pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

ok now I really do have to say holy guacamole!

con rajas y frijoles y arroz Mexicano…which is what I’ll be eating 
tonight because I’m at my parents’ for dinner (did I ever mention my 
parents are from Mexico and I grew up with holy guacamole as a staple in 
my diet?  Anyways…)

So.  Chad.  I am with you on the frustration.  Hopefully I can offer an 
inspiring synthesis from my bungalow in the French Riviera which will 
help to de-stagnify (my new word) this process of deciding on a platform:

-ZOPE/IBIBLIO – ay caramba.   
Lawrence, buddy, friend, amigo…you gotta stop changing your mind!  Your 
posts are an emotional roller-coaster for me (really) – first I think 
you’re with us, then I think you’re taking a hike, then you’re back,
then 
you’re leaving, and now you want to split the group up?!  Can you please 
be more consistent, for the sake of my sanity?  Por favor?  

I’ve been trying to be as respectful and accommodating as possible, but 
your latest post really unnerved me:

“It looks like Chad is stuck on developing HG on John H.'s Zope machine 
with the prospect of paying for commercial hosting somewhere and the 
remote possibility of ibiblio running Zope and moving there at that time, 
maybe, maybe he hopes to host somewhere other than there permanently.”
Chad doesn’t seem stuck on anything!  As far as I can tell, Chad has been 
the most honest, expressive, and willing to compromise out of all of us!

“Stephanie's silence is very curious.”
Hey, I’m enjoying the bungalow life…what can I say?  No seriously, I just

moved, started a new job, and am looking for a home – so my life is a bit 
hectic at the moment.  But I wouldn’t call me silent.

“I am beginning to wonder exactly where Chad, Stephanie and John S. plan 
to take our project.”
What?!  This is very upsetting to read.

Especially upsetting after Loving the ideas you presented in previous 
posts about: 

“canvas the pc list and the sanet-mg for quick donations of $$ to buy 
ibiblio a Zope server, should the group decide to go the Zope-on-ibiblio 
route - maybe Stephanie could find a small grant that we could access for 
this purpose as well." 

and 

“Well, just thought I'd suggest that some of our $10K be used to buy a 
Zope machine for ibiblio (a good investment for the future - saving us 
more than the machine cost in long term hosting fees and maintenance 
costs) and use most of the rest of the 10$K to pay for part of the 
programming costs with the deficit coming later (RSN) as donations and 
grants roll in. I will give $250 to kick things off if this option is 
decided on; ibiblio's contribution can be considered a tangible donation 
also and they might be able to attach a dollar amount/year to that for 
promotional purposes to encourage like contributions. What do you think 
of this idea?”

and especially

“If we go ahead and buy a Zope machine for ibiblio then we can start from 
scratch there and will never encounter hosting, maintenance or hardware 
costs ever again.  We will then be able to handle and benefit from 
rapidly increased usage as we become more widely known; submissions of 
material to the database by many of those users should parallel this. We 
would then be in a good position to ask for and  receive more funding and 
piecemeal donation via PayPal or direct payment. I think we can expect a 
more rapid rise in traffic and earlier supplemental funding if we start 
on ibiblio on a machine we purchase and donate to them and we should be 
able to reliably cover the deficit in programming costs incurred during 
development. We can launch a fundraising campaign concurrently with 
permaculture.info. going online. There may be good prospects for grants 
this summer and fall. A request for donations can be posted to the sanet-
mg forum and the permaculture list. What about a SARE grant? tobacco 
settlement money? a low interest loan from the Permaculture Credit Union 
used to buy the  Zope machine? (Scott: Is this even a remote 
possibility?). What about canvassing computer dealers or manufacturers 
for equipment donations: IBM, Dell, Intel.”

