In additional to sorting Groups by Name and by Recency, it would be neat to be able to sort by Discussion too, so users could find out where some of the more interesting discussions were happening within groups.



N: Mark Grimes
W: http://www.ned.com/
C: - a better world, every day

2007 Ned Accomplishments & Milestones
=====================================
59 microloans: http://www.kiva.org/lender/neddotcom
64 better world videos: http://www.youtube.com/neddotcom
345 members: http://www.ned.com/

Thank you for the kind words bowo, sorry it has taken some time for me to find out you had left a comment here. Here are a list of some things done in 2007 and others I am hoping to get done in 2008.

2007 Ned Accomplishments & Milestones
=====================================
59 microloans: http://www.kiva.org/lender/neddotcom
64 better world videos: http://www.youtube.com/neddotcom
345 members: http://www.ned.com/

2008 Ned Goals & Deliverables
=============================
1,000,000 web site page views monthly
1,000 registered ned.com members
500 Better World Island monthly project revenue
150 microloans
25 good quality inbound web site links
10 ongoing monthly ned.com sponsors
7 new videos at neddotcom YouTube channel
6 <Ned> projects anywhere in the world
3 microfinance workshop sessions in Portland
2 events where five or more Ned members meet FTF
2 <Ned> thriving real world locations
2 or more totally unexpected spectacular things

How do you join this group? (sorry, long day)

Linda, glad you came over for a visit. Barbara, wow...way too kind words, but thank you, thank you. Glad you're enjoying poking around.

Thnx dan;el, that's good to see/know. Holy bat cave, I've made 7 of the last 20 comments across the entire site over the last two days. Somebody shoot me with a tranquilizer dart.

Jon, I agree that a temporary "filter out group" would be a nice feature to have in the visualize network tool. Would be nice if when you have a cloud that is closed on first click it simply opened up (and the next largest group closed to become a cloud), then a second click could bring the text list above.

OK, tranq dart is taking effect...getting woozy.

Michael, glad you jumped into this discussion and hope anyone reading feels welcome to do the same thing.

A weighted voting system is interesting and glad to hear between you and Daniel this is being considered.

Please also see http://www.omidyar.net/user/active/ rating system where threads, posts and member profiles are all rated, and between -4 to +4 are anonymous, but members names become credited to the user when they spend points at the -5 and below and +5 and above levels.

>>If there is one thing I've learned from dealing with lots of orgs, is that many exist in a gray area of acceptability and whether they get in or not, can be very nuanced. In situations like that, a transparent system is needed and it would be great to have confidence in the users that do the actual voting.<<

So here is another example.

Recently was involved in an open space event and $5,000 was being given to benefit the people of Gulu, Uganda. 130+ people, primarily from Africa, attended the event...but roughly 35-45 were from Gulu. We divided into 5 teams at random, then each team developed an idea/project they thought could best benefit the Gulu community, and a "champion" volunteered for each idea/project.

Now, who am I, some guy from Portland, Oregon to vote for or decide what is best for the community and people of Gulu? In essence, after a two hour Q&A period, only the people of Gulu got to vote on the project they preferred and it worked like a charm. The other 2/3 of the people at the event just happily watched with great interest as the voting process took place.

Quite candidly in Gulu I saw oodles of white people in expensive white air-conditioned Range Rover trucks driving around, but never interacting with any local people. Not once. Must-read books like "Despite Good Intentions", "White Man's Burden" and "The Lords of Poverty" all outline similar problems with decades of what has become "the development industry". In other words there is a need to be somewhat weary that those in a "higher position" would assume know the answers, my faith is in the community being served and their ability to rate who are supposed to be helping them.

The local indigenous community members within Gulu very well understood the potential problems with a microfinance program. Corruption. They make be making 1,000 shillings a day (.58 cents), but just because they are extremely impoverished does not mean they don’t have some of the best ideas on what could truly help them overcome issues of poverty.

A non biased comparative rating system based on replicable, scalable, open source, transparent, easy to understand, sustainable, action based problem solving ideas would be worth its weight in gold and clean water.

