Repeal the Texas Death Penalty

 

This page is our central focus of 'doing it' - here be information on: 

 

Purpose of the web project

Purpose of collaborative phase (that's this one)

List of tasks and people

Timing for the work to be done

Decision making

Money stuff

Research streams and proposed structure for documentation

 

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Purpose of the web project:

 

"A set of networks of people taking responsibility and providing support for different aspects of Transition Network, for example, people looking after local initiatives in a region, people from similar theme group to share best practice and support eachother" (Gary Alexander)

 

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Purpose of this collaborative phase:

1. Submit a recommendations report to the Transition Network board regarding suitable solutions for this "web project"
2. Consult with the transitioners everywhere about the web project
3. Build capacity amongst transitioners for their own sustainability
4. De-centralise and share the work and responsibility around the network
5. Document lessons from the project and make those learnings available to relevant groups 

 

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List of tasks: and people!

 

Early list - please add your suggestions or put your initials next to one, or ...

 

Summarise discussions to date from: TTforum, Ning, ethical jcn, TT wiki
Routemap: Education and support toolkit: outline of standards, guidelines, support groups, management issues
Transition Network website: outline of requirements, management issues
Knowledge stream: outline of work to date, review pilot, summarise findings, identify missing elements
Local and regional presence stream: outline of work to date, review pilot, summarise findings
Training stream: outline of work to date, review pilot, summarise findings; review alternatives to pilot platform
Aggregation: outline of theory and design – projects, profiles, events, news, discussions
Evaluation of some initiative sites on different platforms: e.g. compare and contrast MASTT, Transition East, Transition Bristol
Pilot support in general: write help files, set up accounts, support, bug finding, using the pilots, usability analysis etc.
Hosting analysis; outline of possible providers considering ethics and environmental issues, more detailed analysis of centralised vs mesh networking...
General discussions around subjects...

 

 

NEEDED:

Someone with expertise in usability to look at our local and regional pilot Transition East and advise us. We know there is a lot still to do on this, and are planning to work on it quite soon, so we would be grateful for some other people's views. We are, of course, asking all our early users to comment on their experience for this purpose too.

 

 

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Timing

Week number and Monday date	Activities
1: 30/03	Set up Wiser Earth Move to Wiser Earth Identification of activities (people find things they want to do)
2: 06/04	Identification of activities (people find things they want to do) Content gathering and summarising Stream building - identifying/rationalising stream's needs Business requirements meeting PL, BB, EM in Bristol 07/04 Recommendations clarification: BB, EM Easter holiday! Get those fairtrade eggs hidden down the allotment!
3: 13/04	What does the web project look like? (group work on whole project; prioritisation of elements) Identification of activities (people find things they want to do) Stream analysis and collaboration work - identifying/rationalising stream's needs Core meeting, London: Key subjects: Conference, key requirements for pilots, workgroup assessment, tech guy, recommendations, survey Survey closes Survey data analysis (BB and EM, Totnes 16/04, 17/04) and results
4: 20/04	Survey data available to workgroup, Transition US, LCCN, etc. Stream analysis and collaboration work - identifying/rationalising stream's needs
5: 27/04	Pilot interviews Technical assessment of platforms
6: 04/05	Core meeting Technical assessment of platforms Report writing
7: 11/05	Report writing Technical assessment of platforms
8: 18/05	Board meeting 19/05: presentation of recommendations Conference 23/05: workshop at conference Workgroup meetup and beano: 21/05 or 25/05?
9: 27/05	Have a nice sit down and a cup of tea.

 

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Decision-making and process

There are several, potentially conflicting, elements to this:

 

1. The funding from Tudor means that one of the absolutely key priorities is getting the Transition Network web presence spruced up
2. Transition Network is a charity with the typical hierarchical set up:
   • a management team, and
   • a board of trustees who are legally obliged to see that we spend our money in pursuit of our charitable objects, and
   • in the context of this project, a core team of Ben, Ed and Gary
3. One of the principles of transition is subsidiarity
   • decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level, and no further
   • creating conditions that encourage self-organising is smart
4. The expertise to figure out what we need to do on this project lies significantly with the amorphous gang of highly-motivated smart thinkers who have varying degrees of involvement with transition  - aka "Experts"
5. We need to get input from as many transition groups as possible (via survey)
6. All the contributors need to have a sense that they have a voice in what we end up doing

So here's how I think the process needs to be working in terms of making decisions:

•  
  • Ed engages with the experts to shape the project
    • done, and as a result there has been a huge shift in the potential "deliverables"
  • Core team takes input from:
    • pilots - ongoing
    • survey - ongoing
    • interviews - ongoing
    • Expert involvement - ongoing
  • Core team makes available to the Experts the data and analysis from inputs
  • Core team pulls a few all-nighters to analyse the data from the Core team perspective
  • Experts analyse the data from their perspective
  • Core team and Experts share conclusions and figure out the way forward - mebbe we have an awayday
  • Core team writes up the results of discussions into recommendations report to Transition Network board (cc'ed to Experts)
  • Experts make comments on the report and it gets amended
  • the board responds to the recommendations report with an item-level "yes"/"yes with these changes"/"no" (Ben will not be "on the board" for this decision)
  • if the Experts and Core team differ significantly on what needs to be done, the Experts will get a chance to put their case to the Transition Network board
  • we get on with the work based on the Trustees decision

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Money and transparency

• Can we discuss this publicly?

This is being clarified by Ben right now.

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Research streams: proposed structure for documentation

Full live list of wiki pages

• Knowledge and Networking (KN)
• Local and Regional Presence (LRP)
• Training
• Transition Network site
• Aggregation and the distributed web
• Routemap: support and education toolkit
• Hosting
• Business: information, funding, metrics
• Philosophy: centralized and distributed: what is core?
• Lessons Learnt: valuable findings about the project to share after the project

 

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Assets to work with: content to support collaboration

• Forum conversations: TT forums, Ning forums
• Spectifications: the original one and the pilots
• Survey questions and answers
• Workshop findings and materials (more to come)
• Interviews (due to come from pilot users)
• Pilots: qualitative findings from test usage


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This here for scrap-book purposes...

 

Who is doing what in which section?

 

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Transition Network site

 

Ben Brangwyn

 

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Knowledge and Networking

 

Jon Walker: pilot design (project and findings)

P2P networking:

 

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Local and regional presence

 

Gary Alexander: pilot design

Other?

 

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Aggregation and making the most of the wider web

 

Person

Person

 

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Routemap: support and education toolkit

 

Person

Person

 

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Hosting

 

Person

Person

 

 

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Business information

 

Ben Brangwyn

Person

 

 

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Centralisation

 

Person

 

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Lessons learnt

 

Ed Mitchell