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  • From: Michael Kuehnert <mornsbar@gmx.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Callout for Coder or Technology for Permaculture Assoc Britain Web Development
  • Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:26:41 +0200

Niels Corfield wrote:

> 1. Increasing member contribution. Moving to a largely member-driven
> content. Providing fully-featured personal/project web-presence
> hosting services.
> 2. Embedded delicious-style Tagged database retrieval technology
> throughout the site. Possible opensource technologies include:
> Scuttle.org
> 3. Image hosting. Obviously we would like to have something as slick
> as Flickr integrated into the site but at the very least I want to
> see at least the basic functionality with technologies for
> uploading directly from members PC/Macs. Possible technologies:
> Gallery 2, Coppermine (as used by Geoff Lawton).

A few initial thoughts:
* With PC's focus on design and diversity, projects should have
a broad range of options to customize the look of their
presentation
* You mentioned a central repository for project reports. This
would be comfortable, fast and easy, but projects should
also be able to host the material on their individual servers,
as a central server or even a grid of central servers might
just one day fall prey to Hierarchy's trappings. It is one
thing to have copies of reports in central positions which
would be able to backup the data to a secure location, but a
distributed structure would be more robust by design. Perhaps
those two organizational structures can be brought to overlap,
providing distributed security and ease of use at the same
time.
I could also imagine that some projects will only be
accessible via "snail mail", at least as a fallback measure.
This kind of choice should be left up to the individual
project itself, and the software should be able to deal with
it, seamlessly integrating the different sources.

> If anyone has an opinion on any of these technologies or would
> like to input in the design or consultation phase they are
> most welcome. We are planning to have at least one session on
> consultation at this years Convergence
> http://www.permaculture.org.uk/mm.asp?mmfile=conv2006

It is a good thing to have a consultation to give people an
opportunity to meet and think about this project. Yet with all
the (very thought-provoking, thanks a lot everybody!) talk about
Rhizomes and Permaculture's model of cooperation, please
consider the fact that many or most of those on this list will
not be able to join you for this or any subsequent meeting.

My suggestion is to have at least a two-stage process, with the
first design stage taking place in a Wikiwiki context, where
the real requirements of the new platform can be sorted out.
An email list is okay to set up the project, but has too much
overhead to allow effective cooperation.

Only after the first stage has been completed, all ideas have
been incorporated into a concept and everyone has more than a
general idea of what the result ought to look like, one would
start with the programming process itself. Also, unlike a finite
project with a limited budget etc., an open source or even free
software project can go on forever, evolving over time and
reacting to new inputs, possibilites and requirements that are
found along the way.

The key to all this, apart from the technical knowledge, is
constant feedback. The programming aspect does not pose the same
kind of challenge it used to do perhaps twenty years ago, these
days it is all about projects succeeding or failing (speaking
with that antiquated concept of dualism firmly in mind). Given
sufficient time and a well-(self-)managed process, it should be
possible to develop a piece of software which will really suit
the needs of the community.

On a side note, try to avoid the potential pitfalls of thinking
in finite products like Flickr or Coppermine, which will of
course serve as valuable models for what is possible.

In a nutshell: It would be wasteful to simply award this
contract to a small number of programmers without strong links
to the collective intelligence of the potential users of the
platform.

> I hope that these goals will overlap with some of yours own
> personal/work/activist agendas and that it can become a
> reality.

They most certainly do overlap. In fact, if the resulting piece
of software is as versatile as it could be, many organizations
from all fields can adopt it for their own use. The question
remains just how much work everyone can put into this project...
oh well.

By the way, is it just me or does the concept of "agile
programming" <http://www.agilemanifesto.org/> bear a lot of
rememblance to permaculture's ideals? Having recently read
Alistair Cockburn's "Agile Software Development", I was rather
surprised and pleased to find a very familiar mindset in there.


Greetings from Germany,
Michael





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