From giuseppesilvi at yahoo.it  Fri Apr  9 01:23:25 2010
From: giuseppesilvi at yahoo.it (Giuseppe Silvi)
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 23:23:25 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [VBbuilders] ***SPAM*** REWWWOLUTION.TV - LIBERA UNIVERSITA'
	TELEMATICA
Message-ID: <344832.96004.qm@web25604.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

Dear all,

here under two links useful to study for the "Virtual University of small Villages" 

REWWWOLUTION.TV (the new version of - http://streamit.it - will be online on Saturday , 10 April 2010 )
http://twww.rewwwolution.tv/?onair>
LIBERA UNIVERSITA' TELEMATICA DELLA ARTI E DELLE SCIENZE MODERNE
http://www.uniasm.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=67

The best.
Giuseppe Silvi

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From ms at ms.lt  Fri Apr 16 17:03:11 2010
From: ms at ms.lt (Andrius Kulikauskas)
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:03:11 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Ning eliminates free networks
Message-ID: <4BC87C2F.6020801@ms.lt>

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-more-free-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/

I learned of this from Maria Droujkova at the Open Kollab list.

I also note that Dreamfish http://www.dreamfish.com has made nice use of 
open source Elgg.  What they have is not yet convincing to me though as 
a social networking platform. 

At this point, I'm skeptical of any social networking platform that 
doesn't integrate in some smart way with activity on Facebook, Twitter, 
etc.  I think there's a real need for a cultural code like I'm trying to 
do with http://www.12questions.org because I think online venues of 
themselves aren't enough to foster a culture.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms at ms.lt


From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Fri Apr 16 18:47:04 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:47:04 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Ning eliminates free networks
In-Reply-To: <4BC87C2F.6020801@ms.lt>
References: <4BC87C2F.6020801@ms.lt>
Message-ID: <y2rc8c84fad1004160947t592f77a9w35a05731e078a923@mail.gmail.com>

I think we should look at moving the streaming sharing learning, which I
jokingly call screaming, despairing leaving, to another situation. So a
short ideas brainstorm is good.

Maybe we can use this Appropedia site:

http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Forest_Conflict

is a project development I am using right now.

BUT also Julius talked about google wave. So a few suggestions and thoughts
are good.

Ciaokka!

M

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms at ms.lt> wrote:

>
> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-more-free-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/
>
> I learned of this from Maria Droujkova at the Open Kollab list.
>
> I also note that Dreamfish http://www.dreamfish.com has made nice use of
> open source Elgg.  What they have is not yet convincing to me though as a
> social networking platform.
> At this point, I'm skeptical of any social networking platform that doesn't
> integrate in some smart way with activity on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I
> think there's a real need for a cultural code like I'm trying to do with
> http://www.12questions.org because I think online venues of themselves
> aren't enough to foster a culture.
>
> Andrius
>
> Andrius Kulikauskas
> Minciu Sodas
> http://www.ms.lt
> ms at ms.lt
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>
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From S.D.Thompson at tees.ac.uk  Fri Apr 16 19:54:15 2010
From: S.D.Thompson at tees.ac.uk (Thompson, Steve)
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:54:15 +0100
Subject: [VBbuilders] Ning eliminates free networks
In-Reply-To: <4BC87C2F.6020801@ms.lt>
Message-ID: <C7EE62D7.2DBB%s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk>

I'm thinking of trying a Hosted Wordpress with the Buddypress plugin. WP plays nice with FB and Twitter et all

Steve T


On 16/04/2010 16:03, "Andrius Kulikauskas" <ms at ms.lt> wrote:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-more-free-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/

I learned of this from Maria Droujkova at the Open Kollab list.

I also note that Dreamfish http://www.dreamfish.com has made nice use of
open source Elgg.  What they have is not yet convincing to me though as
a social networking platform.

At this point, I'm skeptical of any social networking platform that
doesn't integrate in some smart way with activity on Facebook, Twitter,
etc.  I think there's a real need for a cultural code like I'm trying to
do with http://www.12questions.org because I think online venues of
themselves aren't enough to foster a culture.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms at ms.lt
_______________________________________________
Videobridgebuilders mailing list
Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders

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From f.nahrada at reflex.at  Sun Apr 18 19:13:46 2010
From: f.nahrada at reflex.at (Franz Nahrada)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:13:46 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates free networks
In-Reply-To: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>

Hi Jeff, all!
Also doing a crosspost from globalvillages to other lists, because the
subject was brought up there also.

The NING message really stroke me. Its not only the Global Villages
Network (globalvillages.ning.com) thats heavily depending on NING, but
also many other networks that I know of and many that I run myself. If I
had to pay for all of them I would go broke. They are fine and useful,
like the Transition Europe and Transition Austria Network and Power Down
and many other sites. They have brought a lot of people together and are
much more useful than Facebook. Facebook is good to attract people, but
its to noise and crowded to do in-depth discussions, store files and do
many other things.

Yes, I think its another kind of wrong dependency of communities on
corporate strategies. Corporate business is more and more depending on the
utilisation and enabling catalyzation of community work and outreach. But
this is happening in a Wild-West manner with Lasso and branding iron, not
in a decent way. What is needed would be  a kind of transitory covenant
for me, and we - the community world - will have to learn the hard way to
only go with the ones that are dedicated and set up for trustworthiness.

I was assuming that there would be a much smoother transition strategy and
not such a "shock therapy " and most likely I will keep only Global
Villages Network on NING if at all. Then we would have to set up
donations. I had a talk with Les Squires today, the mastermind from
Colorado that built so many Transition sites, and they already run
Transition US at a paid base, for 25 $ per months to keep it ad-free. This
is based on donations.

Its also no problem if we are doing this for a commercial client. Then we
can simply charge the costs from the client. I did a project in Mixxt and
received some money for it, and its totally OK in this case to give a
share to the provider. What is not OK is to treat all the cases equally.
The originator of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, is said to have
said: "you cannot treat unequal things equally". Here comes my critique on
NING.

I thought that the owner and founder
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen)  was more serious in his
approach, having the financial resources to really do meaningful things
and having supported meaningful non-primarily-profit projects like
Netscape for some time. My trust was even reenforced when I tried to
create my eleventh NING seing that there was a barrier of ten built in to
avoid excess.

I am also ready to pay for services that I value, that is not the
question. I had a time I could afford to support Andrius and the Minciu
Sodas Ecosystem, now the main parts of my resources and the social capital
I can mobilize financewise are taken by Helmut Leitners Wikiservice for my
Dorfwiki. (www.dorfwiki.org)

Here comes the catch. I think that using the vendor-lock-in trick and not
helping people to migrate elsewhere is a variant of blackmail. Helmuts
Wikiservice also is befallen by the "Vendor Lock In Disease" but I suppose
would be fair enough to provide users an exit solution (the raw content of
a Hypertext system exported as textfile by the way is absolutely not
useful, which I saw in the case of Gesunde Erde Gesunde Menschen, = a Wiki
that Helmut turned off for the proponents did not raise resources to pay
for = and they were not able to reconstruct it even when we offered them
ProWiki hosting on our experimental server which for good reasons I do not
want to activate yet). 

Of course in the NING case its absolutely clear that they will not provide
any opportunity to port the content. Or at least that would be very
unlikely. From a database programmers perspective providing portability
also is a nightmare. And where should one go, by the way? To facebook?
Unless another service comes up with a content grabber there will be no
chance. And you have to ask people for permission. You would have had to
think of it way ahead.

Currently the resources to pay for all the online venues that we utilize
are dwindling, and its getting harder year by year to support the
respective standards. I am still trying to convince Helmut of the
necessity of fair conditions and he is trying the same with me from his
commercial point of view. We are still far from each other. But in a world
of blind he seems like the one-eyed for me, and he really is passionate
about our content and gives reliable support. I try to find an economic
base together with him that would allow us to provide good and free
services. I say good and free services, including reliability, empathy,
stability and respect.

But there is another side to all this.

I think there comes a great deal of responsibility for hosting other
peoples content, and this responsibility is a cultural one. Our tragedy is
that capitalism is a system of organized irresponsibility on ALL sides,
and we have to experience painfully the absence of truly meaningful
solutions and cultural standards in an age of transition of value creation
from the factory to the individual. We do not reward people for coworking,
and very often they are not ready to pay when they are already thinking
along. Les gave me the exampe of Adam Green who had a very vivid dBase2
newsletter at a time with 10000 subscribers. When he wanted to charge for
it only 3 people were willing to pay for it. Les thinks that 90% of the
existing NING sites might just go under after the move to commercial.
Consider the amount of human labor lost !!!

Coming back to NING, there is an open question of migration that must be
answered.

I found some UNSATISFACTORY answers here:

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/the-best-most-reliable-and

The author of that blog post, JP is hyping Spruz, but their advertising is
horrible. I already did a test site.

I think that our community could think allong what are the alternatives to
construct a social network that is closed and open at the same time. If
you want to help please meditate about the list given there and help us
find out about commited providers.

I also include neighboring lists like videobridgebuilders and p2p-research

I dont really think that Facebook and Twitter are so necessary - they are
like booths in front of the house, inviting people in, but there is yet an
inside and an outside.

Les suggests that we might think of Wiser Earth, and, for a very small
financial contribution, to also consider meetup.com. Many groups are just
meetups, not many have extensive online discussions, and they are very
reasonable in user-fee ratio. 70% of Transition sites are mainly using
NING as event announcer.

There is a slight chance on the other hand that we will make a quantum
leap and install one system of our choice on globalvillages.org ourselves.
We have a yet unused server online with 1GB/sec connectivity!

I also think of Andrius and his information ecosystem and wished he would
make his standards of action more understandeable. I had a long discussion
with him last night and it worries me how difficult it is to agree on
terms of usage that make sense for all sides. Its hard to point to the
Mornflake example when the goals of the campaigns were not reached,
because of unrealistic expectations.

I have worked out a whole plan for the Minciu Sodas Information Ecosystem
with Andrius (I must say its one of the most complete maps of an
Information Ecosystem ever conceived) , and some parts of this were
depending on commercial services which is totally understandeable from the
pragmatic point of view. This is still a yahoogroup and Andrius has found
out tremendous ways of integrating an external view to yahoogroups that
could easily be turned into a valuable million dollar service and yet be
free to communities. But most likely Yahoo would prevent that. And Andrius
would most likely not be interested in that either - because he wants
everything that we do to directly foster a culture of independent
thinkers. But I point to him as one of the people who have a lot of great
capacities in the field. I wish someone would bail him out and they would
be able to agree in a meaningful way to use this capacity by agreed
standards.

So here I am - still confused and thinking and trying to make sense and
find ways.

all the best

Franz



From ms at ms.lt  Sun Apr 18 22:43:05 2010
From: ms at ms.lt (Andrius Kulikauskas)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:43:05 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Mornflake clarification
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <4BCB6ED9.2010508@ms.lt>

Franz Nahrada wrote:
> I also think of Andrius and his information ecosystem and wished he would
> make his standards of action more understandeable. I had a long discussion
> with him last night and it worries me how difficult it is to agree on
> terms of usage that make sense for all sides. Its hard to point to the
> Mornflake example when the goals of the campaigns were not reached,
> because of unrealistic expectations.
>   

Hi Franz,

I don't know what you mean by "standards of action".

Regarding our Mornflake work, what you write will certainly confuse 
people, and so I clarify.

Minciu Sodas worked for Leon Benjamin and The Law Firm. They are very 
happy with our work, see Leon's post where he comments:
" I?ve been working in the online community space since 2001. In that 
time, I've never seen such a successful approach to seeding and 
community outreach. Nor have I seen a report as comprehensive as this. 
The social web is a crowded place and even well known brands with big 
budgets underestimate the effort and skill required to achieve high 
levels of participation."
http://winningbysharing.typepad.com/oaxaca/2010/02/some-learnings-on-community-outreach-and-the-value-of-authenticity.html
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MornflakeOutreach

In this work, Leon and The Law Firm worked for Mornflake cereal. Before 
Minciu Sodas even started work, Mornflake was told by The Law Firm that 
the online video contest would get 100,000 registered users. Whereas 
ultimately the total number of views for all of the videos was about 
4,500. This unrealistic, unfortunate, unhelpful goal has nothing to do 
with Minciu Sodas's work - we didn't endorse this goal, nor were we 
pressed to, and we were a small part of the overall project - but our 
work was well received by The Law Firm - and they were very good to us, too.

Leon also put the overall project in perspective:
"A big UK household brand, Oxo, commissioned a video competition around 
the same time as Mornflake?s where its winning entries were aired on TV 
during the X-Factor finals. Mornflake?s campaign generated more videos 
in less time, and almost certainly at less cost. This is the value of 
authenticity."

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms at ms.lt
+370 699 30003


From f.nahrada at reflex.at  Sun Apr 18 23:01:25 2010
From: f.nahrada at reflex.at (Franz Nahrada)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:01:25 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders] Mornflake clarification
In-Reply-To: <4BCB6ED9.2010508@ms.lt>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<,	> <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at> <,>
	<4BCB6ED9.2010508@ms.lt>
Message-ID: <fc.009725010af4cfe83b9aca0069519e06.af4d10d@reflex.at>

Andrius,

thank you for the clarification - that was really needed and I apologize
for not mentioning those details. I understand that the work of informing
communities about the campaign was connected with the creation of a public
domain asset for widespread use.

what I meant is that those standards (of doing business and at the same
time enabling community infrastructures and/or empowering individuals)
could be made more explicit.