To help resolve the platform issue, let’s all consider what our 

          * * *ideal*scenario* * * 

would be.  I previously assumed that our ideal scenario was ZOPE on 
Ibilbio – am I correct?  Because if so, let’s manifest it!  No stopping 
short of the dreams, folks, go for the gold!  (hey, it’s the Olympics 
ok?)  And in order to do so, we could employ the suggestions that 
Lawrence (thank you) mentioned above, and I welcome more.  (Lawrence, can 
you please be more explicit?  What are SARE grants and tobacco settlement 
money?)  If we do choose to pursue this scenario, and buy a dedicated 
server for Ibiblio, I see 3 main categories of fund-seeking strategies:
 
a) Dedicate the, or a portion of the, Threshold grant towards this end – 
This is up to everyone, because it would be coming out of our wages.  I 
am fine with that, but I understand dissatisfaction with this strategy, 
and we must discuss.

b) Dedicate new grant proposals towards this end – This would be fine, 
but the money wouldn’t come in for a .w.h.i.l.e.  So as I see it, this 
ain’t much of an option, considering we want to start now.

c) Seek alternative sources of funding to allocate towards this end – 
This might be our best bet.  We can ask for donations on PC lists (which 
might be difficult if we have nothing to show at this point…!) or pursue 
some of the suggestions Lawrence raised.  And what if we make our use of 
ZOPE contingent on the success of this strategy?  If we raise enough 
money to donate a server to Ibiblio, we’ll go with ZOPE and Ibiblio.  And 
otherwise?  Um…don’t wanna think about that right now ;)

Entonces, I am assuming that ZOPE on Ibiblio is our ideal.  Perhaps I am 
assuming incorrectly.  So I encourage everybody to dream up their ideal 
platform + hosting scenario and respond with it.  Forget feasibility for 
now – let’s first establish a common goal in this regard, and then we’ll

consider feasibility.  I don’t know if this is the most effective way to 
approach this impasse, but envisioning the ideal always helps me make 
tough decisions…

Here are some considerations:
‡ Rich pointed out that “one advantage of sticking to MySQL for the plant

database” is “that basically every language can communicate relatively 
painlessly with it.”  However, Chad responded that “Zope can integrate 
with every one of 'Apache, MySQL, PHP, HTML, XML, Javascript, Perl, PHP', 
it runs on Linux and fills the role of a CGI script.  I don't think that 
the tools provided by the Zope platform are limiting in anyway.”  If ZOPE 
does communicate relatively painlessly as every language MySQL can, then 
this would not be one advantage of using MySQL.

‡ Chad wrote, “I'm not super confident that unlimited funding will shower

us from now on.  I was totally surprised that we got the funding we did.  
In my head this may be all we get ever and I want to make the most of it.  
I also think we can generate something with this funding that will turn
heads and generate more funding.  I think that using Zope adds a lot to 
the possibility of creating something meaningful with this money.”

Si.  Claro.  I completely agree with you.  But your last sentence 
definitely implicates this discussion – why would ZOPE add to the 
possibility of creating something meaningful?  Would using ZOPE help us 
get more grants (because we are doing something innovative, and hg might 
become a model for similar projects)?

‡ Richard wrote that to be “convinced of Zope,” he “would need a few 
things
1) A hello world with objects
2) Some idea of the class hierarchy”
And Chad responded, “For 1) what did you think of the Boring product link 
I posted?  For 2) do you mean you want to see a design first?  Why?”  
Rich – perhaps you ought to ask Chad specific questions, he might be able 
to “convince” you…

‡ Finally, Lawrence asked a fantastic question (so fantastic, in fact, 
that I can’t believe I hadn’t asked it myself): “Curious about the pc 
relationships/connections between objects graphical mapping idea 
discussed in some depth before that is important to Stephanie and to 
satisfying the terms of the grant. Can building HG (the software) with 
this feature be done easier or faster or better with Zope rather than 
MySQL/Eden/etc?”  

And Chad responded, “There really isn't a way to display dynamic graphics 
in a web browser short of using Java as in TouchGraph.  One of the big 
time saving issues with using Zope is that we don't have to fully 
normalize our database schema.  The object model is so different that 
this sort of process isn't necessary.  My first thought when I started to 
seriously consider the possibility of using an RDBMS (MySQL) instead of 
Zope is that wow, we are going to need 200-300 tables here.”  Huh?  

So, what I would Love to know is, which platform is more conducive to 
representing maps of relationships – or, Permaculture information webs?  
I deem this a highly critical factor in determining our ideal…

Let's try to reach an agreement that we are all satisfied with.


-NAME – A decision I had thought that we had made.  Darn.  Well, we’re 
almost there.  So now the vote is between Permaculture Information Web 
and Open Permaculture Project.  Please vote.  Might as well - it’s less 
stressful than the whole Ibiblio/ZOPE thang and it’ll make you feel 
accomplished.


