pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

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?

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?)

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?  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?  

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.

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

That’s it for now,
*Stephanie



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Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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