In principle your approach seems to ring a bell in many people, but as
long as you leave it to you own judgement and not try to make it totally
explicit (like a rule of law), it might be really hard to implement
successfully.

I hope very much that you find a way to create an offering based on the 12
questions.

all the best

Franz



From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Sun Apr 18 23:20:43 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:20:43 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Mornflake clarification
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4cfe83b9aca0069519e06.af4d10d@reflex.at>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com> 
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
	<4BCB6ED9.2010508@ms.lt> 
	<fc.009725010af4cfe83b9aca0069519e06.af4d10d@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <y2uc8c84fad1004181420w7402c0bradad20de75c082f9@mail.gmail.com>

That is pretty good, if it exceeded the OXO standards. That success being
the case, will there be more Mornflake type work?

M

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:01 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> Andrius,
>
> thank you for the clarification - that was really needed and I apologize
> for not mentioning those details. I understand that the work of informing
> communities about the campaign was connected with the creation of a public
> domain asset for widespread use.
>
> what I meant is that those standards (of doing business and at the same
> time enabling community infrastructures and/or empowering individuals)
> could be made more explicit.
>
> In principle your approach seems to ring a bell in many people, but as
> long as you leave it to you own judgement and not try to make it totally
> explicit (like a rule of law), it might be really hard to implement
> successfully.
>
> I hope very much that you find a way to create an offering based on the 12
> questions.
>
> all the best
>
> Franz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>
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From f.nahrada at reflex.at  Sun Apr 18 23:34:29 2010
From: f.nahrada at reflex.at (Franz Nahrada)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:34:29 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates free networks
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com> <,>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <fc.009725010af4d4723b9aca0069519e06.af4d4ac@reflex.at>

Still regarding NING

There is quite a storm of negative comments to Jason Rosenthals post and I
hope it will have some effect.

http://blog.ning.com/2010/04/an-update-from-ning.html

Franz

PS. Marc Andreesen wrote before:

"Over?5,000 new Ning Networks are created every day, and we?re adding a
million new?registered users every 12 days."

http://blog.ning.com/2010/03/an-update-from-ning-chairman-co-founder-marc-andreessen.html




From michelsub2004 at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 08:17:58 2010
From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com (Michel Bauwens)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:17:58 +0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates
	free networks
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Franz,

if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as solutions, you
can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on them,

Michel

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> Hi Jeff, all!
> Also doing a crosspost from globalvillages to other lists, because the
> subject was brought up there also.
>
> The NING message really stroke me. Its not only the Global Villages
> Network (globalvillages.ning.com) thats heavily depending on NING, but
> also many other networks that I know of and many that I run myself. If I
> had to pay for all of them I would go broke. They are fine and useful,
> like the Transition Europe and Transition Austria Network and Power Down
> and many other sites. They have brought a lot of people together and are
> much more useful than Facebook. Facebook is good to attract people, but
> its to noise and crowded to do in-depth discussions, store files and do
> many other things.
>
> Yes, I think its another kind of wrong dependency of communities on
> corporate strategies. Corporate business is more and more depending on the
> utilisation and enabling catalyzation of community work and outreach. But
> this is happening in a Wild-West manner with Lasso and branding iron, not
> in a decent way. What is needed would be  a kind of transitory covenant
> for me, and we - the community world - will have to learn the hard way to
> only go with the ones that are dedicated and set up for trustworthiness.
>
> I was assuming that there would be a much smoother transition strategy and
> not such a "shock therapy " and most likely I will keep only Global
> Villages Network on NING if at all. Then we would have to set up
> donations. I had a talk with Les Squires today, the mastermind from
> Colorado that built so many Transition sites, and they already run
> Transition US at a paid base, for 25 $ per months to keep it ad-free. This
> is based on donations.
>
> Its also no problem if we are doing this for a commercial client. Then we
> can simply charge the costs from the client. I did a project in Mixxt and
> received some money for it, and its totally OK in this case to give a
> share to the provider. What is not OK is to treat all the cases equally.
> The originator of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, is said to have
> said: "you cannot treat unequal things equally". Here comes my critique on
> NING.
>
> I thought that the owner and founder
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen)  was more serious in his
> approach, having the financial resources to really do meaningful things
> and having supported meaningful non-primarily-profit projects like
> Netscape for some time. My trust was even reenforced when I tried to
> create my eleventh NING seing that there was a barrier of ten built in to
> avoid excess.
>
> I am also ready to pay for services that I value, that is not the
> question. I had a time I could afford to support Andrius and the Minciu
> Sodas Ecosystem, now the main parts of my resources and the social capital
> I can mobilize financewise are taken by Helmut Leitners Wikiservice for my
> Dorfwiki. (www.dorfwiki.org)
>
> Here comes the catch. I think that using the vendor-lock-in trick and not
> helping people to migrate elsewhere is a variant of blackmail. Helmuts
> Wikiservice also is befallen by the "Vendor Lock In Disease" but I suppose
> would be fair enough to provide users an exit solution (the raw content of
> a Hypertext system exported as textfile by the way is absolutely not
> useful, which I saw in the case of Gesunde Erde Gesunde Menschen, = a Wiki
> that Helmut turned off for the proponents did not raise resources to pay
> for = and they were not able to reconstruct it even when we offered them
> ProWiki hosting on our experimental server which for good reasons I do not
> want to activate yet).
>
> Of course in the NING case its absolutely clear that they will not provide
> any opportunity to port the content. Or at least that would be very
> unlikely. From a database programmers perspective providing portability
> also is a nightmare. And where should one go, by the way? To facebook?
> Unless another service comes up with a content grabber there will be no
> chance. And you have to ask people for permission. You would have had to
> think of it way ahead.
>
> Currently the resources to pay for all the online venues that we utilize
> are dwindling, and its getting harder year by year to support the
> respective standards. I am still trying to convince Helmut of the
> necessity of fair conditions and he is trying the same with me from his
> commercial point of view. We are still far from each other. But in a world
> of blind he seems like the one-eyed for me, and he really is passionate
> about our content and gives reliable support. I try to find an economic
> base together with him that would allow us to provide good and free
> services. I say good and free services, including reliability, empathy,
> stability and respect.
>
> But there is another side to all this.
>
> I think there comes a great deal of responsibility for hosting other
> peoples content, and this responsibility is a cultural one. Our tragedy is
> that capitalism is a system of organized irresponsibility on ALL sides,
> and we have to experience painfully the absence of truly meaningful
> solutions and cultural standards in an age of transition of value creation
> from the factory to the individual. We do not reward people for coworking,
> and very often they are not ready to pay when they are already thinking
> along. Les gave me the exampe of Adam Green who had a very vivid dBase2
> newsletter at a time with 10000 subscribers. When he wanted to charge for
> it only 3 people were willing to pay for it. Les thinks that 90% of the
> existing NING sites might just go under after the move to commercial.
> Consider the amount of human labor lost !!!
>
> Coming back to NING, there is an open question of migration that must be
> answered.
>
> I found some UNSATISFACTORY answers here:
>
> http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/the-best-most-reliable-and
>
> The author of that blog post, JP is hyping Spruz, but their advertising is
> horrible. I already did a test site.
>
> I think that our community could think allong what are the alternatives to
> construct a social network that is closed and open at the same time. If
> you want to help please meditate about the list given there and help us
> find out about commited providers.
>
> I also include neighboring lists like videobridgebuilders and p2p-research
>
> I dont really think that Facebook and Twitter are so necessary - they are
> like booths in front of the house, inviting people in, but there is yet an
> inside and an outside.
>
> Les suggests that we might think of Wiser Earth, and, for a very small
> financial contribution, to also consider meetup.com. Many groups are just
> meetups, not many have extensive online discussions, and they are very
> reasonable in user-fee ratio. 70% of Transition sites are mainly using
> NING as event announcer.
>
> There is a slight chance on the other hand that we will make a quantum
> leap and install one system of our choice on globalvillages.org ourselves.
> We have a yet unused server online with 1GB/sec connectivity!
>
> I also think of Andrius and his information ecosystem and wished he would
> make his standards of action more understandeable. I had a long discussion
> with him last night and it worries me how difficult it is to agree on
> terms of usage that make sense for all sides. Its hard to point to the
> Mornflake example when the goals of the campaigns were not reached,
> because of unrealistic expectations.
>
> I have worked out a whole plan for the Minciu Sodas Information Ecosystem
> with Andrius (I must say its one of the most complete maps of an
> Information Ecosystem ever conceived) , and some parts of this were
> depending on commercial services which is totally understandeable from the
> pragmatic point of view. This is still a yahoogroup and Andrius has found
> out tremendous ways of integrating an external view to yahoogroups that
> could easily be turned into a valuable million dollar service and yet be
> free to communities. But most likely Yahoo would prevent that. And Andrius
> would most likely not be interested in that either - because he wants
> everything that we do to directly foster a culture of independent
> thinkers. But I point to him as one of the people who have a lot of great
> capacities in the field. I wish someone would bail him out and they would
> be able to agree in a meaningful way to use this capacity by agreed
> standards.
>
> So here I am - still confused and thinking and trying to make sense and
> find ways.
>
> all the best
>
> Franz
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>



-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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From f.nahrada at reflex.at  Mon Apr 19 08:43:44 2010
From: f.nahrada at reflex.at (Franz Nahrada)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:43:44 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders] why NING after all?
In-Reply-To: <y2uc8c84fad1004181420w7402c0bradad20de75c082f9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <y2uc8c84fad1004181420w7402c0bradad20de75c082f9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fc.009725010af4e5de3b9aca0069519e06.af4f67a@reflex.at>

In a discussion with Markus I wrote up some points that I find essential
about NING. 

a) the potential to form groups of individuals that have thematic
coherence; a very good balanced relation between community spirit and
embeddedness in a larger space where individuals can move freely (you can
bring your friends from other networks) , fractal in its approach that
gives us sense of belonging. (*)

b) in the framework of this:  the ability to request theme specific
profiles and not just general profiles like in Facebook or Wiser Earth.
This is very important to understand the degree and kind of motivation
that people have from the beginning.

b2) in the framework of this: the ability to add one level of fractal
subgroups in a theme, with its own membership and discussion fora. 
*** I wanted us to do this in the videobridge NING, so we can identify our
technological etc. capacities.
*** I wanted us to do this in the globalvillages NING, so we can identify
our research base

c) a very good and fine tuned email notification system that allows me to
leave the community and only be drawn there only when it is necessary.

d) a very flexible way to upload files in thematic contexts. I lack that
for example in even similar systems like MIXXT.

I gladly learn from others how they feel about this. I think its important
to think about ways of organizing cooperation online that are realistic
and coherent.

And I know tons of things are missing in NING. But I feel we need a kind
of center or several types of centers to group other patterns around them,
like Skype, GoogleDocs, Facebook,

The natural centers for me are mailing list and social network.

Franz


(*) Wiser Earth is not fractal enough, it gives me endless lists of people
and solutions and does not carry through even its internal order system
which would provide ordered fractality. The internal order system is
detailed but it lacks some categories.
Also, WE is still extremely buggy - I tried a test network there also and
it behaves weird. http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages




From michelsub2004 at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 10:46:14 2010
From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com (Michel Bauwens)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:46:14 +0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates
	free networks
In-Reply-To: <j2r2b03c9cc1004190138g11d2e470h379475f610a25bfa@mail.gmail.com>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
	<w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>
	<j2r2b03c9cc1004190138g11d2e470h379475f610a25bfa@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <v2hc776300b1004190146w108e1446k6c4d7469d2e4dab8@mail.gmail.com>

