OSE Social Network

Last updated: ?

Overview
Our goal is to build the world's first replicable self sufficient post-industrial global village and evolve to freedom.

Proposal
In support of that goal, we need people that can integrate research and design and build the necessary technology while collaborating with other people on-site or on-line. We assume that most scientific research has already been done and that we only need to integrate the information that is already out there so it can be formed into a replicable open source design and built.

The OpenFarmTech.org Wiki is okay at documenting information and can help with integration and design. It isn't as good for collaboration since the information is non-linear (you can add something new in the middle of old stuff).

=Need for a social networking site= So we need something that will facilitate in outreach to find people, and in collaborating on research and design. This would seem to be some kind of social networking site, like a forum.

We also need some form of funding coming in to facilitate building the technology. We assume that that funding will come from stakeholders interested in seeing the development of the GVCS. Their willingness to donate is based on their judgment of whether progress is being made and how well their donations are being put to use.

This would seem to require some form of reporting, which could even be on a forum, but a news blog would probably be better. Actually a blog seems much like a forum on a main page but with one one set of people able to make threads that have the content visible to the forum list and anyone able to post comments inside the threads. Optimally the two could be combined, with all posts being on a forum with posts able to be made into blog entries.

Goals

 * 1) Linear time collaboration and discussion - forum.
 * 2) News updates.
 * 3) Possibly combine these functions.
 * 4) What else is needed?

Potential software

 * Drupal may meet these conditions. It requires a little fixing up but could work. It's already set up at FactoreFarm.org.
 * Mahara may meet these conditions. It needs to be evaluated. We need an example Mahara site that has forums.
 * Crabgrass - "designed for social networking, group collaboration and network organizing"
 * n-1 / lorea - for spanish speaking areas - used and developed in spain