-THRESHOLD AND BUDGET– 
Rich, I am responding to your post but this is for everyone:

“Just wondering if there has been any further news from Threshold 
Foundation. Do we know when the money is coming in, are there any pre-
contitions before we get the loot. etc...”
I contacted them by phone a few weeks ago, but never heard back.  I will 
contact them again.  Scott, did you ever speak with them?

“As to the 10-20% overheads, I've little idea as to how we are going to 
spend the other 80% we don't really need that much else.”
I have cut and pasted the budget from the grant proposal below so you can 
review how we proposed to allocate our funds.

“The one thing I do really think we could do with is money for a meeting.  
Some admin costs, some books, maybe some consulting fees (getting someone 
who knows about guilds would be cool).”
We included these sorts of costs in the proposal, and I agree that a 
meeting would certainly help!  Once again, check the budget below.

“In the UK we have a difference between capital projects (where the money 
goes on buying a bunch of tools/buildings etc) and revenue projects 
(money for wages). Different funders specialise in different aspects.”
Can you please recommend any funders which specialize in purely revenue 
projects?  That would be fantastic.

“Personal feeling is that Jim will realise that we are mainly in the 
revenue domain.”
It’s not about Jim realizing anything – we submitted a budget along with 
our proposal and we are supposed to stick to it.  He doesn’t monitor how 
projects allocate their funds anyway, he is on the panel which reviews 
grant proposals and assesses their merit.

“BTW has their been any recent communication from Jim (I might easily 
have missed something).”
No, but now that I am back in the bay area, I do plan on meeting with him 
in person.  He sounds like a fascinating person!

Related, Lawrence wrote “Stephanie's statement that our grant (future 
ones too?) allows only a small percentage to be used for wages. This 
needs to be changed early on or HG will go nowhere.”  
Hey hey now, this isn’t up to me!  As I already said, it is the 
foundations themselves that usually only allow 10-20% of funding to be 
allocated towards wages.  The only way this can “be changed,” as you put 
it, is if we seek funding from foundations which specialize in revenue 
projects (as Rich described) or ask for an exception because this project 
primarily involves intellectual property (as Chad described), at least in 
future grant proposals.  Ok?


-PROJECT PLAN – I spent so long responding to this post, that I never got 
‘round to updating the project plan.  Apologies.  Will do so soon, but 
our first priority is definitely resolving this platform issue.  And will 
also read the Haystack article (thanks, Chad). 


-MISCELLANEOUS – 
‡ Lawrence asked if he could create a public forum on Ibiblio.  What will 
the public forum be for?  And if you wanted me to wait to send a post to 
the PC lists, why are we creating a public forum?  (Or am I confused 
about its function?)

‡ Chad brought up a great point, “In a less focused way, I hope HG will 
both accommodate and encourage a lot of brainstorming.”  Actually, this 
is something Jim and I discussed extensively – the potential for this 
project to create truly effective mechanisms for online collaboration and 
information exchange.  And, this is something which Jim’s own 
organization, Planetwork (http://www.planetwork.net/index.html), is 
heavily involved with – and probably contributed to his interest in hg.  
So yes, I agree that we are part of a larger effort to develop mechanisms 
for e-brainstorming (akk, awful combination of words but you know what I 
mean), and perhaps serve a model for other virtual communities seeking to 
do the same.  I also included this intention in our grant proposals. 

‡ Lawrence asked, “what proportion of the total body of information made 
available by HG would be non-HG proprietary resources gleaned from 
outside sources?”  Hmmm, good question.  I would like hg to be rich 
information-wise, without becoming monstrous, un-navigable, and without 
re-inventing the wheel.  I assume we will become more systematic and 
deliberate in deciding when to include the actual information and when to 
offer links to “outside resources” as we build hg, but I would rather 
integrate ourselves within the existing informational infrastructure than 
try to make hg the wal-mart of Permaculture knowledge.  Whoa.  You get 
the idea.  (Sorry, it’s getting late and I’m becoming less articulate.  
Although that was a rhyme…kind of.)

‡ Ok, I am super embarrassed to be asking this question so late in the 
game…but can someone please teach me (in plain English, o espanol) how to 
respond directly to threads instead of always creating my own subject – 
here’s the catch – from the archives?  Because I stopped receiving 
pcplantdb posts in emails, and simply read and respond through the 
archives, but I can find no way of responding directly to posts/threads.  
Is there a way to do this on the archives, or is it only possible if I 
receive emails and then respond directly to them?