copying sam, whose advice on this I trust 100%

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Pamela McLean <pam54321 at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi Franz and Michel (and Andy and Ryan)
>
> I am wondering if the work we have done (and plan to do) for
> www.dadamac.net is relevant to your needs. I have been working with Ryan
> and Andy on this, as resources have allowed, for the past year or so. We are
> designing and developing dadamac as the "online home" that is needed for the
> dadamac community.
>
> Our work may be relevant to you because, from the start I have been setting
> dadamac.net up to serve an existing network (which I now call the "dadamac
> community"). Like many networks it is not easy to define - but for the sake
> of this email all you need to know is the nature of the problem we are
> trying to address, and how far we have got. Then you can judge if our
> foundations are useful for you to build on.
>
> I need an online home for Dadamac for various reasons. We are involved in
> many things (which are scattered around online and on the ground). I need
> some way to bring them all together, make them more visible, make it easier
> for "outsiders" to get involved with us, provide a kind of one-stop-shop for
> all we are doing so that people can rummage around for themselves to see
> what interests them. At the same time I need spaces which are for private
> meetings etc. This is an oversimplification - there is much more - regarding
> action groups and so on. Also there is stuff which is working already but
> you cannot see as you are not a member of the relevant groups. In my mind I
> can see the information flows that I am trying to enable, and the
> relationships (people to people, people to information, information to
> information) that I am trying to enable.
>
> I needed to pull it all together, and I was not satisfied with what I
> understood to be available through eixisting things like Facebook and NING.
> If you visit Dadamac.net  you will only see it as far as it has got.  What
> you nee to see is what is in my mind (which is what I would like you to be
> able to have). But if we have the right conversation and involve Andy and
> Ryan, they can explain better what we are doing, and how, and you can decide
> if our foundations would be of use to you.
>
> Andy - you will recognise that this is partly about the "CKK/CCK" thing you
> and I have been talking about which I need to ask Ryan about implementing.
> Plus our existing visible Drupal stuff, and our invisible Moodle stuff and
> various things around the edges.
>
> I imagine that either people could copy our framework and put in their own
> info - or we could all do something using the existing framework.  I don't
> know exactly. I just know that it would be sad to waste effort duplicating
> things if the effort we have already put in would be useful to others.
>
> Pamela
>
>
>
>
> On 19 April 2010 07:17, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Franz,
>>
>> if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as solutions,
>> you can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
>> them,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>   On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jeff, all!
>>> Also doing a crosspost from globalvillages to other lists, because the
>>> subject was brought up there also.
>>>
>>> The NING message really stroke me. Its not only the Global Villages
>>> Network (globalvillages.ning.com) thats heavily depending on NING, but
>>> also many other networks that I know of and many that I run myself. If I
>>> had to pay for all of them I would go broke. They are fine and useful,
>>> like the Transition Europe and Transition Austria Network and Power Down
>>> and many other sites. They have brought a lot of people together and are
>>> much more useful than Facebook. Facebook is good to attract people, but
>>> its to noise and crowded to do in-depth discussions, store files and do
>>> many other things.
>>>
>>> Yes, I think its another kind of wrong dependency of communities on
>>> corporate strategies. Corporate business is more and more depending on
>>> the
>>> utilisation and enabling catalyzation of community work and outreach. But
>>> this is happening in a Wild-West manner with Lasso and branding iron, not
>>> in a decent way. What is needed would be  a kind of transitory covenant
>>> for me, and we - the community world - will have to learn the hard way to
>>> only go with the ones that are dedicated and set up for trustworthiness.
>>>
>>> I was assuming that there would be a much smoother transition strategy
>>> and
>>> not such a "shock therapy " and most likely I will keep only Global
>>> Villages Network on NING if at all. Then we would have to set up
>>> donations. I had a talk with Les Squires today, the mastermind from
>>> Colorado that built so many Transition sites, and they already run
>>> Transition US at a paid base, for 25 $ per months to keep it ad-free.
>>> This
>>> is based on donations.
>>>
>>> Its also no problem if we are doing this for a commercial client. Then we
>>> can simply charge the costs from the client. I did a project in Mixxt and
>>> received some money for it, and its totally OK in this case to give a
>>> share to the provider. What is not OK is to treat all the cases equally.
>>> The originator of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, is said to have
>>> said: "you cannot treat unequal things equally". Here comes my critique
>>> on
>>> NING.
>>>
>>> I thought that the owner and founder
>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen)  was more serious in his
>>> approach, having the financial resources to really do meaningful things
>>> and having supported meaningful non-primarily-profit projects like
>>> Netscape for some time. My trust was even reenforced when I tried to
>>> create my eleventh NING seing that there was a barrier of ten built in to
>>> avoid excess.
>>>
>>> I am also ready to pay for services that I value, that is not the
>>> question. I had a time I could afford to support Andrius and the Minciu
>>> Sodas Ecosystem, now the main parts of my resources and the social
>>> capital
>>> I can mobilize financewise are taken by Helmut Leitners Wikiservice for
>>> my
>>> Dorfwiki. (www.dorfwiki.org)
>>>
>>> Here comes the catch. I think that using the vendor-lock-in trick and not
>>> helping people to migrate elsewhere is a variant of blackmail. Helmuts
>>> Wikiservice also is befallen by the "Vendor Lock In Disease" but I
>>> suppose
>>> would be fair enough to provide users an exit solution (the raw content
>>> of
>>> a Hypertext system exported as textfile by the way is absolutely not
>>> useful, which I saw in the case of Gesunde Erde Gesunde Menschen, = a
>>> Wiki
>>> that Helmut turned off for the proponents did not raise resources to pay
>>> for = and they were not able to reconstruct it even when we offered them
>>> ProWiki hosting on our experimental server which for good reasons I do
>>> not
>>> want to activate yet).
>>>
>>> Of course in the NING case its absolutely clear that they will not
>>> provide
>>> any opportunity to port the content. Or at least that would be very
>>> unlikely. From a database programmers perspective providing portability
>>> also is a nightmare. And where should one go, by the way? To facebook?
>>> Unless another service comes up with a content grabber there will be no
>>> chance. And you have to ask people for permission. You would have had to
>>> think of it way ahead.
>>>
>>> Currently the resources to pay for all the online venues that we utilize
>>> are dwindling, and its getting harder year by year to support the
>>> respective standards. I am still trying to convince Helmut of the
>>> necessity of fair conditions and he is trying the same with me from his
>>> commercial point of view. We are still far from each other. But in a
>>> world
>>> of blind he seems like the one-eyed for me, and he really is passionate
>>> about our content and gives reliable support. I try to find an economic
>>> base together with him that would allow us to provide good and free
>>> services. I say good and free services, including reliability, empathy,
>>> stability and respect.
>>>
>>> But there is another side to all this.
>>>
>>> I think there comes a great deal of responsibility for hosting other
>>> peoples content, and this responsibility is a cultural one. Our tragedy
>>> is
>>> that capitalism is a system of organized irresponsibility on ALL sides,
>>> and we have to experience painfully the absence of truly meaningful
>>> solutions and cultural standards in an age of transition of value
>>> creation
>>> from the factory to the individual. We do not reward people for
>>> coworking,
>>> and very often they are not ready to pay when they are already thinking
>>> along. Les gave me the exampe of Adam Green who had a very vivid dBase2
>>> newsletter at a time with 10000 subscribers. When he wanted to charge for
>>> it only 3 people were willing to pay for it. Les thinks that 90% of the
>>> existing NING sites might just go under after the move to commercial.
>>> Consider the amount of human labor lost !!!
>>>
>>> Coming back to NING, there is an open question of migration that must be
>>> answered.
>>>
>>> I found some UNSATISFACTORY answers here:
>>>
>>> http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/the-best-most-reliable-and
>>>
>>> The author of that blog post, JP is hyping Spruz, but their advertising
>>> is
>>> horrible. I already did a test site.
>>>
>>> I think that our community could think allong what are the alternatives
>>> to
>>> construct a social network that is closed and open at the same time. If
>>> you want to help please meditate about the list given there and help us
>>> find out about commited providers.
>>>
>>> I also include neighboring lists like videobridgebuilders and
>>> p2p-research
>>>
>>> I dont really think that Facebook and Twitter are so necessary - they are
>>> like booths in front of the house, inviting people in, but there is yet
>>> an
>>> inside and an outside.
>>>
>>> Les suggests that we might think of Wiser Earth, and, for a very small
>>> financial contribution, to also consider meetup.com. Many groups are
>>> just
>>> meetups, not many have extensive online discussions, and they are very
>>> reasonable in user-fee ratio. 70% of Transition sites are mainly using
>>> NING as event announcer.
>>>
>>> There is a slight chance on the other hand that we will make a quantum
>>> leap and install one system of our choice on globalvillages.orgourselves.
>>> We have a yet unused server online with 1GB/sec connectivity!
>>>
>>> I also think of Andrius and his information ecosystem and wished he would
>>> make his standards of action more understandeable. I had a long
>>> discussion
>>> with him last night and it worries me how difficult it is to agree on
>>> terms of usage that make sense for all sides. Its hard to point to the
>>> Mornflake example when the goals of the campaigns were not reached,
>>> because of unrealistic expectations.
>>>
>>> I have worked out a whole plan for the Minciu Sodas Information Ecosystem
>>> with Andrius (I must say its one of the most complete maps of an
>>> Information Ecosystem ever conceived) , and some parts of this were
>>> depending on commercial services which is totally understandeable from
>>> the
>>> pragmatic point of view. This is still a yahoogroup and Andrius has found
>>> out tremendous ways of integrating an external view to yahoogroups that
>>> could easily be turned into a valuable million dollar service and yet be
>>> free to communities. But most likely Yahoo would prevent that. And
>>> Andrius
>>> would most likely not be interested in that either - because he wants
>>> everything that we do to directly foster a culture of independent
>>> thinkers. But I point to him as one of the people who have a lot of great
>>> capacities in the field. I wish someone would bail him out and they would
>>> be able to agree in a meaningful way to use this capacity by agreed
>>> standards.
>>>
>>> So here I am - still confused and thinking and trying to make sense and
>>> find ways.
>>>
>>> all the best
>>>
>>> Franz
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> p2presearch mailing list
>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 10:53:32 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:53:32 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] why NING after all?
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4e5de3b9aca0069519e06.af4f67a@reflex.at>
References: <y2uc8c84fad1004181420w7402c0bradad20de75c082f9@mail.gmail.com> 
	<fc.009725010af4e5de3b9aca0069519e06.af4f67a@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <k2mc8c84fad1004190153n8ffddf91i222bca04306e15f7@mail.gmail.com>

There are myriad social networks out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

and much has been written about features in them that are useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

but we are in danger of ending up with

Bonini's paradox <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox>

if we try and build in every feature we want on-ine to be in our network.

Better I feel is to look at 3 or 4 nets and just go for one. I am glad we
are doing this. At the moment I like Wiser Earth (Franz evaluated this) or
Appropedia (he has the contacts and the guys are positive about working with
us). BUT I don't want to spend months prevaricating and discussing.
Meanwhile people get bored and we loose the connections we have.

So a fast decsion is good. It should form part of a strategy (an information
strategy), NOT a Global Village Development Strategy (which I think some
want to bring in everything under one roof), Business Plan (which I feel
Helmut and Andrius would warm to). Such wider strategic aims should be
something the GIVE Institut focuses on. To my mind with 2 or 3 clear
projects:

VideoBridging (could be one project and would work well if the political
views are not focused on. By that I mean just like a wiki can be used by
anyone from  any belief, but the development of wiki technology is
independent of the actual beliefs. The same should apply for our VideoBridge
development in my view. We can focus on the community part and the technical
part seperately.) Then I think it can be useful for many and a stronger
collective mind raises efficacies.

Of course we may have our own orgs and organizational priorities - but that
is something else.

I hope this expedites the decision making process.

Ciaokka!

Markus

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> In a discussion with Markus I wrote up some points that I find essential
> about NING.
> .
> a) the potential to form groups of individuals that have thematic
> coherence; a very good balanced relation between community spirit and
> embeddedness in a larger space where individuals can move freely (you can
> bring your friends from other networks) , fractal in its approach that
> gives us sense of belonging. (*)
>
> b) in the framework of this:  the ability to request theme specific
> profiles and not just general profiles like in Facebook or Wiser Earth.
> This is very important to understand the degree and kind of motivation
> that people have from the beginning.
>
> b2) in the framework of this: the ability to add one level of fractal
> subgroups in a theme, with its own membership and discussion fora.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the videobridge NING, so we can identify our
> technological etc. capacities.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the globalvillages NING, so we can identify
> our research base
>
> c) a very good and fine tuned email notification system that allows me to
> leave the community and only be drawn there only when it is necessary.
>
> d) a very flexible way to upload files in thematic contexts. I lack that
> for example in even similar systems like MIXXT.
>
> I gladly learn from others how they feel about this. I think its important
> to think about ways of organizing cooperation online that are realistic
> and coherent.
>
> And I know tons of things are missing in NING. But I feel we need a kind
> of center or several types of centers to group other patterns around them,
> like Skype, GoogleDocs, Facebook,
>
> The natural centers for me are mailing list and social network.
>
> Franz
>
>
> (*) Wiser Earth is not fractal enough, it gives me endless lists of people
> and solutions and does not carry through even its internal order system
> which would provide ordered fractality. The internal order system is
> detailed but it lacks some categories.
> Also, WE is still extremely buggy - I tried a test network there also and
> it behaves weird. http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>
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From rsc at runtux.com  Mon Apr 19 16:23:52 2010
From: rsc at runtux.com (Ralf Schlatterbeck)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:23:52 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates free networks
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <20100419142351.GA20082@runtux.com>

I'm also crossposting to two of the original lists...
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 07:13:46PM +0200, Franz Nahrada wrote:
> 
> Here comes the catch. I think that using the vendor-lock-in trick and not
> helping people to migrate elsewhere is a variant of blackmail.

I also think so. But to be blackmailed there are two factors:
- somebody who wants to blackmail others
- a willing victim to go into the trap

You have the choice: Only use a service which at least provides a way to
get your data out.

But: The data alone is nothing without the software. So you need a
service where you can export the data *and* have open source software
available to do something with the extracted data.
But the first part is the crucial one: If you have only the data,
software can be written...

I've written in my blog: http://blog.runtux.com/2009/08/04/106/
(and talked @Manchester http://blog.runtux.com/2009/11/03/148/)
about the problem of vendor lock-in in "cloud computing" which is almost
the same as "web 2.0 services", namely software as a service (SAAS).

This boils down to what the open cloud initiative has defined as cloud
computing openness: http://www.opencloudinitiative.org/node/27
For open content you ideally want to go for a free cloud with open APIs,
open formats, open source (software), and open data.

Note that facebook is no alternative to ning: People have been thrown
off facebook for retrieving their data:
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/scoble_gets_thrown_off_facebook
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/data_portability_scoble_explains

But the choice has to be made by customers (or non-paying users) of
these services: Don't use something where you lock in your data. Or your
data might be at risk, or locked in, or dead.

Doc Searls, co-Author of Cluetrain Manifesto and Editor of Linux Journal
has written about this in a blog entry called "Silos End"
(http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/05/01/silos-end/):
"These problems cannot be solved by the companies themselves. Companies
make silos. It's as simple as that. Left to their own devices, that's
what they do. Over and over and over again."

