Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] miscellaneous items of interest

pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: pcplantdb

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] miscellaneous items of interest
  • Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 11:40:59 +0000

Stephanie Gerson wrote:

hi yalls,

Cleaned out my inbox today and have a few miscellaneous thoughts/
questions:

1. A new version of Creative Commons is available at http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/. Do we want to use it?

In theory yes. A few technical Q's as the pfaf dataset is officially released under 1.0 license, not insurmontable.

2. Considering that we are creating an online informational resource, we should get in touch with online Permaculture classes. I know Dan Hemenway teaches one – do any of you know of others? (Or should I post a message about this on the Permaculture list at some point?)

Dan Hemingway is definatly worth contacting. A few years back he was thinking of getting some interns to input data into the DB. However we should hold back on this for a while. We need to get things into a state where its posible to enter data before widening the net too much.

That set we could use input from as many people as posible as to schema issues. Probably a post to various mailing lists. But again not quite yet. We need some system to collate these thoughs. It could be done by email. My preference is for a wiki which allows some user input, wiki as colaborative document.

3. I think I asked this before, but… We are currently using a modified version of the PFAF dataset. Do we intend to keep this database as a part of PIW, and embellish it with relationship-oriented data?

I'd say yes. It is a good body of work representing several man years of work. Much of it can be reworked to fit a relationship structure.

> Or, do we
intend to completely replace this dataset with relationship-oriented data? Clearly, we’ll still have info on individual plants – but to what extent will information be individual vs. relational?

Yep wheres the data coming from? Hopefully Heidi will be able to contribute some.

4. Finally, so far we’ve been engaging the Permaculture community, but I’d like to broaden our efforts to include market farmers practicing/
making the transition to sustainable agriculture – both for purposes of grant eligibility (i.e. SARE) and for making PIW truly valuable in promoting sustainable agriculture. As a part of this effort, I spoke with Steve Diver today and we had an interesting conversation. He told me that he doesn’t see PIW satisfying the needs of market farmers practicing/attempting to transition to sustainable agriculture, at least not those in this country – considering that they are crunched for time, must make end meet, and have little leeway for experimenting with guilds. However, many are aware of Natural Systems Agriculture being practiced at the Land Institute. So, I have some questions for us:
‡ Is PIW (with its current vision) valuable to market farmers practicing sustainable agriculture (similar questions to those I asked regarding the Whole Systems Foundation)?
‡ If not, how can we make it useful (this might simply require a shift in terminology – from “guild” to “intercropping”)? Or, is this
something that doesn’t worry us, as we are not (necessarily) catering to market farmers?

‡ And if so, how do we include them in the design process? Steve suggested the possibility of user testing specifically for farmers, and I think this is a great idea. Perhaps we could create a testing prototype, put a call out to market farmers, and solicit feedback specifically from them. Or Johns, would you rather keep testing general? I do think it would be helpful for PIW and grant apps to have testing specifically for farmers.

I'd say Steve is probably right. The data we have got is good for some purposes, but not really well targeted towards the needs of commercial growers. I don't really know what their requirements are, but it is a good question to ask.

Also, this might be a good topic to introduce to the PIW list.

Indeed.

Laters

Rich





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page