Jon E. Ramer
jonramereditor
Comments (1 - 20 of 79)
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I agree that this can make the value of a group much greater. There is a parallel innovation that I think would work as well. I will post it as a separate suggestion but it gets at the same concern.
Once you "select all" for a list of organizations, resources, or events it returns a flat list with just two tabs -- name and recency. Having folders to group these items into makes a lot of sense; it would also be very helpful to sort them by "areas of focus". I will add a separate suggestion for sorting group items by areas of focus. Thank you, Lauren! I think you've touched on an important way to add more value to the group experience. |
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Hi Sonya
I appreciated our time together and I look forward to working on a project in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for reaching out. Jon |
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Sharing content from WE is a must. Lets do this!
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Google has done a great job of embedding their calendar. Here is a good example that we are doing:
example google calendar |
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I totally agree with Honore and Angus. Organizations -- public, profit, or public -- will always exist in WE because some PERSON added them. By making sure that people are people we can trace back as to who added or edited any entry. In my opinion, whatever mechanism we have in place to question orgs should also question people that are not describing themselves as a person.
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I think you guys are right in a number of ways.... "see all" does a lot of what I was thinking. I think this should be a lower priority.
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I first noticed this when we visualized a network and the "people" are only showing "usernames" and what I wanted to see was the "Full Name" to understand who they are. Since we ask for Full Name we might as well use it. It is a required field and it is used to identify yourself to yourself when you log in. Why not use it as an extension to username with others?
I think that when some people join they don't know what to create as a user name and often put names that they may later regret. But Full Name seems to be a commonly understood term. If I could mouse over a username and reveal their full name I would be satisfied. |
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Thanks, Earnest. Interconnecting groups and their areas of focuse and the capability to find them this way would definately add value to my WE expereience. Thanks for the support!
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I agree... + 1
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Hi Sami it is good to hear from you and very timely. I have stayed at the Red Vic and in fact performed musically there on more than one occasion. I just finished reading the note you left me on my profile. I am actively involved in assembling a network of regional learning centers. These regional learning centers will disseminate best practices for sustainable living. I am working to build such a center here in the Pacific Northwest visit http://www.21acres.org
I will be in San Francisco next week. I'm available on Tuesday or Wednesday if you have some time and interest in meeting to discuss this further.
thanks! Jon Ramer |
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Another way to think about this is to ask: what is missing that WE provides? what are the breakdowns and missed opportunities that WE is the solution for? I think I am still a beginner at knowing what to do with WE.
For me as an individual person interested in knowing what is going on the community directory offers a way of discovering who's out there and what they're up to. So many of us know that there is a tremendous amont of redundancy and duplication of effort. It is making more and more sense to check and see if something exists on WE. For me as an organizer the group function lets us create an electronic "settlement" and get to work.
I think the homepage should be different for a first time visitor. As one gets more involved ideally they can customize the homepage to suit what they need to have ready to hand. |
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I think this suggestion could use some clarification.Having a calendar view of events would be very helpful; whether it is a Google calendar or not.Embedding a Google Calendar in WE like you can a YouTube video is another suggestion unto itself. If we store our calendar data in Google it would sure be nice to just embed it in WE.
Knowing the author of the original suggestion, I am assuming that this suggestion is actually for both.
A number of us dream of the holy-grail of sharing event data between public and private calendars. It gets complicated since there is no agreed upon unique event identifier. This makes it hard to know if separate calendars have duplicates or unique events. Groups need to coordinate events and to let the world know about them. '
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Thank you, Stefan. It is clear that we are aligned and working together without yet knowing each other! Congratulations on your work to date. I will look over in more detail the group and the PDF you sent. Lets stay in touch! Jon |
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I agree that a blog functionality makes sense.... perhaps there are two places for it. Why not have a personal blog capabilioty be part of my person profile and a collective blog be part of the group functionality? Make sense? I think this is what Angus is suggesting as well.
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Yes... let's add location + 1
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I am trying to be clear. This suggestion was to add For Profit companies and Public Agencies to the community directory. Period.
I think we do need to take responsibility for WE sustaining itself, I don't think adding private and public organizations to the directory is the way to do that. That is why I am restating my suggestion and recommend we decouple dollars to WE from additions to the directory.
By identifying a sustainable subset within each of the three sectors -- public, private, and civil society -- I think I am addressing the concerns I am aware of about adding them to the directory. Are there other concerns about adding them to the directory that remain unaddressed?
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JT I may have confused you. I cannot speak for Melinda but I suspect she is concerned with making sure that WE can sustain itself. So she might of thought that we could charge businesses if we included them. I am not in favorf of this but have said that I am open to further conversation about it. I have not discussed or gained support for any economic activity with WE. The support I was referring to was the intention to include business and public agencies.