Ideally there would be a standardized service and hosters agree to use
the same software (maybe customized in the appearance) to host services
for users. A hosting standard for collaboration software. Starting with
the services Facebook, Xing, etc. are offering today. We want an
interchange format that everybody can use, export, import.

I think a standard for these types of services will leave us with a
network of hosters. This -- in comparison to the status quo today --
will be a distributed system, maybe a peer-to-peer system, not some big
players locking in users. A common standard will hopefully keep the
players honest.

To get there: Lets try to evaluate replacement software for Ning. Work
on interchange formats. A suitable format for contact information is the
"Friend of a Friend" (FOAF) format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(software) endorsed by the W3C
(http://www.w3.org/), this is part of the "semantic web" effort:
http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/

When we get there, we've left Web 2.0 behind. The future is a
distributed system, lets call it Web 3.0.

Ralf
-- 
Dr. Ralf Schlatterbeck                  Tel:   +43/2243/26465-16
Open Source Consulting                  Fax:   +43/2243/26465-23
Reichergasse 131                        www:   http://www.runtux.com
A-3411 Weidling                         email: office at runtux.com
osAlliance member                       email: rsc at osalliance.com


From pam54321 at googlemail.com  Mon Apr 19 10:38:19 2010
From: pam54321 at googlemail.com (Pamela McLean)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:38:19 +0100
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates
	free networks
In-Reply-To: <w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
	<w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <j2r2b03c9cc1004190138g11d2e470h379475f610a25bfa@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Franz and Michel (and Andy and Ryan)

I am wondering if the work we have done (and plan to do) for
www.dadamac.netis relevant to your needs. I have been working with
Ryan and Andy on this,
as resources have allowed, for the past year or so. We are designing and
developing dadamac as the "online home" that is needed for the dadamac
community.

Our work may be relevant to you because, from the start I have been setting
dadamac.net up to serve an existing network (which I now call the "dadamac
community"). Like many networks it is not easy to define - but for the sake
of this email all you need to know is the nature of the problem we are
trying to address, and how far we have got. Then you can judge if our
foundations are useful for you to build on.

I need an online home for Dadamac for various reasons. We are involved in
many things (which are scattered around online and on the ground). I need
some way to bring them all together, make them more visible, make it easier
for "outsiders" to get involved with us, provide a kind of one-stop-shop for
all we are doing so that people can rummage around for themselves to see
what interests them. At the same time I need spaces which are for private
meetings etc. This is an oversimplification - there is much more - regarding
action groups and so on. Also there is stuff which is working already but
you cannot see as you are not a member of the relevant groups. In my mind I
can see the information flows that I am trying to enable, and the
relationships (people to people, people to information, information to
information) that I am trying to enable.

I needed to pull it all together, and I was not satisfied with what I
understood to be available through eixisting things like Facebook and NING.
If you visit Dadamac.net  you will only see it as far as it has got.  What
you nee to see is what is in my mind (which is what I would like you to be
able to have). But if we have the right conversation and involve Andy and
Ryan, they can explain better what we are doing, and how, and you can decide
if our foundations would be of use to you.

Andy - you will recognise that this is partly about the "CKK/CCK" thing you
and I have been talking about which I need to ask Ryan about implementing.
Plus our existing visible Drupal stuff, and our invisible Moodle stuff and
various things around the edges.

I imagine that either people could copy our framework and put in their own
info - or we could all do something using the existing framework.  I don't
know exactly. I just know that it would be sad to waste effort duplicating
things if the effort we have already put in would be useful to others.

Pamela



On 19 April 2010 07:17, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Franz,
>
> if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as solutions,
> you can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
> them,
>
> Michel
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at>wrote:
>
>> Hi Jeff, all!
>> Also doing a crosspost from globalvillages to other lists, because the
>> subject was brought up there also.
>>
>> The NING message really stroke me. Its not only the Global Villages
>> Network (globalvillages.ning.com) thats heavily depending on NING, but
>> also many other networks that I know of and many that I run myself. If I
>> had to pay for all of them I would go broke. They are fine and useful,
>> like the Transition Europe and Transition Austria Network and Power Down
>> and many other sites. They have brought a lot of people together and are
>> much more useful than Facebook. Facebook is good to attract people, but
>> its to noise and crowded to do in-depth discussions, store files and do
>> many other things.
>>
>> Yes, I think its another kind of wrong dependency of communities on
>> corporate strategies. Corporate business is more and more depending on the
>> utilisation and enabling catalyzation of community work and outreach. But
>> this is happening in a Wild-West manner with Lasso and branding iron, not
>> in a decent way. What is needed would be  a kind of transitory covenant
>> for me, and we - the community world - will have to learn the hard way to
>> only go with the ones that are dedicated and set up for trustworthiness.
>>
>> I was assuming that there would be a much smoother transition strategy and
>> not such a "shock therapy " and most likely I will keep only Global
>> Villages Network on NING if at all. Then we would have to set up
>> donations. I had a talk with Les Squires today, the mastermind from
>> Colorado that built so many Transition sites, and they already run
>> Transition US at a paid base, for 25 $ per months to keep it ad-free. This
>> is based on donations.
>>
>> Its also no problem if we are doing this for a commercial client. Then we
>> can simply charge the costs from the client. I did a project in Mixxt and
>> received some money for it, and its totally OK in this case to give a
>> share to the provider. What is not OK is to treat all the cases equally.
>> The originator of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, is said to have
>> said: "you cannot treat unequal things equally". Here comes my critique on
>> NING.
>>
>> I thought that the owner and founder
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen)  was more serious in his
>> approach, having the financial resources to really do meaningful things
>> and having supported meaningful non-primarily-profit projects like
>> Netscape for some time. My trust was even reenforced when I tried to
>> create my eleventh NING seing that there was a barrier of ten built in to
>> avoid excess.
>>
>> I am also ready to pay for services that I value, that is not the
>> question. I had a time I could afford to support Andrius and the Minciu
>> Sodas Ecosystem, now the main parts of my resources and the social capital
>> I can mobilize financewise are taken by Helmut Leitners Wikiservice for my
>> Dorfwiki. (www.dorfwiki.org)
>>
>> Here comes the catch. I think that using the vendor-lock-in trick and not
>> helping people to migrate elsewhere is a variant of blackmail. Helmuts
>> Wikiservice also is befallen by the "Vendor Lock In Disease" but I suppose
>> would be fair enough to provide users an exit solution (the raw content of
>> a Hypertext system exported as textfile by the way is absolutely not
>> useful, which I saw in the case of Gesunde Erde Gesunde Menschen, = a Wiki
>> that Helmut turned off for the proponents did not raise resources to pay
>> for = and they were not able to reconstruct it even when we offered them
>> ProWiki hosting on our experimental server which for good reasons I do not
>> want to activate yet).
>>
>> Of course in the NING case its absolutely clear that they will not provide
>> any opportunity to port the content. Or at least that would be very
>> unlikely. From a database programmers perspective providing portability
>> also is a nightmare. And where should one go, by the way? To facebook?
>> Unless another service comes up with a content grabber there will be no
>> chance. And you have to ask people for permission. You would have had to
>> think of it way ahead.
>>
>> Currently the resources to pay for all the online venues that we utilize
>> are dwindling, and its getting harder year by year to support the
>> respective standards. I am still trying to convince Helmut of the
>> necessity of fair conditions and he is trying the same with me from his
>> commercial point of view. We are still far from each other. But in a world
>> of blind he seems like the one-eyed for me, and he really is passionate
>> about our content and gives reliable support. I try to find an economic
>> base together with him that would allow us to provide good and free
>> services. I say good and free services, including reliability, empathy,
>> stability and respect.
>>
>> But there is another side to all this.
>>
>> I think there comes a great deal of responsibility for hosting other
>> peoples content, and this responsibility is a cultural one. Our tragedy is
>> that capitalism is a system of organized irresponsibility on ALL sides,
>> and we have to experience painfully the absence of truly meaningful
>> solutions and cultural standards in an age of transition of value creation
>> from the factory to the individual. We do not reward people for coworking,
>> and very often they are not ready to pay when they are already thinking
>> along. Les gave me the exampe of Adam Green who had a very vivid dBase2
>> newsletter at a time with 10000 subscribers. When he wanted to charge for
>> it only 3 people were willing to pay for it. Les thinks that 90% of the
>> existing NING sites might just go under after the move to commercial.
>> Consider the amount of human labor lost !!!
>>
>> Coming back to NING, there is an open question of migration that must be
>> answered.
>>
>> I found some UNSATISFACTORY answers here:
>>
>> http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/the-best-most-reliable-and
>>
>> The author of that blog post, JP is hyping Spruz, but their advertising is
>> horrible. I already did a test site.
>>
>> I think that our community could think allong what are the alternatives to
>> construct a social network that is closed and open at the same time. If
>> you want to help please meditate about the list given there and help us
>> find out about commited providers.
>>
>> I also include neighboring lists like videobridgebuilders and p2p-research
>>
>> I dont really think that Facebook and Twitter are so necessary - they are
>> like booths in front of the house, inviting people in, but there is yet an
>> inside and an outside.
>>
>> Les suggests that we might think of Wiser Earth, and, for a very small
>> financial contribution, to also consider meetup.com. Many groups are just
>> meetups, not many have extensive online discussions, and they are very
>> reasonable in user-fee ratio. 70% of Transition sites are mainly using
>> NING as event announcer.
>>
>> There is a slight chance on the other hand that we will make a quantum
>> leap and install one system of our choice on globalvillages.orgourselves.
>> We have a yet unused server online with 1GB/sec connectivity!
>>
>> I also think of Andrius and his information ecosystem and wished he would
>> make his standards of action more understandeable. I had a long discussion
>> with him last night and it worries me how difficult it is to agree on
>> terms of usage that make sense for all sides. Its hard to point to the
>> Mornflake example when the goals of the campaigns were not reached,
>> because of unrealistic expectations.
>>
>> I have worked out a whole plan for the Minciu Sodas Information Ecosystem
>> with Andrius (I must say its one of the most complete maps of an
>> Information Ecosystem ever conceived) , and some parts of this were
>> depending on commercial services which is totally understandeable from the
>> pragmatic point of view. This is still a yahoogroup and Andrius has found
>> out tremendous ways of integrating an external view to yahoogroups that
>> could easily be turned into a valuable million dollar service and yet be
>> free to communities. But most likely Yahoo would prevent that. And Andrius
>> would most likely not be interested in that either - because he wants
>> everything that we do to directly foster a culture of independent
>> thinkers. But I point to him as one of the people who have a lot of great
>> capacities in the field. I wish someone would bail him out and they would
>> be able to agree in a meaningful way to use this capacity by agreed
>> standards.
>>
>> So here I am - still confused and thinking and trying to make sense and
>> find ways.
>>
>> all the best
>>
>> Franz
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>
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From michelsub2004 at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 17:31:15 2010
From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com (Michel Bauwens)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:31:15 +0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates
	free networks
In-Reply-To: <j2ie30ddaf11004190535m8cf1091nccd3f7b598ec00cf@mail.gmail.com>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
	<w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>
	<j2ie30ddaf11004190535m8cf1091nccd3f7b598ec00cf@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <s2mc776300b1004190831w46278eb8qb6d675e61d971470@mail.gmail.com>

I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm overextended
myself,

the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?

as i said, the social features and threading were the added value, but
otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one taking care
of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles which
attracteda lot of discussion)

personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course, would be
happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,

this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year strategy
for movement building and funding,

I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,

what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list of our
sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes

Michel

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi Franz,
> >
> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as solutions,
> you
> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
> them,
> >
> > Michel
> >
> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
> replacement for Ning
>
> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around Drupal.
> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount of
> effort.
> --
> --
>  Sam Rose
> Forward Foundation
> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
> skype: samuelrose
> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
> http://forwardfound.org
> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
> http://localfoodsystems.org
> http://notanemployee.net
> http://communitywiki.org
> http://p2pfoundation.net
>
> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>



-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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From samuel.rose at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 17:33:07 2010
From: samuel.rose at gmail.com (Samuel Rose)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:33:07 -0400
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [globalvillages] Ning eliminates
	free networks
In-Reply-To: <s2mc776300b1004190831w46278eb8qb6d675e61d971470@mail.gmail.com>
References: <m2q6e5f50ad1004171106xfba3230egde104c10b6b1a69@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4a41e3b9aca0069519e06.af4b55c@reflex.at>
	<w2xc776300b1004182317hffe7349bh6f94555613e7b33f@mail.gmail.com>
	<j2ie30ddaf11004190535m8cf1091nccd3f7b598ec00cf@mail.gmail.com>
	<s2mc776300b1004190831w46278eb8qb6d675e61d971470@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <l2qe30ddaf11004190833zf5250f95j319e68b16b235bbe@mail.gmail.com>

I agree with Michel and Alex on what Michel talks about below. We can
discuss and plan first, then choose tools and build together. Makes
sense to me.



