Art of Harvesting
Moving from Conversation to Collective Meaning Making
Sharing the harvests and practices of our collective meaning-making that help to make the results of shared experiences useful and sustainable.
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Jan 29, 2008
Updated: Jul 30, 2009
Membership: Member Referral
Semi-Private
Pilots' feedback
Access Privileges
The Pilot page to gather feedback from the pilots
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The two pilots we are assessing with links:
1. Knowledge and Networking (food projects)
2. Local and Regional Presence(East Anglia, UK)
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We need people to try these websites - it won't hurt we promise, and we want you to break them!
All you need to do is add your name below (click on 'edit this page' just above this text), and go and visit the websites (as listed above, one requires a login which you get at the site), play with them for a bit, then Melissa may interview you. Can't be that bad, can it now?
Please add your name here if you can help with testing the pilots (requires no technical expertise at all - the less the better.
If you have any problems or questions, get in touch with Ed
Please add your name here...
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Interviews status:
@melissaw kindly agreed to conduct some interviews
Needed:
- 1 or 2 or 500 interviews with pilot users to ascertain whether the pilot met their expectations from a knowledge perspective
Knowledge and Networking questions:
- are you technical?
- did it help them find what they were looking for?
- was it easy to put stuff in?
- was it easy to find?
- does it represent enough indepth 'knowledge' to represent the project?
- does it represent a wide enough range of 'knowledge'?
- did it encourage them to contact the project representative?
- what were they thinking while they read it?
- How could it be improved?
- Maybe also for Uploaders:
- Could you get all the important aspects of your projects into the categories/boxes provided ?
- Are there any other categories/boxes which would have helped ?
- Are any of the categories/boxes which you didn't use or found inappropriate ?
- Did pull-down menus help ?
- For Searchers:
- Did you use the search facility, or just scan the list of projects ?
- Did you search by project type, or by region, or what ?
- Did you use the tags/keywords to search ?
An interesting piece by Dave Snowden on rendering knowledge
Local and regional questions:
- Was the platform easy to use?
- Did you use it?
- What for?
- Did it offer you a good balance of tools to support your initiative?
- Did you use the support network?
- Did you need any support?
- Did your members use it?
- How could it be improved?
Training questions:
- Was the platform easy to use?
- Did you use it?
- What for?
- Did you need any help?
- Did you find anyone to train or be trained in your area?
- How could it be improved?
- Can you tell me one incidence of you using it?
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Pilot user feedback: Please add the feedback below:
Ed Mitchell: Food pilot: contact emails are visible - will this make them likely to be trawled by spam bots and sent loads of spam or are they masked in some way?
Comments (1 - 20 of 22)
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community of communities
Only the person who uploaded info on the food pilot can edit it. This undermines collaboration and sharing of responsibility, and promotes a sense of individual ownership of the project.
Using individual emails as the contact for each project may inhibit people from asking for help. I would suggest using a group email instead/as well.This would also be less likely to become out of date, and would reduce the pressure on a busy person's inbox. It would also promote the sense of group-group interaction.
On the same subject, though not connected with the food pilot, would a system of 'twinning' initiatives be a good idea (is this the transition 'buddy' idea mentioned in the survey? If so, sorry) While the reality of diversity is wonderful and exciting, my exchange with Sandi on the '(social) requirements' forum shows that sometimes a big difference in social context can make it hard to communicate fruitfully. At the same time it is clear from the TT forum that initiatives working in similar communities face similar challenges and have much to share. This is partly answered by the developemnt of regional hubs and eg the 'cities' in transition, but could be taken much further.
(hope this makes sense - I was much more coherent an hour ago before I lost my original post! |
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folksonomies
while tagging info will doubtless be second nature to web users in 5 years' time, I think many people are not yet aware of this and may ignore it which would compromise both the search facility and the aggregation tools - would a support page introducing the idea and giving examples be a good idea? |
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knowledge and networking
categorising projects by what stage they are at would:
John Croft's Dragon Dreaming would be a lovely way of communicating thsi (dreaming through to celebrating) |
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@honore - I was using this page. The message took a while to write, and I was repeatedly referring back to the food pilot site while writing. I can't remember if I had other WE tabs open but quite possibly. I have a feeling I was having to relog in repeatedly while reading through various pages but assumed I had accidentally logged out by closing tabs.
@Josiah - thanks I'll have a look (later - have seedlings to deal with!)
@upperholme - thanks for that, am checking details with our food project queen and will hopefully upload later, if not I'll make it up if that's OK. Have been playing with the forum and have posted comments there, as I'm sure you are aware!