Small thing, but having the word "people" so often in the Area of Focus (under personal profiles) makes the interface a tad kludgey (for my taste). I think if the number where there, people would still get it, and it would look much cleaner

Not this...

| Social Entrepreneurship (81 people) | Sustainable Livelihoods (41 people) | Youth Participation (16 people)

But this...

| Social Entrepreneurship (81) | Sustainable Livelihoods (41) | Youth Participation (16)

Soren, nice to see you here, please check out the WiserEarth Social Entrepreneur page, I'm trying to play around with the discussion thread feature there. BTW, that picture of you and Navarre is great, I showed Pam last night.

>>It is too easy to "rate and rank" to satisfy the needs of funders (both major and micro) rather than parsing down to the intersection of "who?", "why?", and "what?"<<

Peter, I agree 100%

In the way many larger newspapers have "public community editors" inhouse to be critical of their own company on behalf of the public it could be interesting if NPO/NGO's had some similar position that transparently oversaw and reported publicly about the organization on behalf of clients, investors and donors.

Managing and Measuring Social Enterprises looks like a great book. $179...ouch.

>>Mark: Editors can add tags and keywords to the areas of focus. I want to respond to all of your suggestions in a separate comment, and I agree with every one, but wanted to reply to this one area as it complements Josef’s comments.<<

Thnx Paul. Wrote my gibberish below before reading your note, thank you.

The WiserEarth welcoming message at the top of the index page is perfect, saying all the right things to first time visitors.

1. It might be worthwhile at the end of every Tags/Keywords list to have and "editor" link (or "suggest other tags/keywords") so users can easily click to suggest other Tags/Keywords to the editor.

For Social Entrepreneurship I would suggest to the editor thinking about adding: Muhammad Yunus, Bill Drayton, micro credit, microfinance, micro loans, micro franchising.

2. In the right hand column...

Organizations(278)
Users(53)
Resources(23)
Events(3)
Jobs(0)

Might be nice to add...

Case Studies (though perhaps that is a resource)
Discussions

3. Nit picky (sorry), the Logo is *WISER earth* and in text reads *WiserEarth*, personally I would go with one not both.

4. This is a big one, usability-wise, and I'm making some assumptions here...so if I'm off base, please forgive me.

You will have visitors to the Wiser Earth site, your goal then is conversion to users/people (who create a profile), then your goal is active (repeat) community members.

Personally, I would want to track those numbers each and every day. Now in the past when working with companies like Nextel, Disney & P&G they were not only not tracking their numbers, they didn’t even know what they wanted to track. There are other things you probably already are tracking like volume of "Recent Activity" per day, new orgs, resources, events, jobs, wiki pages added per day, etc. A daily report on the numbers is great, even better if it is something that is shared openly for all members to see.

Please keep in mind I live online with 2-3 browsers open, working in another app, and on the phone...so I may not be an "average user". Hmmm, now that I read that maybe I have ADD...oh, well.

Here's the big one. I've been a member since 07 April 2007 and have returned every day...and know I'm not quite sure what to do when returning to the site. I've edited my profile, so it's fine for now. I've invited a few people and they have signed up and they're here now. I'm not going to download new software to chat, but feel the need to communicate somehow...to connect. It may mean a tighter integration of discussion areas within each AoF, I'm not sure...and this is also just my opinion. But I do find myself going to the "Feedback" section, knowing there is a conversation there, knowing a dialogue will happen.

To the developers I want to say (after you quit cursing my name), I think you have done an outstanding job here. With regards to depth of content, user interface, clean design, information architecture, and so much more...you all have done just incredible work and I commend you. I'm not going to placate you listing all the wonderful things you've done right, but want to be as encompassing as I can be with sharing recommendations and ideas at an early stage here as you are ready to push the "launch button".

When working with the management team to launch "Go To" search site (which then became "Overture" which is now "Yahoo! Search Marketing") one of the deepest and best volumes of insights came from a videotaped well run FTF two hour focus group. It could be worth looking at for Wiser at some stage. (I tend to be more of a "gut" entrepreneur myself...but a well timed focus group can offer some very nice insights)

When searching on "Organizations" it is unclear to the user (well, to me anyway) how and why the order or results is being returned to me. If the user could slice and dice results how they desired, that could be interesting...

Returning search results under "Organizations" based on most recently edited first...could be useful.

Returning search results under "Organizations" based on geographic proximity to the seachers address could be useful.

also

Under "Browse Areas of Focus" having a "people" link that would show the user all people using that tag might be interesting too.

For that matter, having a monthly discussion area under each of the 372 topic/categories could be very useful.