On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Michel Bauwens
<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm overextended
> myself,
>
> the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?
>
> as i said, the social features and threading were the added value, but
> otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one taking care
> of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles which
> attracteda lot of discussion)
>
> personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course, would be
> happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,
>
> this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year strategy
> for movement building and funding,
>
> I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,
>
> what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list of our
> sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes
>
> Michel
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi Franz,
>> >
>> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as solutions,
>> > you
>> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
>> > them,
>> >
>> > Michel
>> >
>> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
>> replacement for Ning
>>
>> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around Drupal.
>> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
>> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount of
>> effort.
>> --
>> --
>> Sam Rose
>> Forward Foundation
>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> skype: samuelrose
>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> http://forwardfound.org
>> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>> http://localfoodsystems.org
>> http://notanemployee.net
>> http://communitywiki.org
>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net ?- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
-- 
Sam Rose
Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://notanemployee.net
http://communitywiki.org
http://p2pfoundation.net

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan


From ms at ms.lt  Mon Apr 19 21:33:25 2010
From: ms at ms.lt (ms at ms.lt)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:33:25 +0300 (EEST)
Subject: [VBbuilders] Why and how work together?
Message-ID: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>

I'm glad for Franz Nahrada's and other letters at Global Villages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/ in response to the closing
down of the free-of-charge Ning services and what we might do next.

I wish that:
* We organize around people who have demonstrated successful leadership as
networkers working openly, whether its Suresh Fernando (Open Kollab),
Tiffany Von Emmel (Dreamfish), myself (Minciu Sodas), Michel Bauwens (P2P
Foundation), etc.   And actually double check what has been successful. 
So, for example, our Pyramid of Peace http://www.pyramidofpeace.net was
undeniably successful.  Franz Nahrada is a key person at Minciu Sodas, but
not a "hub" for "working openly", rather a person who destructively
"compartmentalizes" activity, which is to say, works in a closed,
untransparent manner.  Sam Rose is less of a "hub" and Alex Rollins even
less so.  How can we make progress if we don't acknowledge merit?
* We organize around social goals - for example, I'm interested in an
"economy of dreams".  Suresh (and Janet Feldman!) is interested in how to
organize millions of people to tackle big problems like world poverty. 
Tiffany Von Emmel is interested in a new kind of work cooperative. 
Whereas Franz was interested in Ning and Sam is interested in Elgg and
Alex in Drupal.  I think that's backwards and unhelpful.
* Let's organize around existing groups.  Tiffany already has an Elgg site
running at http://dreamfish.com  Why do we need more Elgg sites?  Or why
can't we build around existing ones in a more general way?  Why can't we
build on existing software teams like Dreamfish's?  Why couldn't we build
a team for Minciu Sodas, there was such need? I was very disturbed when
Franz walked away from years of free service I provided - without any
consultation - just set up a new server with Ralf - and what has he
gained?  Or pays 3,000 EUR per year to closed version of ProWiki, why? 
Why aren't we trying to share resources? (And thank you to Franz for
sharing in many other ways, I recently stayed 6 weeks with him in Vienna.)
* Let's look at technologies and see if there's any examples that actually
encourage us.  I can't think of a single Drupal website that impresses me
as a community.  Nor a Ning or Elgg site for that matter.  Certainly none
as strong as the Minciu Sodas community, which isn't all that strong.
* What are our personal goals, values, questions, concerns,
accountability, etc.?  Why are we wasting time with people who offer
"help" when we have no idea of their own dreams, values, endeavors, quests
nor they of ours?  That's why I believe it's important to start with a
cultural commitment as I'm trying to with "12 Questions"
http://www.12questions.org
* Let's make a technology strategy that can support a culture.  In a
Facebook/Twitter world it's no longer possible to develop a culture
through venues, there's no reason for people to be loyal to an online
space.  So the cultural commitment has to be I imagine a cultural code but
not a set of venues.

I'm very troubled that leadership is offered without credibility, and that
people like myself who have demonstrated credibility are not supported. 
How can we have a meaningful network then?

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms at ms.lt
+370 699 30003


> I agree with Michel and Alex on what Michel talks about below. We can
> discuss and plan first, then choose tools and build together. Makes
> sense to me.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Michel Bauwens
> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm
>> overextended
>> myself,
>>
>> the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?
>>
>> as i said, the social features and threading were the added value, but
>> otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one taking
>> care
>> of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles
>> which
>> attracteda lot of discussion)
>>
>> personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course,
>> would be
>> happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,
>>
>> this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year
>> strategy
>> for movement building and funding,
>>
>> I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,
>>
>> what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list of
>> our
>> sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens
>>> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Hi Franz,
>>> >
>>> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as
>>> solutions,
>>> > you
>>> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
>>> > them,
>>> >
>>> > Michel
>>> >
>>> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
>>> replacement for Ning
>>>
>>> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around Drupal.
>>> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
>>> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount of
>>> effort.
>>> --
>>> --
>>> Sam Rose
>>> Forward Foundation
>>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>>> skype: samuelrose
>>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>>> http://forwardfound.org
>>> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>>> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>>> http://localfoodsystems.org
>>> http://notanemployee.net
>>> http://communitywiki.org
>>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>>>
>>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> thank:
>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net ?-
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> Sam Rose
> Forward Foundation
> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
> skype: samuelrose
> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
> http://forwardfound.org
> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
> http://localfoodsystems.org
> http://notanemployee.net
> http://communitywiki.org
> http://p2pfoundation.net
>
> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> ambition." - Carl Sagan
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>




From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Mon Apr 19 21:43:26 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:43:26 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Why and how work together?
In-Reply-To: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>
References: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>
Message-ID: <l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com>

I see here Andrius exposing his thoughts openly. BUT I see that can be seen
as divisive and argumentative by some. I think that this call for
communities working together is actually a reflection of what we want in
real life.

Luckily I have a community where at times I can play a leadership r?le and
at others a supporting r?le. Pispala is good that way with solidarity a part
of how we are. I urge any of you to come and spend some time here with
projects I can help you find and you can see how that culture works.

Annette is doing this right now.

Markus

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:33 PM, <ms at ms.lt> wrote:

> I'm glad for Franz Nahrada's and other letters at Global Villages
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/ in response to the closing
> down of the free-of-charge Ning services and what we might do next.
>
> I wish that:
> * We organize around people who have demonstrated successful leadership as
> networkers working openly, whether its Suresh Fernando (Open Kollab),
> Tiffany Von Emmel (Dreamfish), myself (Minciu Sodas), Michel Bauwens (P2P
> Foundation), etc.   And actually double check what has been successful.
> So, for example, our Pyramid of Peace http://www.pyramidofpeace.net was
> undeniably successful.  Franz Nahrada is a key person at Minciu Sodas, but
> not a "hub" for "working openly", rather a person who destructively
> "compartmentalizes" activity, which is to say, works in a closed,
> untransparent manner.  Sam Rose is less of a "hub" and Alex Rollins even
> less so.  How can we make progress if we don't acknowledge merit?
> * We organize around social goals - for example, I'm interested in an
> "economy of dreams".  Suresh (and Janet Feldman!) is interested in how to
> organize millions of people to tackle big problems like world poverty.
> Tiffany Von Emmel is interested in a new kind of work cooperative.
> Whereas Franz was interested in Ning and Sam is interested in Elgg and
> Alex in Drupal.  I think that's backwards and unhelpful.
> * Let's organize around existing groups.  Tiffany already has an Elgg site
> running at http://dreamfish.com  Why do we need more Elgg sites?  Or why
> can't we build around existing ones in a more general way?  Why can't we
> build on existing software teams like Dreamfish's?  Why couldn't we build
> a team for Minciu Sodas, there was such need? I was very disturbed when
> Franz walked away from years of free service I provided - without any
> consultation - just set up a new server with Ralf - and what has he
> gained?  Or pays 3,000 EUR per year to closed version of ProWiki, why?
> Why aren't we trying to share resources? (And thank you to Franz for
> sharing in many other ways, I recently stayed 6 weeks with him in Vienna.)
> * Let's look at technologies and see if there's any examples that actually
> encourage us.  I can't think of a single Drupal website that impresses me
> as a community.  Nor a Ning or Elgg site for that matter.  Certainly none
> as strong as the Minciu Sodas community, which isn't all that strong.
> * What are our personal goals, values, questions, concerns,
> accountability, etc.?  Why are we wasting time with people who offer
> "help" when we have no idea of their own dreams, values, endeavors, quests
> nor they of ours?  That's why I believe it's important to start with a
> cultural commitment as I'm trying to with "12 Questions"
> http://www.12questions.org
> * Let's make a technology strategy that can support a culture.  In a
> Facebook/Twitter world it's no longer possible to develop a culture
> through venues, there's no reason for people to be loyal to an online
> space.  So the cultural commitment has to be I imagine a cultural code but
> not a set of venues.
>
> I'm very troubled that leadership is offered without credibility, and that
> people like myself who have demonstrated credibility are not supported.
> How can we have a meaningful network then?
>
> Andrius
>
> Andrius Kulikauskas
> Minciu Sodas
> http://www.ms.lt
> ms at ms.lt
> +370 699 30003
>
>
> > I agree with Michel and Alex on what Michel talks about below. We can
> > discuss and plan first, then choose tools and build together. Makes
> > sense to me.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Michel Bauwens
> > <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm
> >> overextended
> >> myself,
> >>
> >> the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?
> >>
> >> as i said, the social features and threading were the added value, but
> >> otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one taking
> >> care
> >> of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles
> >> which
> >> attracteda lot of discussion)
> >>
> >> personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course,
> >> would be
> >> happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,
> >>
> >> this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year
> >> strategy
> >> for movement building and funding,
> >>
> >> I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,
> >>
> >> what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list of
> >> our
> >> sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes
> >>
> >> Michel
> >>
> >> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens
> >>> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> > Hi Franz,
> >>> >
> >>> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as
> >>> solutions,
> >>> > you
> >>> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
> >>> > them,
> >>> >
> >>> > Michel
> >>> >
> >>> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
> >>> replacement for Ning
> >>>
> >>> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
> >>> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around Drupal.
> >>> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
> >>> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount of
> >>> effort.
> >>> --
> >>> --
> >>> Sam Rose
> >>> Forward Foundation
> >>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
> >>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
> >>> skype: samuelrose
> >>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
> >>> http://forwardfound.org
> >>> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
> >>> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
> >>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
> >>> http://localfoodsystems.org
> >>> http://notanemployee.net
> >>> http://communitywiki.org
> >>> http://p2pfoundation.net
> >>>
> >>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> >>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> >> thank:
> >> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >>
> >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
> >> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
> >>
> >> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> >> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >>
> >> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > --
> > Sam Rose
> > Forward Foundation
> > Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
> > Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
> > skype: samuelrose
> > email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
> > http://forwardfound.org
> > http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
> > http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
> > http://socialmediaclassroom.com
> > http://localfoodsystems.org
> > http://notanemployee.net
> > http://communitywiki.org
> > http://p2pfoundation.net
> >
> > "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> > ambition." - Carl Sagan
> > _______________________________________________
> > Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> > Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> > http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>
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From pam54321 at googlemail.com  Tue Apr 20 02:01:11 2010
From: pam54321 at googlemail.com (Pamela McLean)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:01:11 +0100
Subject: [VBbuilders] [globalvillages] why NING after all?
In-Reply-To: <fc.009725010af4e5de3b9aca0069519e06.af4f67a@reflex.at>
References: <y2uc8c84fad1004181420w7402c0bradad20de75c082f9@mail.gmail.com>
	<fc.009725010af4e5de3b9aca0069519e06.af4f67a@reflex.at>
Message-ID: <o2x2b03c9cc1004191701oca081925x8fc0d32e70219ce6@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Franz and everyone.

I am reluctant to enter into serious techie-speak discussions as my comfort
zone there is fairly limited - but I would like to share what I have been
developing with Andy and Ryan for Dadamac as some of our explorations may be
a useful addition to your discussions (and they can follow up later with
techie-speak).

First the background to my online community experiences, then the technology
I have used and some explanation of the thinking behind what has been used
so you can judge its relevance.

My personal "online community" history has been through the development of a
"three part" inter-related network made up of: an online network; a F2F
network in the UK; and a F2F network in Nigeria (and a little in East
Africa). This Internet enabled networking all began ten years ago when a
close friend in London persuaded me to get involved in a community project
that her Nigerian husband was starting "back home" in the ten local
governments of rural  Oke-Ogun in Oyo State SW Nigeria.

At that stage my computer knowledge related to using ICT in schools and my
Internet use was mainly email and some web-browsing. I had never heard the
term ICT for Development - and had no intention of ever visiting Africa.
However, that was ten years ago - and "life happens". I now have
considerable experience of ICT4D, of being in online communities, of
nurturing online relationships and communities, and pushing maximum
information back and forth online (and beyond the boundary of the online
network) to enable ongoing collaborations, shared learning and friendships
(with especial emphasis on collaborations between the "bandwidth rich" and
the "bandwidth poor - or bandwidth challenged"), and knowing first hand how
things do work and don't work in certain parts of Africa.