@Ed - am reading through links - brilliant thanks, and will keep throwing it all back at you all! watch out! |
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Melissa, and others - I've relaxed some of the permissions at http://transitionfood.org.uk so any logged in user can have a go at creating a case study/project. Probably better if detailed comments are posted on that site's forum, but not critical from my perspective. |
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@MelissaW: I hope you guys don't mind me chiming in here, very curious about this logging out issue. By any chance, do you remember what pages you were on? Were you using multiple tabs in your browser to access WiserEarth? There must be some particular way that you and Bowo are using the site that brings about this issue, as it seems pretty uncommon. Still, I'd love to find out more about it and resolve it immediately.
@Edmittance: Likely what we'll do is disable the use of the flash upload meter if it's continuing to cause you issues. We're doing a rather massive infrastructure upgrade right now, which will hopefully be rolled out in by the end of May. That may help out quite a bit with these issues that users run across on WiserEarth, as it'll certainly improve the performance and stability of the website. |
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@MelissaW: I've set up a few pages on Transition East to start gathering answers to the questions posed above: http://transitioneast.net/site-usability-discussion as there are users there who aren't signed-up here, I've also suggested that people can volunteer to be interviewed by you - have a look and see if you're happy with this.
Josiah |
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@MelissaW: I'm checking in with our tech team about the "accidental logged-out" thing. I actually am experiencing the same problem myself. Sorry for that!
@Upperholme: That's very strange.... never heard of such problem before. Although a bit silly to ask, were you sure you clicked the Post Comment button? Can you share info on your broswser, version and OS? I'm reporting this to our tech team too. |
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Hmm. I posted a response here yesterday, which seems to have been lost. I'll come back later and see if I can't rewrite that. Thanks to WE (not).
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@MelissaW - WE been a bit funny today; I was trying to re-upload the survey presentation with new graphs and it was a bit weird...
re: online faciliation - good! the recommendations to the board will be a *socio* technical proposal rather than a straight website spec (where it began) as building big monolithic centralised websites (and their empty social networking spaces waiting for people to join up and 'engage') doesn't really go that far; people are the vital ingredient.
a significant part of the implementation phase (that is after the recommendations) is likely to be 'how to go about co-creating a social space for support for the Transition network using (x) technology)... for example, the survey has generated a set of excellent responses from interested people who want to help out - we have our first pioneers! Also it generated a set of responses from the ubergeeks who we are hoping will join us to do some focused brainstorming over the next couple of weeks).
if you fancy some reading, I keep links here: http://www.delicious.com/edmittance/facilitation ... |
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just lost my thoughtful reply (asked to sign in again even though I was definitely signed in before - is it a bug?) anyway here is what I think I said:
@ Edmittance - all points taken.
re owngrown - I posted the link after reading Clare's thoughts on the Ning group. The owngrown site is a shell developed over a weekend sci camp, hence its emptiness. From what I understand proposals for techno solutions to social problems are submitted to a panel, those chosen are worked on intensively by sicamp members, then either taken forward by proposor (or whoever) or not. In this case apparently not which is why it is left hanging like a fat ripe plum for someone to pick it!
fyi, facilitating something like this is exactly the sort of thing I want to develop skills in - trying to build a life where I float between my computer and garden...
@upperholme: food pilot site
Wow! has someone been working hard or did I have trouble uploading last time? It looks loads better and is much more pleasant to use today! Some points:
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@macrocosm - I know you were, and part of the report will include the time and resources taken to deliver the pilots; food (drupal powered database for projects), local and regional presence (plone powered regionally modelled groups), training (school of everything powered partnership). I see that garyalex has replied to you.
@MelissaW - you can see the high level design for the food project pilot outlined in the 'web project definition' page and more detail of how it came about on the 'knowledge and networking' page. It is deliberately simple and focused on the 'projects' element of 'knowledge' after interviews and workshops indicated that it would be more suitable to start with a focus on the group aspects of 'knowledge' in Transition (as opposed to the individual aspects of knowledge) - as Transition is a 'community of communities' (rather than a 'community of individuals'), with a clear focus on the immediate physical communities rather than an international social networking service... (bit long winded sorry!). It is behind a login as we are sharing information which is about to be published, so we need to bear that in mind.