+ - + - +

To sum up this monstrously long post, hey folks - this is supposed be 
enjoyable, inspiring, challenging, exciting…remember?  I feel that we’ve 
assembled a group of highly talented and dedicated individuals, and I 
think we should work together.  No more threats or ultimatums, please 
Lawrence?  Think Permaculture.  Think creating meaningful and successful 
relationships between system components, in this case, the individuals in 
this group.  Think maximizing flow.  Think transforming problems into 
solutions.  Think of all those principles you’ve learned in your PDC 
courses or Permaculture Design Manuals and apply them right here.  Now.  
To us.  And the way we interact. 

Perhaps this is the initial challenge, the rite of passage, testing our 
ability to create a resource of Permaculture relationships by testing our 
ability to practice Permaculture within our own relationships.  Maybe I’m 
trying to justify this situation, maybe I’m just being cheesy, maybe I’m 
delirious and should go to sleep…but in the same way that the medium must 
match the message, the :M:E:T:H:O:D:O:L:O:G:Y: must match the message as 
well.

ya dig?

Bueno.  Ya me voy a dormir.  The next posts I read better make me smile…

peace(!!!!!!!!!!!)
*s

p.s. Don’t forget about the budget below if you want to check it out.

p.p.s. If this post seemed a bit schizophrenic, I wrote part of it while 
I was wide awake before the holy guacamole and part of it while I was 
tired and full after the holy guacamole.

================

Following is the budget from the Threshold grant proposal.  Please note: 
things might have changed since!  

Project Budget
To note: considering that this project intends to promote widespread 
cultivation of Permaculture principles, we recognize that we must apply 
these principles to our grant seeking and project development processes.  
Accordingly, we have deliberately practiced Permaculture principles in 
devising our budget costs—namely, using available resources whenever 
possible, stacking functions, building relationships with potential 
collaborators, and ultimately, insert this project within an existing 
‘guild,’ in this case, of Permaculture resources, to achieve symbiosis 
between all components.  And in so doing, we have eliminated many costs 
from our previous budget, including: web hosting/server, which the 
Ibiblios.org site has agreed to provide free of charge; project-
participant meeting, which we have combined with dissemination/
presentation/conference costs (conduct meeting while attending a 
Permaculture convention, instead of as an isolated event); marketing/
publicity, which we plan to perform ourselves through magazine articles, 
email, and related listservs and forums; and perhaps most significant, 
web-development software, which we plan to use open-source versions of, 
such as MySQL, PHP, Zope, and Touchgraph.  With that, our remaining 
budget costs include:

Equipment/Technology 
License costs of datasets/photo galleries—access to 1,000+ images on The 
Plants For A Future photo gallery       $800
Website—Domain name     $10-$15 per year
Total   $815

Travel Expenses
Project-participant meeting & Dissemination/Presentation/Conference 
visits—for all project participants to simultaneously convene in person 
and present/gather information at Permaculture conference
        $1,000 total travel cost
$700 total conference fee
$1700 total per event (plan 2 per year)
Research—conducting on-site research/interviews         $700/year
Total   $2,400

Research Tools
Books   $30
Journal Subscriptions   $30
Total   $60

Wages (participant biographies attached)
Stephanie Gerson—Project Coordination/Administration, Public Relations, 
HCI/UI Design, Interactive Education Design     $15/hour
Richard Morris—Programming, Web Development     $15/hour
John Schinnerer—User-testing, Whole Systems Design      $15/hour
Lawrence London—Webspace, Web Design, Web Maintenance, Wikis/Weblogs/
Mailing Lists (virtual project development/communication tools), Subject 
Matter Expert   $15/hour
Paula Westmoreland—Subject Matter Expert (USDA Zones 3,4,5), Database 
Development/Maintenance $15/hour
Robin Williamson—Subject Matter Expert for Australia, Outreach to 
indigenous/low-income populations in Kempsey, Australia $15/hour
Total   $95,000

Communications
Telephone Service       $5/month/person 
Internet Service        $25/month/person
Total   $2,160


     Total Budget Cost $100,435 


+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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