Technically the story went like this (written from a personal perspective,
but within a gradually growing network and aided by a variety of helpers and
collaborators, written in an approximate "starting to get important" date
order - but it all developed organically so things are really very
interwoven and overlapping. I have not included every detail, just enough to
give an idea of the gradual development and scope )

   - Emails
   - Emails with attachments
   - Other people's websites
   - Travelling in Nigeria helping to field test a prototype solar-driven,
   low-power, email-sending, computer with a touch screen (2004) organised
   through my Oge-Ogun network.
   - Other people's discussion lists and yahoo groups
   - Writing and moderating an online newsletter - for the Oke-Ogun project
   (thanks to Kabissa)
   - Getting my own yahoo email address (set up in a Nigerian cyber cafe)
   - More trips to Nigeria - always including non-formal ICT training
   - Setting up and moderating a  yahoo group - to support preparations for
   an ICT programme called Teachers Talking Fantsuam Foundation in North
   Central Nigeria
   - A wiki that grew from the information content generated by the yahoo
   group. (It was fine as an information warehouse  but not so good as an
   information self-service store.  My TT participants needed 'wiki guides' to
   help provide the relevant links. We needed something more friendly and
   better suited to the participants' needs)
   - Presenting ICT training courses on various occasions with the
   limitations of "the Nigerian factor" (also repeated in Kenya) - all
   contributing to my growing online network as well as my local knowledge/
   - The "friendly wiki" (This was my first introduction to how different
   people could relate to information in differently structured ways through a
   system of "permissions". It was a difficult learning curve as "content" and
   "purpose" ie me, and "technical capability" i.e. my patient Open Source
   mentor and collaborator, struggled to understand each other.)
   - Yahoo chat
   - Yahoo conferences
   - Developing a conceptual model for successful online collaboration
   (finding there were missing bits and improving it)
   - Using the model to initiate a collaboration which gave rise to
   People'sUni.org
   - Skype
   - Explorations with audio-grahic conferencing
   - Experiments with digital cameras (video and photos) and with putting
   information online
   - Regular (once a month) use of the Minciu Sodas worknets chat room
   - Experimenting with Moodle (A leap forward from the 'friendly wiki". I
   could consider the individual interests of people and allocate them to
   appropriate Special Interest Groups. There can be different permissions for
   different people within the group. This means for example that some people
   can only see "tidy, ready-to-use" information, and others can also see messy
   "work in progress', some have information sent out to them, others only see
   information if they choose to visit the information store, and others are
   able to help stock the information store - or even just leave things there
   for their own future use, which is quite handy if you don't have computer of
   your own to rely on - especially a few years back before data sticks were
   around. Forums can be used for emails between SIG members. )
   - Skyping
   - Website that I was responsible for generating (Useful experience, but,
   as it turned out, not permanent - one of my "eek!" learning experiences)
   - Blogs, for communication, as an information store to point to in
   emails, and as a temporary web-presence
   - Joining with John Dada to form Dadamac
   - Joining various NING groups
   - Joining facebook
   - Joining other social media/web2.0 groups
   - More setting up and moderating of yahoo and google groups
   - Use of google docs and spreadsheets in our extended virtual office.
   - Weekly use of typed online conferencing (first yahoo, then skype) for
   regular weekly Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meetings
   - Treating UK-Nigeria team as one of our Moodle SIGs and using Moodle to
   send out agendas, store relevant documents, keep meeting archives etc.
   - Drupal as an alternative way of generating a website (setting up
   www.dadamac.net on Drupal with help from Ryan of Equitas and Andy
   Broomfield of NewMediaThinking
   - Adding blogs to Dadamac.net
   - Various experiments in collaboration, especially related to roles of
   teachers and learners now we have the Internet.
   - Start of experiments with containers and forums on Drupal - to be
   followed up later - just a learning experience so far, no real migration of
   our community activities to that space.
   - Continuing to develop use of Moodle - and using that for some community
   activities that I hope to make more visible later by moving over to Drupal
   - Use of twitter
   - Setting up a NING group as a learning experience for the Dadamac Social
   Media SIG
   - Discussions with Andy about CCK and development of better Drupal
   enabled discussion groups and "community happenings"  at
www,dadamac.net(CCK = Content Construction Kit and is what allows you
to set up different
   content types / fields sets etc.)
   - Experimenting with posterous as a mid-point between private emails and
   letters written as "open letters" for my blog

As I read the discussions about people's NING groups and why they want them
it seems to me that there is a considerable overlap with Dadamac's interests
and efforts so far, and so there might be beneficial opportunities for
collaboration. Dadamac recognises various kinds of "currency" for win-win
collaborations - money, time, skills, knowledge,information, trust-building,
etc. It is small, flexible and independent so is open to new ideas,
strategies and projects.

Pamela

Pamela McLean
UK-Africa Connections
Dadamac Ltd - Knowledge Brokers
www.dadamac.net

On 19 April 2010 07:43, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

>   In a discussion with Markus I wrote up some points that I find essential
> about NING.
>
> a) the potential to form groups of individuals that have thematic
> coherence;
>
a very good balanced relation between community spirit and
> embeddedness in a larger space where individuals can move freely (you can
> bring your friends from other networks) , fractal in its approach that
> gives us sense of belonging. (*)
>
> b) in the framework of this: the ability to request theme specific
> profiles and not just general profiles like in Facebook or Wiser Earth.
> This is very important to understand the degree and kind of motivation
> that people have from the beginning.
>
> b2) in the framework of this: the ability to add one level of fractal
> subgroups in a theme, with its own membership and discussion fora.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the videobridge NING, so we can identify our
> technological etc. capacities.
> *** I wanted us to do this in the globalvillages NING, so we can identify
> our research base
>
> c) a very good and fine tuned email notification system that allows me to
> leave the community and only be drawn there only when it is necessary.
>
> d) a very flexible way to upload files in thematic contexts. I lack that
> for example in even similar systems like MIXXT.
>
> I gladly learn from others how they feel about this. I think its important
> to think about ways of organizing cooperation online that are realistic
> and coherent.
>
> And I know tons of things are missing in NING. But I feel we need a kind
> of center or several types of centers to group other patterns around them,
> like Skype, GoogleDocs, Facebook,
>
> The natural centers for me are mailing list and social network.
>
> Franz
>
> (*) Wiser Earth is not fractal enough, it gives me endless lists of people
> and solutions and does not carry through even its internal order system
> which would provide ordered fractality. The internal order system is
> detailed but it lacks some categories.
> Also, WE is still extremely buggy - I tried a test network there also and
> it behaves weird. http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages
>
>  __._,_.___
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>  [image: Yahoo! Groups]<http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJlcDRvMDBoBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzEzMDU3NDE3BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDMTI3MTY2MjM4OQ-->
> Switch to: Text-Only<globalvillages-traditional at yahoogroups.com?subject=Change+Delivery+Format:+Traditional>,
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> Unsubscribe<globalvillages-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe>? Terms
> of Use <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>
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> __,_._,___
>
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From michelsub2004 at gmail.com  Tue Apr 20 13:38:03 2010
From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com (Michel Bauwens)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:38:03 +0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] Why and how work together?
In-Reply-To: <l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>
	<l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g2vc776300b1004200438scb742be7r5fa19017295008f5@mail.gmail.com>

I'm equally unsure that attacking people in person who have put much effort
in building a broader global movement (franz, sam, alex) is really helpful,
and also, I think human ego precludes everybody following the same movement,
whether it is andrius' or p2p-f or whatever,

so it is looking for commonalities in our approaches, looking for common
needs, and technology proceeds from that, not the other way around,

each of our approaches appeals to different personalities and segments of
people, though of course, historical events and sudden scale-explosion of a
particular initiative, will eventually coalesce forces into particular
social organisations, but p2p, broadly considered, is still too emergent and
ahead of its time to achieve such scale.

So where we are is with this flourishing of myriad initiatives, each trying
to re-invent the wheel and duplicating efforts,

BUT, we can use each other's differential strengths to rally around certain
initiatives for certain goals, and around others for other goals,

people who are spiritually inclined would join andrius, those interested in
building a knowledge commons would rally around the p2p-foundation (if I had
my wish <g>), and those with tech-platform ideas around sam's forward
foundation,

at this stage, this is unavoidable,

Michel




On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 2:43 AM, Mark Petz <ravenwyn at gmail.com> wrote:

> I see here Andrius exposing his thoughts openly. BUT I see that can be seen
> as divisive and argumentative by some. I think that this call for
> communities working together is actually a reflection of what we want in
> real life.
>
> Luckily I have a community where at times I can play a leadership r?le and
> at others a supporting r?le. Pispala is good that way with solidarity a part
> of how we are. I urge any of you to come and spend some time here with
> projects I can help you find and you can see how that culture works.
>
> Annette is doing this right now.
>
> Markus
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:33 PM, <ms at ms.lt> wrote:
>
>> I'm glad for Franz Nahrada's and other letters at Global Villages
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/ in response to the closing
>> down of the free-of-charge Ning services and what we might do next.
>>
>> I wish that:
>> * We organize around people who have demonstrated successful leadership as
>> networkers working openly, whether its Suresh Fernando (Open Kollab),
>> Tiffany Von Emmel (Dreamfish), myself (Minciu Sodas), Michel Bauwens (P2P
>> Foundation), etc.   And actually double check what has been successful.
>> So, for example, our Pyramid of Peace http://www.pyramidofpeace.net was
>> undeniably successful.  Franz Nahrada is a key person at Minciu Sodas, but
>> not a "hub" for "working openly", rather a person who destructively
>> "compartmentalizes" activity, which is to say, works in a closed,
>> untransparent manner.  Sam Rose is less of a "hub" and Alex Rollins even
>> less so.  How can we make progress if we don't acknowledge merit?
>> * We organize around social goals - for example, I'm interested in an
>> "economy of dreams".  Suresh (and Janet Feldman!) is interested in how to
>> organize millions of people to tackle big problems like world poverty.
>> Tiffany Von Emmel is interested in a new kind of work cooperative.
>> Whereas Franz was interested in Ning and Sam is interested in Elgg and
>> Alex in Drupal.  I think that's backwards and unhelpful.
>> * Let's organize around existing groups.  Tiffany already has an Elgg site
>> running at http://dreamfish.com  Why do we need more Elgg sites?  Or why
>> can't we build around existing ones in a more general way?  Why can't we
>> build on existing software teams like Dreamfish's?  Why couldn't we build
>> a team for Minciu Sodas, there was such need? I was very disturbed when
>> Franz walked away from years of free service I provided - without any
>> consultation - just set up a new server with Ralf - and what has he
>> gained?  Or pays 3,000 EUR per year to closed version of ProWiki, why?
>> Why aren't we trying to share resources? (And thank you to Franz for
>> sharing in many other ways, I recently stayed 6 weeks with him in Vienna.)
>> * Let's look at technologies and see if there's any examples that actually
>> encourage us.  I can't think of a single Drupal website that impresses me
>> as a community.  Nor a Ning or Elgg site for that matter.  Certainly none
>> as strong as the Minciu Sodas community, which isn't all that strong.
>> * What are our personal goals, values, questions, concerns,
>> accountability, etc.?  Why are we wasting time with people who offer
>> "help" when we have no idea of their own dreams, values, endeavors, quests
>> nor they of ours?  That's why I believe it's important to start with a
>> cultural commitment as I'm trying to with "12 Questions"
>> http://www.12questions.org
>> * Let's make a technology strategy that can support a culture.  In a
>> Facebook/Twitter world it's no longer possible to develop a culture
>> through venues, there's no reason for people to be loyal to an online
>> space.  So the cultural commitment has to be I imagine a cultural code but
>> not a set of venues.
>>
>> I'm very troubled that leadership is offered without credibility, and that
>> people like myself who have demonstrated credibility are not supported.
>> How can we have a meaningful network then?
>>
>> Andrius
>>
>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>> Minciu Sodas
>> http://www.ms.lt
>> ms at ms.lt
>> +370 699 30003
>>
>>
>> > I agree with Michel and Alex on what Michel talks about below. We can
>> > discuss and plan first, then choose tools and build together. Makes
>> > sense to me.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Michel Bauwens
>> > <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm
>> >> overextended
>> >> myself,
>> >>
>> >> the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?
>> >>
>> >> as i said, the social features and threading were the added value, but
>> >> otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one taking
>> >> care
>> >> of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles
>> >> which
>> >> attracteda lot of discussion)
>> >>
>> >> personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course,
>> >> would be
>> >> happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,
>> >>
>> >> this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year
>> >> strategy
>> >> for movement building and funding,
>> >>
>> >> I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,
>> >>
>> >> what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list of
>> >> our
>> >> sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes
>> >>
>> >> Michel
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens
>> >>> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>> > Hi Franz,
>> >>> >
>> >>> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as
>> >>> solutions,
>> >>> > you
>> >>> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working on
>> >>> > them,
>> >>> >
>> >>> > Michel
>> >>> >
>> >>> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
>> >>> replacement for Ning
>> >>>
>> >>> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
>> >>> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around Drupal.
>> >>> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
>> >>> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount of
>> >>> effort.
>> >>> --
>> >>> --
>> >>> Sam Rose
>> >>> Forward Foundation
>> >>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> >>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> >>> skype: samuelrose
>> >>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> >>> http://forwardfound.org
>> >>> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>> >>> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>> >>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>> >>> http://localfoodsystems.org
>> >>> http://notanemployee.net
>> >>> http://communitywiki.org
>> >>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>> >>>
>> >>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> >>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> >> thank:
>> >> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>> >>
>> >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>> >> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>> >>
>> >> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> >> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>> >>
>> >> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > --
>> > Sam Rose
>> > Forward Foundation
>> > Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> > Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> > skype: samuelrose
>> > email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> > http://forwardfound.org
>> > http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>> > http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>> > http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>> > http://localfoodsystems.org
>> > http://notanemployee.net
>> > http://communitywiki.org
>> > http://p2pfoundation.net
>> >
>> > "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> > ambition." - Carl Sagan
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Videobridgebuilders mailing list
>> > Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
>> > http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>> >
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
>> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
>> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>>
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Tue Apr 20 21:40:49 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:40:49 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] [OK] Re:  Why and how work together?
In-Reply-To: <o2t277880411004201036xfef71b00xd071fd22378eea85@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt> 
	<l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com> 
	<g2vc776300b1004200438scb742be7r5fa19017295008f5@mail.gmail.com> 
	<o2t277880411004201036xfef71b00xd071fd22378eea85@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <x2vc8c84fad1004201240r3439952o8d8a135eb9285dbb@mail.gmail.com>

Actually when I joined the NING I had already considered Wave a better
option. As did at least one other participant in Vienna, but Franz and
others were insistent that NING was the way to go.

