed

•    Needs to reflect a wide (and widening!) variety of social and technical needs
•    Necessarily de-centralised and owned by the network, with facilitation
•    More needed for early groups and mullers: is this a focus for facilitation?
•    Regional in nature: connections, virtual conversations and physical meetings
•    ‘Routemap’ as a metaphor: what to use, when and why

“Best place where you can help is the list of free or inexpensive resources. That will help us increase our sustainability forces.” (Survey)
“The best ideas will come from the people on the ground but it's unlikely that local communities will have the knowledge of IT or the resources to take direct advantage of it so the platform would need to find ways of making local communities aware of what IT can do and let them suggest the best ways of using it.” (TT fora)
“A kiddy style guide to the agreed useful tools and which of them should be considered at various stages of initiative building could be handy. It's be helpful to have readily available a list of contacts in the various transition (town) initiatives” (Survey)

5. Community based networking is the most important focus:

• Transition has a focus on initiatives; not peer to peer social network style
• Personal profiling is popular for some but exclusive to others

"Transition is a community of communities" (Sydney workshop)
"A lot of our members said they do not want their names and contact details online, we will have one person's details for each working group hopefully," (Survey)
"Where do we put our names? Where do we say who we are?" (Norfolk meeting)
"We need group structures above personal blogs" (Bristol interview)

7. Process: and simplicity:

•    Web project can never be a finished product – needs evolutionary approach
•    Modular rollouts of applications embedded in a support community
•    Simplicity must be the watchword – start simple and work outwards
•    Project needs roles and governance at all levels (board to working groups)
•    Open Source technology very popular; maintenance must be easy

“Of course we start small. But unless we aim big we'll stay small. We must aim for the stars and have many steps along the way. At each step we need to produce working and usable systems. Lots of small steps. Lots of working systems. Not wait for some big bang product at the end.” (TT fora)
“And finally, my advice from doing this before is don't start out to solve everything from the word go. Start simple and add functionality organically.”
(TT fora)

8. Aggregation:

•    To support independence and diversity rather than centralise them
•    To bridge inside and ‘outside’ Transition Network
•    Will require users’ motivation but offer peer to peer de-centralisation
•    Centralisation and aggregation both carry risks: possible to try both

“A system that encourages collaboration and cross-fertilisation of ideas between groups - e.g. a newsfeed that can be embedded on a local initiative's webpage that shows what other groups are doing (inspiring, + fosters a sense of connectedness).” (Survey)
“As there are already many TT web sites (and similar, eg LCCN), aggregation of content from a wide variety of sources will probably need to play a big part in any 'global' TT web site.” (TT fora)

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Tools analysis: from survey

The following represents the analysis of the quantitative findings from the survey, run in April 2009. Full quantitative and qualitative data, as well as a full graphical analysis can be found in the appendix.

Respondents were asked to identify their current use of web tools and then rank them by importance. They were also invited to share qualitative feedback about these tools in free text fields. The web tools were classified as follows:

•    Communications
•    Online presence
•    Collaboration
•    Support

This was then cross-referenced with their ‘maturity’ (length of engagement with an initiative) to produce a sense of change over time. Thus we can see what people are using, what they think is important, and how that changes as their initiatives mature.

Included with these results are our ‘indicators and lessons’ from each section which contributed to the ‘high level patterns’ in an earlier section of this chapter.

Users

•    Average 415 replies - 10% response - excellent feedback
•    Excellent base for future launches and support (experiment: Ubergeek week)
•    Largely competent and more sophisticated (non-webbers didn’t reply!)
•    Mainly from The UK, USA, Australia
•    Majority responses from relatively mature initiatives, but a good range of younger initiatives provide balance

Communications tools:

•    Wide array of sometime contradictory use of technologies and experiences, issues, successes and failures
•    Local physical (not web) presence significantly the most used and important
•    Newsletters and mailing lists the most used and important online tools
•    With maturity: these all become more used and important
•    With maturity: online chat/teleconferencing less used and important