We will throw the doors open in the future for the 'come and populate the database' approach as you identify, and this will be part of the implementation plan (along with quite possibly prizes as you say!); just wasn't possible for the pilot - so we figured it was better to try the software out with what we had in the time given and widen as we go :)
I had a look at the owngrown site; it looks like a great idea (and similar to Clare Milne's re-localising food work) but also a bit like an empty space right now (a big risk when setting up new social networks is that the remain hollow and need endless facilitation) - am I missing something? I will ask the sicamp crowd what's up with this and see if we can't find a contact point... |
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@upperholme Thanks for that. I don't mind for myself about the delay getting approval, but I would imagine that it will make a lot of work for you, and disencourage testers from proceeding within the very tight timescale if you have to manually approve every visitor (especially given Ed's optimism re 500 users!) Is it wise to use information you want to control access to for a pilot testing usability for the general public? Personally I would have offered a small prize for the first so many initiatives to upload a project and opened it up to the network as a whole rather than risk the effectiveness of the pilot by limiting access, (or risk compromising the research material) but perhaps that's just my Cassandra complex rearing its whingey head!
Another advantage of multiple contributors is that it would feel more dynamic and exciting if there were multiple voices in the projects - people would communicate their own excitement directly. Anyway fingers crossed you do manage to open it up for both perusal and contribution as the pilot proceeds (am I right that there are just 3 weeks before you want to report findings?) would it be possible to direct access through eg wiserearth? - that way you could monitor who was accessing the site without having to personally gatekeep.
other points:
Re contacting project 'owners' in the context of burn out discussions on the wiki forum, if I were a contact I would much prefer to respond to queries via the site rather than dealing with individual emails.
Would it be possible to indicate on the welcome page the current 'liveness' of the site so that others can avoid wasting time trying out disabled features?
Is there a difference in focus between 'case studies' and the projects searched? If so could the casestudies be introduced so we know why they were selected? If not can the language be more consistent?
There are some floating buttons etc on the forum page, esp where Ed has used an avatar (I'm using firefox).There is some alienating language (create content; vocabularies, and whatever it says on the 'body' button when you try to post to the forum) Also frustrating that 'create content' takes you to the forum rather than to a form to add a project. Also unecessary to define what a thread is on a forum - this annoyed me!
I went back to the owngrown site and found a link to a drupal developer (www.mulpo.com), so either I misremembered or there are 2 developers, don't have time to explore now. I did however email the drupal developer saying we were discussing the site here and gave the link.
Finally I tried to track down James Lewis with little success, unless he is known as Jim Lewis and is either discussing php v aps (or something (!?) or has contrubuted to a book on VHDL (!?). I suppose the easy way if you are interested would be via scicamp.org
By the way i am being ungentle with you as requested - feels a little uncomfortable but, hey, you asked for it! I'm not expecting you to justify yourself to me - just raising issues from my experience of the site. :)
Perhaps I should have another look and systematically answer the questions suggested above - is the list complete?
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@MelissaW: Access to the food pilot site is currently being controlled, mainly out of respect to the person that provided us with some of their research material that we put up on the site as case studies/projects. As we take the pilot forward I am hopeful that we can open the thing right up. In terms of getting approval for an account, this is currently a manual process for the reason above, so apologies if I was not around to approve your account application. Again a live site would have open access. I'll happily take on board your other points to improve usability and sociability (we haven't put in any social networking features yet). In terms of having the site 'do' something, I'll check the owngrown project with interest. Our focus with this pilot, in terms of what it delivered, was to enable people to share their projects, enable others to see what is being done, and to make contact with project 'owners' to learn more. We deliberately set out to keep the thing as simple and as 'stripped down' as possible in the first instance, seeking to build on that as additional needs and wants were defined. |
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Any chance of putting the food pilot 'online' so we can actually see how it works? Currently not sure my life is long enough to express how frustrating my attempt to use the site has been this morning! I'm going for a walk.
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Having had a look at the food pilot, it is currently a searchable database of selected UK food projects and a forum. It took a working day for me to get access. While I completely understand and respect that many of its limitations are due to time constraints, would it be possible to open up access, see a list of members (very humanising on Ning and Wiserearth), add a tab to return to the welcome page (and maybe a 'search' tab to start a new search quickly - the changing panel could be confusing for a non-tech) , get discussions going on the forum (so people visiting experience a 'live' site), and have the site *do* something such as the 'owngrown' example below imported from the tail-end of the Ning group discussion 'food seems like an open door'...
(@garyalex, doesn't the owngrown site as it is lend itself to developing autonomously at the local/regional level? As it is in plone (the developer linked to in the 'members' section is a plone developer so I am assuming...), can't it just be added on to see if it works? The problem with allowing development to proceed at regional level is that strong regions get stronger while weak regions are left floundering. This seems to be available to all UK regions while avoiding centralisation. This site having been developed with someone elses money and time, being available for any group to run with, and being so clearly aligned to Transition aims, it seems a real shame to me that we can't have a suck and see...)