I let it ride - we want outcomes  NOT arguments.

Some of these questions here seem tangential to the real issue. THAT is NING
is not free, where do we move the content and networks so that they still
function.

Already we are working in communities of interests. If anything there is a
lack of strategic planning with a long term goal (3 yr and 5yr plans) and so
instead we end up with a piece meal project approach that does not lead to a
manual or real pattern language to do anything.

Have a strategic plan for outcomes and the tools will come as those working
will need to find them to do the job. Right now people are looking at pieces
not holistically.

My own view is that appropedia is a good way to go as the guys there have
the right sentiments and there is the right culture for openness (I guess
you all know that Google Wave was developed in Australia - RIGHT? I guess
you have all checked out Appropedia AND seen that its in Australia - RIGHT?
And I guess you have seen that the guys behind it are Engineers Without
Borders - RIGHT?

Ciaokka!

Markus

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:36 PM, Sam Putman <atmanistan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:38 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > So where we are is with this flourishing of myriad initiatives, each
> trying
> > to re-invent the wheel and duplicating efforts,
> >
> > BUT, we can use each other's differential strengths to rally around
> certain
> > initiatives for certain goals, and around others for other goals,
> >
> >
> > at this stage, this is unavoidable,
> >
> > Michel
>
> This is an invisible consequence of poor protocol design on the part
> of the Internet community.
>
> Back in the (g)olden days, the trend was to solve a communication
> challenge by designing a protocol that was robust, easy to implement,
> and would therefore let any server anywhere implement the protocol.
> Such are email, usenet, IRC, and HTML, and the suite of lower-level
> and supporting technologies.
>
> bittorrent is an example of a protocol from the more modern era which
> was developed correctly. It is inevitable, unstoppable, and
> democratic. These protocols can succumb to poor design (as usenet
> largely has) but when executed well they are what let us organize in a
> peer-to-peer fashion.
>
> Internet existed in competition with many walled gardens: Compuserve,
> Prodigy, AOL and the countless bulletin boards. All are gone, or
> assimilated into the collective; for the most part, the work that went
> into making them, the content they hosted, is lost.
>
> Facebook may look 'too big to fail' but AOL once bought Time-Warner. A
> walled garden is simply not an Internet-compatible solution; what's
> needed is a Social Networking Protocol, something that works in a
> fine-grained way to let someone define their own social network across
> the entire Internet, without prejudice of provider, and interact with
> that as they move from node to node.
>
> Wave, from my perusal of it, has (more than) what it takes to do this.
> Modern Internet standards tend to have the relatively obese quality of
> Wave, with XML as the shining example. Wave has a long way to go
> before we can set up a Wave server as fast and easily as we can throw
> up Apache now, but when that time comes, Wave may well have what it
> takes.
>
> In the meantime, we'll muddle along with forums, Drupal sites, and a
> thousand and one passwords. However, if we keep in mind the kind of
> architecture we actually need, it will be faster and easier to
> eventually get it.
>
> cheers,
> -Sam Putman.
>
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From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Tue Apr 20 21:41:45 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:41:45 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] Fwd: ning discussion - ask for your help
In-Reply-To: <4BCDD646.6080805@googlemail.com>
References: <4BCDD646.6080805@googlemail.com>
Message-ID: <w2sc8c84fad1004201241y766c7b9cj63aceffd64d716ae@mail.gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Annette Leeb
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 7:28 PM
Subject: ning discussion - ask for your help



Hi Markus,

could you please help me, as I cann't send mails with my office-mailaddress,
which is the subscribed one, I'd like to ask you, if you could send it as an
reply to Michel's last respond to the group in my name? If not, just let me
know, no problem. A.

------

Hey,

I agree with Markus and Michel, it's no tolerable way to deal with this -
the chance to figure out clearly, who wants / needs / offers what in the
network - in attacking people personally.

So, I didn't a profound analysis of mentioned issues, individuals
(representing a group, initiative), tools in the ongoing mail conversation,
but how about using e.g. a wiki for this discussion. For me, a mailinglist
becomes very soon confusing, I loose overview, which is a pitty because of
all the good suggestions, and the good will most of the contributions to
come to a practicable solution. Which may mean to separate issues and
interests into different sub-circles using different tools for their
purposes. As we do anyway.

Other suggestions to find a way to a more structured conversation, which
makes it easier to appriciate difference in the group without loosing the
connecting aspects?

Greetings, A.
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From S.D.Thompson at tees.ac.uk  Tue Apr 20 23:29:18 2010
From: S.D.Thompson at tees.ac.uk (Thompson, Steve)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:29:18 +0100
Subject: [VBbuilders] APRES NING
In-Reply-To: <v2hc776300b1004190146w108e1446k6c4d7469d2e4dab8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C7F3DB3E.304C%s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk>

Hi All,

Sorry for crossposting but I've seen lot of traffic on the demise of Free Nings and what the alternatives might be. There seems to be lots of alts and of course folks have their preferences. I don't think there is a "like for like" alternative to Ning and I think I'll be cautious in future about getting hooked into any free provider in future.

I guess the rule of thumb is the purpose at hand. A 30 day project or a 6 week course might be ok to try one of the Ning lookalikes and not care about longevity. For anything else we probably want to go self-hosted. Like I said we all have our preferences and I like Wordpress so I'm looking at BuddyPress. I have an instance running without too much hassle. I had a slight detour to the forum and had to add a line of code so it's probably not a total non geek option (yet) but it seems OK. My instance is here http://www.tvcm.co.uk/community and I have a plugin ready to go to import my NING membership.

All good fun eh?

Steve T


--
Steve Thompson
Community Media Manager
Institute of Digital Innovation
Teesside University
M -  07795 826953
E -  s.d.thompson at tees.ac.uk
W - www.steve-thompson.org.uk


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From ravenwyn at gmail.com  Tue Apr 20 23:36:34 2010
From: ravenwyn at gmail.com (Mark Petz)
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:36:34 +0300
Subject: [VBbuilders] APRES NING
In-Reply-To: <C7F3DB3E.304C%s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk>
References: <v2hc776300b1004190146w108e1446k6c4d7469d2e4dab8@mail.gmail.com> 
	<C7F3DB3E.304C%s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <u2oc8c84fad1004201436ib190c3d7m90e798172a1fc7f2@mail.gmail.com>

Plug in sounds perfect -- and reminds me of dodgy turbo chargers

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Thompson, Steve
<S.D.Thompson at tees.ac.uk>wrote:

>  Hi All,
>
> Sorry for crossposting but I?ve seen lot of traffic on the demise of Free
> Nings and what the alternatives might be. There seems to be lots of alts and
> of course folks have their preferences. I don?t think there is a ?like for
> like? alternative to Ning and I think I?ll be cautious in future about
> getting hooked into any free provider in future.
>
> I guess the rule of thumb is the purpose at hand. A 30 day project or a 6
> week course might be ok to try one of the Ning lookalikes and not care about
> longevity. For anything else we probably want to go self-hosted. Like I said
> we all have our preferences and I like Wordpress so I?m looking at
> BuddyPress. I have an instance running without too much hassle. I had a
> slight detour to the forum and had to add a line of code so it?s probably
> not a total non geek option (yet) but it seems OK. My instance is here
> http://www.tvcm.co.uk/community and I have a plugin ready to go to import
> my NING membership.
>
> All good fun eh?
>
> Steve T
>
>
> --
> Steve Thompson
> Community Media Manager
> Institute of Digital Innovation
> Teesside University
> M -  07795 826953
> E -  *s.d.thompson at tees.ac.uk
> *W - www.steve-thompson.org.uk
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>
>
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From michelsub2004 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 21 01:35:13 2010
From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com (Michel Bauwens)
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:35:13 +0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] [p2p-research] [OK] Re: Why and how work together?
In-Reply-To: <o2lfc39995d1004200610r596ef5beo6d926c93faa0c760@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>
	<l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com>
	<g2vc776300b1004200438scb742be7r5fa19017295008f5@mail.gmail.com>
	<o2lfc39995d1004200610r596ef5beo6d926c93faa0c760@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <w2zc776300b1004201635jac4bb7f5z351adaaba7d7f05a@mail.gmail.com>

HI matt,

you say: Map people, groups, goals, strategies, and resource and their
relationships using standard data formats and a distributed database. (a lot
of work has already been done on this across a number of the participants
here)

we're using open source wiki's and blogs essentially, which I think work on
these principles

twitter and facebook are used, for their reach, not for gathering info,
that's a political decision,

that leaves the status of delicious .. because of its overriding ease of use
..

what's missing is an open source collectivising/networking of the people
around the effort ..

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Matt Cooperrider <mattcooperrider at gmail.com
> wrote:

