pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Stephanie Gerson wrote:

> I spent many hours applying for funding, and deferred a large majority of
> costs because I wanted funding to go to you and to implementation.  So I'd
> appreciate it if you didn't take your frustration out on me.  Chad, if you'd
> like to be paid, you should just bill.  And if you'd rather not work on the
> project at all, please just be honest.

You're asking for feedback so here's mine for what its worth:

> August 10, 2004            Permaculture Institute  Administrative fee      
800.00
> October 20, 2004   Chad Knepp              Programming             495.00
> January 7, 2005            Stephanie Gerson        Project Coordination    
1,000.00
> July 26, 2005              Chad Knepp              Programming             
630.00
> January 18, 2006   Chad Knepp              Programming             765.00

Maybe you could have accepted $500 instead of $1000. Excpet for $800 for PI I would have preferred that the remainder of 
the $10000 go to Chad at the start so he would have know what to expect. The rest of us should have offered to work
for free.

The Permaculture Database is an old idea that was discussed in the PC list 
for many years, off and on.
It evolved into a Permaculture plant database largely through Rich's interest 
in the project-to-be
and partly from the existence of PFAF (which used to be online in an Access 
DB with lovely pictures -
that showed what a PCPDB _could become_). Enter Chad with Eden and an 
interest in taking PFAF further
on a new platform integrated with his concept of a Permaculture database or infoweb. As I see it for the past few years 
PIW has been Chad's vision with the rest of us helping out; he at one point asked to be given complete control of what 
happens programming-wise to keep things on track and organized; this after Rich opted out of contributing programming to 
the project. Chad encouraged several of us and some in the PC list to help develop PIW in lieu of continuing work on our 
own PC related projects such as his Eden, my pc knowledgebase, WIKI, etc. someone else's robust, searchable front end 
for the PC list message archives and another creating another DB from the PFAF dataset. So many were on board to offer 
enthusiasm, ideas, support and work, with Chad at the helm, forging ahead with his/our PIW/PFAF/Eden/PCPDB. I really 
don't think it would be a good idea to drop the project at this point.

Give Chad the rest of the Threshhold funding and let it rip when he has time to work on it. After that he could work on 
it when he feels motivated and the rest of us can contribute when we can. It should get done one way or another 
eventually. Getting there is half the fun.


> This is exactly why I suggested that we simply return funds to Threshold -
> because I saw that this project was not happening.

This is not a good idea at all.

> I take full responsibility for disappearing, but I (mistakenly?) thought we
> were in implementation mode and frankly didn't have the technical literacy to
> understand most of the emails being passed around.

So, you didn't stay in touch with what was going on.

> questions:
> -do we still want to work on this project?

I do and expect many others do also.

> -do we consider this project worthwile (even if we personally don't want to
> work on it)?

Of course it is. This project or at least the ideas and motivation behind it 
have been arounf for over a decade,
mostly in the PC list. It didn't start with the Threshhold grant.

> -is it justifiable to retain Threshold funding???

Certainly. Give the rest to Chad and take our time finishing PIW.

> not angry.  I appreciate you all and have enjoyed working and non-working with
> you ;)  but wanting HONESTY.

I would like to see the project continue regardless of how long it takes to 
get it to prime time status.
A long term work-in-progress.

Lawrence