From Ning
My comment:
re structural contraints of food system, here's a wheel someone's invented: Gary's reply: Thanks for that Melissa. The general ideas behind our food pilot are clearly bubbling up all over the place. There are lots of projects around looking at many different ways of facilitating local food. I think the owngrown approach of swapping or selling local food is one key idea, probably best approached at the local level (we will be building a trading system into the local and regional pilot).We are groping towards effective ways of putting relevant people in touch with each other, exactly as James says, and discovering good ways of co-ordinating what they are doing in a non-hierarchical structure. That is what I see as the main purpose of this pilot project, and doing it in the context of the food theme groups in the Transition Network. Yours, Gary |
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you sort of lost me with
The less technical competence the better.
I was serious when i asked how long it took to get these sites where they are now?
Philralph Hi Ed, thanks for the link. I particularly like: "Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts." (point 3). I suspect we''ll get better at enriching 'our' shared artifacts with more practice, but even so linking and connecting seems to come first. -------------------------------------------------------------
hey, sounds like common social software!
I do not know if sharing my experience with the system i first developed 14-15 years ago with primitive cgi will help or not, then superimpose the latest social software and gismos. it has now pretty much fallen apart over the years, but i connected to google for updates the best i could. hell, i got my domain in 1993 when they only allowed 8 letters.
First i setup a add-your-own listing directory, while also making the handbook's directory available online, using a program to convert a database to a searchable online directory.
i made 4 add-your-own directories, states, foreign, business/classifieds, people
then i setup a full site search engine. i tried to insure that every entry has a zip code. the best i could do for REGIONS was to do states, and allow assess to each state directory.
i have setup two different forum programs over the years, usually private
I added a keyword INDEX, like you would find at the end of a book
others did a better job of it than me, and of course we know the success of wiserearth and idealist.
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@jonwalker: good questions - i have added them to the doc - please feel free to edit docs yourself too - and encourage others to do it :)
re: number of projects - reminds me of the old facilitation mantra: the number of people who come is the right number of people.
@philralph: it's a good piece by snowden. I recommend his writing in general but that piece is particularly useful. He does a good conference talk too if you ever get the chance. It's a good point, but not to be confused with setting up yet another social network imo; rather to connect people through their knowledge (as opposed to just through their extrovert-ish styled public behaviour patterns as experienced in zeitgeisty social network software)... We have a long distant hope that we can find some mutually beneficial relationship with Cognitive Edge's 'sense maker' software but that may be a looong term hope... |
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Looks good Ed. Maybe also for Uploaders:
Could you get all the important aspects of your projects into the categories/boxes provided ? Are there any other categories/boxes which would have helped ? Are any of the categories/boxes which you didn't use or found inappropriate ? Did pull-down menus help ? For Searchers: Did you use the search facility, or just scan the list of projects ? Did you search by project type, or by region, or what ? Did you use the tags/keywords to search ? We might not have enough projects up there to fully test searches first by region and then by category. |
Hi Melissa,
Interested in the idea of categorising and I can see exactly why you've suggested it, but I'm not sure how it would be done - categorising is a very subjective process at the best of times and 'Transition' is an incredibly heterogeneous thing - trying to (usefully) pin down an initiative or a project would, I suspect, be very difficult. All we can really expect is indicators - we've started to think about this at initiative level in the regional pilot and I think the food pilot addresses this too:
http://transitioneast.net/groups/transition-east-support-group/the-state-of-transition-east/view
But, beyond being interesting, I'm not sure how useful this information really is - the document linked to above is pretty static and all these groups have already moved on and changed. I'd be interested in your ideas about how we could go about this.
What does seem to work is an ongoing dialogue with other, similar or geographically proximate groups (I think that all the K and N system can really do is start people talking to each other). So the group I'm involved with (Bungay) has close links with all the neighbouring towns, we talk to each other as well as supporting and promoting each others events and projects - which I guess is the kind of buddying system you're talking about.
In East Anglia we have a fairly active google group;
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/transition-east-anglia
which keeps people in touch - a question posted there will inevitably get some sensible replies from people who understand the regional context. We've also had a regional network meeting;
http://transitioneast.net/groups/transition-east-support-group/transition-east-anglia-network-meeting-7th-march-09/view
at which a small group came forward and expressed an interest in developing some sort of regional support group - we've met once so far:
http://transitioneast.net/groups/transition-east-support-group/transition-east-regional-support-group-meeting/view .
We're all interested in the Viable Systems Model and its potential to help Transition at a range of scales. Jon Walker (of food pilot fame) has written an introduction,
http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=home
which I can strongly recommend.
I'd be interested to talk more about all this (particularly the regional pilot) - email me and I'll send you my phone number: josiahmeldrum [at] gmail [dot] com
Josiah