> It's a great question Andrius, and one worth answering.
>
> But it's way too big a question for one person to answer. Would folks on
> this list first try to answer this question instead?:
>
> *** What do we need to do in order to be able to answer the question "why
> and how work together?" ***
>
> Here's mine:
>
> Map people, groups, goals, strategies, and resource and their relationships
> using standard data formats and a distributed database. (a lot of work has
> already been done on this across a number of the participants here)
>
> - Matt
>
>   On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:38 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>>   I'm equally unsure that attacking people in person who have put much
>> effort in building a broader global movement (franz, sam, alex) is really
>> helpful, and also, I think human ego precludes everybody following the same
>> movement, whether it is andrius' or p2p-f or whatever,
>>
>> so it is looking for commonalities in our approaches, looking for common
>> needs, and technology proceeds from that, not the other way around,
>>
>> each of our approaches appeals to different personalities and segments of
>> people, though of course, historical events and sudden scale-explosion of a
>> particular initiative, will eventually coalesce forces into particular
>> social organisations, but p2p, broadly considered, is still too emergent and
>> ahead of its time to achieve such scale.
>>
>> So where we are is with this flourishing of myriad initiatives, each
>> trying to re-invent the wheel and duplicating efforts,
>>
>> BUT, we can use each other's differential strengths to rally around
>> certain initiatives for certain goals, and around others for other goals,
>>
>> people who are spiritually inclined would join andrius, those interested
>> in building a knowledge commons would rally around the p2p-foundation (if I
>> had my wish <g>), and those with tech-platform ideas around sam's forward
>> foundation,
>>
>> at this stage, this is unavoidable,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 2:43 AM, Mark Petz <ravenwyn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I see here Andrius exposing his thoughts openly. BUT I see that can be
>>> seen as divisive and argumentative by some. I think that this call for
>>> communities working together is actually a reflection of what we want in
>>> real life.
>>>
>>> Luckily I have a community where at times I can play a leadership r?le
>>> and at others a supporting r?le. Pispala is good that way with solidarity a
>>> part of how we are. I urge any of you to come and spend some time here with
>>> projects I can help you find and you can see how that culture works.
>>>
>>> Annette is doing this right now.
>>>
>>> Markus
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:33 PM, <ms at ms.lt> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm glad for Franz Nahrada's and other letters at Global Villages
>>>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/ in response to the
>>>> closing
>>>> down of the free-of-charge Ning services and what we might do next.
>>>>
>>>> I wish that:
>>>> * We organize around people who have demonstrated successful leadership
>>>> as
>>>> networkers working openly, whether its Suresh Fernando (Open Kollab),
>>>> Tiffany Von Emmel (Dreamfish), myself (Minciu Sodas), Michel Bauwens
>>>> (P2P
>>>> Foundation), etc.   And actually double check what has been successful.
>>>> So, for example, our Pyramid of Peace http://www.pyramidofpeace.net was
>>>> undeniably successful.  Franz Nahrada is a key person at Minciu Sodas,
>>>> but
>>>> not a "hub" for "working openly", rather a person who destructively
>>>> "compartmentalizes" activity, which is to say, works in a closed,
>>>> untransparent manner.  Sam Rose is less of a "hub" and Alex Rollins even
>>>> less so.  How can we make progress if we don't acknowledge merit?
>>>> * We organize around social goals - for example, I'm interested in an
>>>> "economy of dreams".  Suresh (and Janet Feldman!) is interested in how
>>>> to
>>>> organize millions of people to tackle big problems like world poverty.
>>>> Tiffany Von Emmel is interested in a new kind of work cooperative.
>>>> Whereas Franz was interested in Ning and Sam is interested in Elgg and
>>>> Alex in Drupal.  I think that's backwards and unhelpful.
>>>> * Let's organize around existing groups.  Tiffany already has an Elgg
>>>> site
>>>> running at http://dreamfish.com  Why do we need more Elgg sites?  Or
>>>> why
>>>> can't we build around existing ones in a more general way?  Why can't we
>>>> build on existing software teams like Dreamfish's?  Why couldn't we
>>>> build
>>>> a team for Minciu Sodas, there was such need? I was very disturbed when
>>>> Franz walked away from years of free service I provided - without any
>>>> consultation - just set up a new server with Ralf - and what has he
>>>> gained?  Or pays 3,000 EUR per year to closed version of ProWiki, why?
>>>> Why aren't we trying to share resources? (And thank you to Franz for
>>>> sharing in many other ways, I recently stayed 6 weeks with him in
>>>> Vienna.)
>>>> * Let's look at technologies and see if there's any examples that
>>>> actually
>>>> encourage us.  I can't think of a single Drupal website that impresses
>>>> me
>>>> as a community.  Nor a Ning or Elgg site for that matter.  Certainly
>>>> none
>>>> as strong as the Minciu Sodas community, which isn't all that strong.
>>>> * What are our personal goals, values, questions, concerns,
>>>> accountability, etc.?  Why are we wasting time with people who offer
>>>> "help" when we have no idea of their own dreams, values, endeavors,
>>>> quests
>>>> nor they of ours?  That's why I believe it's important to start with a
>>>> cultural commitment as I'm trying to with "12 Questions"
>>>> http://www.12questions.org
>>>> * Let's make a technology strategy that can support a culture.  In a
>>>> Facebook/Twitter world it's no longer possible to develop a culture
>>>> through venues, there's no reason for people to be loyal to an online
>>>> space.  So the cultural commitment has to be I imagine a cultural code
>>>> but
>>>> not a set of venues.
>>>>
>>>> I'm very troubled that leadership is offered without credibility, and
>>>> that
>>>> people like myself who have demonstrated credibility are not supported.
>>>> How can we have a meaningful network then?
>>>>
>>>> Andrius
>>>>
>>>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>>>> Minciu Sodas
>>>> http://www.ms.lt
>>>> ms at ms.lt
>>>> +370 699 30003
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > I agree with Michel and Alex on what Michel talks about below. We can
>>>> > discuss and plan first, then choose tools and build together. Makes
>>>> > sense to me.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Michel Bauwens
>>>> > <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >> I'm personally a least effort guy, but that mostly because I'm
>>>> >> overextended
>>>> >> myself,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> the first thing is asking ourselves, but what it is for?
>>>> >>
>>>> >> as i said, the social features and threading were the added value,
>>>> but
>>>> >> otherwise, the Ning site underperformed, and I was the only one
>>>> taking
>>>> >> care
>>>> >> of admin tasks (but thanks to sepp especially for his forum articles
>>>> >> which
>>>> >> attracteda lot of discussion)
>>>> >>
>>>> >> personally, I won't necessarily miss Ning that much, but of course,
>>>> >> would be
>>>> >> happy for others to really build the p2p foundation as a movement,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> this is what is appealing in alex' proposals, to devise a 3-year
>>>> >> strategy
>>>> >> for movement building and funding,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I'm of course really for it, but it is beyond my individual effort,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> what I'm doing with Sam, through civicCRM is devising a mailing list
>>>> of
>>>> >> our
>>>> >> sympathizers, for some more specialized outreach purposes
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Michel
>>>> >>
>>>> >> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>
>>>> >> wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Michel Bauwens
>>>> >>> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>>>> >>> wrote:
>>>> >>> > Hi Franz,
>>>> >>> >
>>>> >>> > if you want to know what the p2p network is trying to find as
>>>> >>> solutions,
>>>> >>> > you
>>>> >>> > can talk to Sam, who had some proposals for us, and we're working
>>>> on
>>>> >>> > them,
>>>> >>> >
>>>> >>> > Michel
>>>> >>> >
>>>> >>> My suggestion was that we can use ELGG http://elgg.org/ as a
>>>> >>> replacement for Ning
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> There's currently lots of discussion, offers and ideas at
>>>> >>> p2presearch at listcultures.org as well, mostly centered around
>>>> Drupal.
>>>> >>> Drupal's great, but I still stick by my suggestion and offer of ELGG
>>>> >>> as the best 1 to 1 replacement for Ning, requiring the least amount
>>>> of
>>>> >>> effort.
>>>> >>> --
>>>> >>> --
>>>> >>> Sam Rose
>>>> >>> Forward Foundation
>>>> >>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>>>> >>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>>>> >>> skype: samuelrose
>>>> >>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>>>> >>> http://forwardfound.org
>>>> >>> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>>>> >>> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>>>> >>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>>>> >>> http://localfoodsystems.org
>>>> >>> http://notanemployee.net
>>>> >>> http://communitywiki.org
>>>> >>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>>>> >>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> --
>>>> >> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>>> Think
>>>> >> thank:
>>>> >> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>> >>
>>>> >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>>>> >> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>>>> >>
>>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens
>>>> ;
>>>> >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > --
>>>> > Sam Rose
>>>> > Forward Foundation
>>>> > Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>>>> > Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>>>> > skype: samuelrose
>>>> > email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>>>> > http://forwardfound.org
>>>> > http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
>>>> > http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
>>>> > http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>>>> > http://localfoodsystems.org
>>>> > http://notanemployee.net
>>>> > http://communitywiki.org
>>>> > http://p2pfoundation.net
>>>> >
>>>> > "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>>>> > ambition." - Carl Sagan
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > Videobridgebuilders mailing list
>>>> > Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
>>>> > http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Videobridgebuilders mailing list
>>>> Videobridgebuilders at globalvillages.org
>>>> http://globalvillages.org/mailman/listinfo/videobridgebuilders
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
>> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>   This is a message from the OpenKollab Google Group located at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/openkollab?hl=en
>> To post to this group, send email to openkollab at googlegroups.com
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Matt Cooperrider
> Strategic Account Manager, Collabforge pty ltd
> collaboration ~ mass collaboration ~ social software
> + 61 (0) 468 954 779 ~ 239 Rathdowne St, Carlton, Melbourne 3053
> collabforge.com ~ twitter.com/mattcoop
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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From atmanistan at gmail.com  Tue Apr 20 19:36:33 2010
From: atmanistan at gmail.com (Sam Putman)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:36:33 -0700
Subject: [VBbuilders] [OK] Re:  Why and how work together?
In-Reply-To: <g2vc776300b1004200438scb742be7r5fa19017295008f5@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3701.84.15.148.237.1271705605.squirrel@pastas.elnet.lt>
	<l2tc8c84fad1004191243ga17f9d6bn4338fd093291f170@mail.gmail.com>
	<g2vc776300b1004200438scb742be7r5fa19017295008f5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <o2t277880411004201036xfef71b00xd071fd22378eea85@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:38 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So where we are is with this flourishing of myriad initiatives, each trying
> to re-invent the wheel and duplicating efforts,
>
> BUT, we can use each other's differential strengths to rally around certain
> initiatives for certain goals, and around others for other goals,
>
>
> at this stage, this is unavoidable,
>
> Michel

This is an invisible consequence of poor protocol design on the part
of the Internet community.

Back in the (g)olden days, the trend was to solve a communication
challenge by designing a protocol that was robust, easy to implement,
and would therefore let any server anywhere implement the protocol.
Such are email, usenet, IRC, and HTML, and the suite of lower-level
and supporting technologies.

bittorrent is an example of a protocol from the more modern era which
was developed correctly. It is inevitable, unstoppable, and
democratic. These protocols can succumb to poor design (as usenet
largely has) but when executed well they are what let us organize in a
peer-to-peer fashion.

Internet existed in competition with many walled gardens: Compuserve,
Prodigy, AOL and the countless bulletin boards. All are gone, or
assimilated into the collective; for the most part, the work that went
into making them, the content they hosted, is lost.

Facebook may look 'too big to fail' but AOL once bought Time-Warner. A
walled garden is simply not an Internet-compatible solution; what's
needed is a Social Networking Protocol, something that works in a
fine-grained way to let someone define their own social network across
the entire Internet, without prejudice of provider, and interact with
that as they move from node to node.

Wave, from my perusal of it, has (more than) what it takes to do this.
Modern Internet standards tend to have the relatively obese quality of
Wave, with XML as the shining example. Wave has a long way to go
before we can set up a Wave server as fast and easily as we can throw
up Apache now, but when that time comes, Wave may well have what it
takes.

In the meantime, we'll muddle along with forums, Drupal sites, and a
thousand and one passwords. However, if we keep in mind the kind of
architecture we actually need, it will be faster and easier to
eventually get it.

cheers,
-Sam Putman.


From f.nahrada at reflex.at  Fri Apr 23 14:52:59 2010
From: f.nahrada at reflex.at (Franz Nahrada)
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:52:59 +0200
Subject: [VBbuilders]
	=?iso-8859-1?q?=5BNetwork=5D_An_Idea_for_Community_C?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?ultural_Showcase_Exchange_at_=09TeleCentres?=
In-Reply-To: <4BD18B9E.7010109@voxworld.coop>
References: <4BD18B9E.7010109@voxworld.coop>
Message-ID: <fc.009725010af923883b9aca000deaba0a.af92a36@reflex.at>



I post this answer also to two other mailing lists because its suitable.
Please do not crosspost the answers unless you really think its meaningful
and you are member of all groups involved.


Richard O'Farrell <richard.ofarrell at voxworld.coop>  -
http://www.voxworld.coop/ - wrote:

>Dear fellow Telecentre-Europe members, 
>We are travelling through a period of great change together. We have
>witnessed the emergence of Information, Knowledge, Smart and Innovation
>Economies at various stages since late 90's. All fellow members have
>crossed the Digital Divide together. Telecentres have struck a cord at
>the heart of Communities the world over, and they are now asking for more
>- to use what they learn so as to make greater impact on their lives,
>working at home with online opportunities. Its only a small step away
>from the point to which Telecentres have already reached. ICT was and is
>the starting gate for Enterprises and we have seen Social Enterprise
>Centres grow around Telecentres. 

Thanks Richard!

I totally agree. telecentres are less the places that put us in initial
touch with technology, although this function was important at times and
might still persist - Telecenters should NOW be the places that put us in
touch with each other!

Thats simple and logically consistent: the more the workplace is at home,
the more we need a place to do our vital networking, learning, exploring,
socializing!!

This is why we at GIVE have focussed on the teclecenter/re as "village"
center/re and from the early nineties on looked at the possible relations
between Telecenter and community.

We see a convergence of patterns here: no matter where we start from, we
will end up in a similar configration.

We need 
* Local centers that are places of meeting and learning (and access)
* an awareness of these local centers that they are not just "telecenters"
but in servidce to their locality, especially to people that are
"isolated" by telehomework
* a new focus on the opportunity of part time working  ("Coworking) in
telecenters, marvelously demonstrated by the Hub movement
*  all that sums of in social entrepreneurship: having community
development in mind when doing business.

There are great opportunities that I am chasing personally 
* Create a virtual network of learning places and connect their best
events that focus on improving community life
* use digital? video as a very attractive means to stream the best local
ideas everywhere. free like in cooking pot and fair use!

We have completed a workshop on this in Vienna in January this year and we
are ready to expand our community:

http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?VideoBridge/GrundtvigWorkshop

It would be great to team up with telecentres and repeat and improve this
workshop. We are still planning a preparatory visit this summer for future
endavours.
>
>
>Within Europe we are fortunate to, perhaps more visibly, possess an
>especially rich, exciting and priceless Culture within every Community,
>one which we should and now can choose to Showcase in the surrounds of
>our fellow Telcentres members. Communities can showcase aspects of their
>Culture, tell their story to the world through Trade rather than Aid now;
>be that through Hospitality Centres like Coffee Shops, Internet Cafes,
>Hotels etc or elsewhere where Telecentres operate. These showcases would
>offer Special Value in latent demand products and services to those using
>the Telecentres in a reciprocal arrangement with their fellow members
>cross-border through a Community Cultural Showcase Exchange. The world
>needs healing more than ever now, and this is a time of very great
>once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for every Community to empower and
>advance. 

Yes we can create a community powered unified network of enormous market
impact and strength - but:

There is also a third choice beyond Trade or Aid, and that is Share; there
is an increasing numbers of knowledge resources that can hepl us to
intensify and augment each local community experience and if we decide to
address that in a sharing way, an enorm,ous opportunity unfolds.

If we use Trade, Aid and Share accordingly and wisely, we can create some
real change.

>This is most likely to be best achieved when Communities of every ilk
>come together virtually to obtain a better understanding of each other,
>while at the same helping to meet each other's needs. I believe that the
>potential for impact on lives of everyone involved is enormous,
>especially with arrival because of technology advances of virtual
>offices, virtual workshops and virtual new eBusiness models such as those
>operated by VoxWorld.Coop, where you can do it yourself and build your
>own interactive Community Brand.

Remember: we can also live on doing less and sharing the work of
developing content. Not everything has to be done with more efforts, more
shops, more brands and more marketing outreach. In contrary: We can decide
to target and focus into local life support systems and create a "virtuos
cycle" away from market dependency.

at least this is what I and GIVE stand for.

And  still even this de-monetisation is a gigantic task that makes also
lots of business opportunities.

I welcome resonance.

we are gathering in two NINGs and due to the suicidal announcement of NING
of going "Premium only" we will have to change locations in the not too
distant future.

plese use them still to conect to us

http://globalvillages.ning.com/   --Research about the highest potentials
of local communities in the age of digital technology and virtual
cooperation.

http://videobridge.ning.com/
* building a bridge between learning communities
* enabling groups in small and remote locations to participate in a wealth
of education
* creating a network of sharing content and learning-in-parallel
* creating an ever growing repository of learning material.
* motivate participants to contribute excellent lectures and events.

hope to see you there!


all the best


Mag. Franz Nahrada
GIVE research association - Laboratory for Global Villages
Jedleseer Strasse 75
1210 Wien
Tel. 01-2787801
Mob. 0676 9133961
http://www.dorfwiki.org
http://www.globalvillages.info
>