I agree with you that someone who cares enough, Melinda, you, et. al. should start a separate Wiki page suggestion to discuss ways to raise money for WE. My point is that it is a distinct suggestion. I don't know what the Melinda/Jon proposal is that you are referring to.
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A little more clarification on how I am proposing we do this is in order:
I propose we extend the field called "type" in the organizaton profile to include companies and public agencies. We can come up with some iconic, labeling, or visual cue to help identify the sustainable private and public sectors from civil society.
A directory is for description and discovery. We can extend the descriptions of organizations to include best practices as well as affiliations so a business can state that they are affiliated with Co-Op America, etc.
We can enhance the discovery tools so that a user can easily filter or include any of the types of organizations they are interested in.
Lets trust that by either editing those profiles or commenting on them we can tap the feedback from the community to advise us on when an organization ought to be removed.
I want to be sure to respect other perspectives. I just want to keep the focus on this suggestion. I am open to delaing with any other issue, I am just advocating keeping these issues distinct.
Could WiserEarth offer a certification service? Why not? Lets just treat is as a separate suggestion and discuss it there.
What are the other concerns about including for profits and pubic agencies that are not being addressed?
Also to clarify the NCI and Interra relationship; NCI is our fiscal agent, they are not a financial partner or supporter in any way in Interra. Interra is incorporated as a nonprofit but we are not a 501 C3. That is why NCI, who is a 501c3 is our fiscal agent. When someone donates to Interra they write the check to NCI who disburses Interra the proceeds. NCI has no interest in Interra and vice versa. Our views on WiserEarth are impartial. My interest is in making WE as useful as possible for us and everyone else who wants to use it and contribute to it. I appreciate your time and talent being put into WE to address or interconnectedness and the needs of the whole. Lets just get on with it!
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My intent in writing again is to reach resolution on the suggestion that I made to include private and public sector organizations in the community directory. I have reviewed the community guidelines and I don't think they are as relevant to this suggestion as the WiserEarth Content Standards.
In the same way that the content standards carve out a subset of Civil Society as "Sustainable Civil Society" that was the approach I was taking to the other public and private sectors. I think we can let our values -- i.e. what we believe to be important -- guide the expanded scope and carve out a subset of businesses and public agencies that can included in the directory.
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JT, the community guidelines references being polite, civil and building community. You reference NCI as if they were a person and you are accusing NCI of doing harm.I don't think you understand my point when I say that only people contribute to NCI. NCI is a fiction. It exists by declaration.
It seems extermely impolite to come to someones site that you are welcomed at and be so accusatory. It may be the way I was brought up but it rubs me wrong. I have gratitude and appreciation for all it took to make this available. I bet you do too. I suspect that you are pointing out what you see as inconsistencies because you care. So be it. I suggest we do it in a civil and polite way that helps build community.
I also want to clarify my role with NCI. I have never been paid by WE. I am a volunteer. I have known personally a number of people that are involved with WE. I have been involved prior to when WE was launched. It was always in the plan to include the other sectors. It was just a matter of time.
The reason that the time is now is that the multi-stakeholder initiatives that we are involved with will not continue on WE unless the community directory is inclusive of all the parties that are working together toward a just and sustainable world.
I remain committed to addressing concerns about including For Profit and Public Agencies. What are they?
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I don't even know where to start. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that we are speaking for ourselves. I don't believe you are speaking for the community nor am I speaking for community.
WE is open to anyone to join. WE doesn't restrict people by race or religion. We don't restrict people by affiliation. In other words we don't say that someone can't join WE because they work for a for-profit company, or because they work for government agency. All are welcome to join. I suspect that most people think this is a good approach. I know I do.
The challenge is that if you're working on making just and lasting change happen in communities then the directory of participants should include those organizations that are working for that change. The directory functions as a way to describe and discover those organizations. This becomes most apparent when you set up group and you want to invite everyone in was working in your group. And if you want to list all the organizations that are affiliated with the people in that group what do you tell the people that are working at for-profit companies and government agencies?
It just so happens that I was involved with WE before it was released to the public. I am proud to say that I contributed in some very small way to making this resource available. I offer you the historical reference that it was always intended that the directory be expanded to include naming those for-profit companies and government agencies that share our values and commitment to a just and sustainable world.
If you look at the projects I'm involved with as the Executive Director of the Interra project you will see that they are multi-stakeholder processes, e.g. the Roots of Change. In other words they include nonprofits, for profits, and supportive government agencies. That is why I made the suggestion to include them.
There are challenges to raise the funds to maintain a resource such as this. But I know of no payment plan for including anyone in wiserearth. Wiserearth is noncommercial, open source, and I hope it stays that way. I know that I would be willing to help raise funds for it to avoid charging people to participate.