"Main problem is not many people get round to looking at the website and wait to hear word of mouth or via e- newsletter" (Survey)

Indicators and lessons from communications tools feedback:

•    Locality is vital to initiatives, increasingly so with maturity
•    At this time, most focus is about announcement not online engagement
•    Any web tools are best integrated into the intiatives’ social processes

Online presence tools:

•    Email lists, newsletters and simple website pages are the most used and important
•    Personal profiles least used and least important
•    Green hosting: not used much but considered important: indicator of need
•    With maturity: email lists, newsletters and website pages become more used and important
•    With maturity: calendars and file storage become more used and important
•    With maturity: personal profiles become less important

"As we progress, I am sure that web tools will become more important. We would be interested in learning from others what has worked and how." (Survey)

Indicators and lessons from online presence feedback:

•    Gradual tech adoption: online presence tools become more sophisticated with maturity. This is natural as their complexity, needs and identity and confidence grows
•    Tools provision needs to be managed and gradual in line with stage of initiative
•    Pattern of 'community of communities' and in parallel with regional/national support - need processes in regional and project focused way NOT social networking at this point.

Collaboration tools:

•    Shared documents and membership lists relatively used and important
•    With maturity: some take up with maturity but not massive

"… has a paper list, we pop round to each others houses" (Survey)

Indicators and lessons from collaboration tools feedback:

•    Local projects work face to face primarily
•    Working with new social models - need trust not wysiwyg editors
•    Sensitive issues around control and behaviour - handled best face to face
•    Document sharing doesn't necessarily need the web in this context

Support tools:

•    Not much use (there is not much formal support provision currently)
•    Most important is seen as regional, face to face and telephone support
•    With maturity: support goes up in use and down in importance

“… big help would be for guidelines, starting points, briefing specs, suggestions for SIMPLE ways of doing things so that the sense of powerlessness when an IT superstar says 'this is the best way' and you have a gut feeling that this will leave you forever running round in hi-tec circles not being able to do the simplest thing” (Survey)

Indicators and lessons from support tools feedback:

•    Personal and group networks develop over time to provide support. Mullers and early groups need more facilitation
•    Confidence appears to grow with maturity and growing resilience - is this an indicator that the model works?
•    People build their own networks locally and spiral outwards regionally
•    Significant number of related responses in qualitative input indicates that these are early days and there is need

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Conclusions for research chapter

Rolling out any web project in a network so keen on physical locality, independence, diversity and related context is very challenging. Millions of pounds have been spent on vast ambitious ‘community’ platforms trying to achieve everything with varying success; we need to monitor our ambition without dampening it.

The ‘human-ness’ of Transition needs to be honoured; the biggest emergent themes from our research are ‘face to face’ and ‘support’. It is therefore vital to retain a project focus on the social support and blended (ie online and offline) facilitation elements to help the network help itself. The ‘web’ is not only a technical phenonenom and ‘technology’ is not the only cost; the project needs to consider how to launch this new social space as well as how to support it going forward.

A centralised ‘one size fits all’ design mentality is the traditional approach for web projects, which are rooted in engineering and scientific disciplines (although change is afoot). This approach feels ‘tidy’ and ‘manageable’ (to the providers and users of the project); and is therefore tempting. We can see from our research that this would be an anathema to Transitioners, so we have a double challenge of supporting a new way of working and introducing it to a group who are largely skeptical of technology.

Given the dynamic nature of Transition and the findings from the research, the most suitable strategy will be simple, modular, diverse, shared and extendable. We will need to support pilots and experimentation alongside keen social support. The most important project element will be the people.

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Appendices

High level project plan diagram

High level 4ps diagram

Web project diagram

Learning Connections: design information

Learning Connections: design mindmap

Local and Regional presence: software specification

Survey: questions

Survey: anonymised data spreadsheet

Survey: qualitative feedback document

Survey: presentation

Quotes from the research streams

Recommendations

Access Privileges

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