I must agree with Arthur that we have reached an exciting momentum in our projects. Not only have we experienced the synchronicity of partnerships and supporters, but the currency projects we are working on are diverse, interesting, and full of value for their communities. I am thrilled that we are making leaps in our development and are more and more able to provide powerful toolsets for communities to build and strengthen our gift economies.

Please accept my thanks as well for your support, feedback, and encouragement. It's the work of many that will bring this vision (sustainability, abundance, a thriving gift economy) to reality for more and more communities.

You know how excited I am about this work, Arthur. If there is anything that I can contribute, please contact me.

what kind of work is it ??

from Leslie Lloyd

Arthur's work is in alternate currencies and the work he is doing on the "Geeks Proposal" is the development of a customizable reputation engine plug-in for use in developing on-line communities. Kind of like the feedback system here at ONet but better.

Linda Nowakowski said:

Arthur's work is in alternate currencies and the work he is doing on the "Geeks Proposal" is the development of a customizable reputation engine plug-in for use in developing on-line communities. Kind of like the feedback system here at ONet but better.

Leslie Lloyd

Congratulations. :)

Arthur & Mickki

Congratulations on this, I am excited particularly about the flood of currency projects.

Have to admit that it took me a little while to "get" what you guys were on about with the alternative currency stuff - it was only in Chicago that it gelled for me, and I'm a fan.

Was very interesting meeting you guys as well.

May good things come, can't wait to play around with the stuff you build.

Brief update on the Microbusiness Connectory project: We received the initial payment on Wednesday (9/27/06). If that starts the clock ticking for us, we should be able to deliver siginificantly ahead of schedule since we have already been doing some of the work on the underlying components for it.

And on the Geeks Proposal for the reputation currency system things are clicking along nicely. We've built AJAX components to submit and render ratings without refreshing the page,an Apache extension module for handling the queries, and the data engine and back-end scripting for recalculating values is all working. Next week we will be beta testing these things for a customer on Drupal. We still need to create documentation and make some Drupal admin tools for it and get it nicely packaged for install and such.

I think we're pretty well on track.

Update on Geeks Proposal

The Good News: I'll be in San Jose, CA this weekend at the Alliance for Community Media, Western conference (http://www.acmwest.org) announcing the launch and demonstrating some of the feedback and rating tools that have been developed from this process. The Manhattan Neighborhood Network is buildind other complementary modules in Drupal to make a nice, large, well-featured set of tools for Public Access stations and independent media around the country (and world).

You may recall that the Denver Evolution Production Group was the fiscal sponsor for this project. The first applicaiton of these tools are for a number of parts of their operations with Public Access Cable. The tools enable them to receive immediate and direct viewer feedback from their broadcasts. Viewers can rate shows by web, email, SMS text pages, or by calling in and following voice prompt menues. The ratings feed directly into the programming to determine which programs receive which slots.

The feedback systems are also being used for their Crew Connections system for helping amateur TV/Film people find crew members interested in their nascient projects. Initially there is interest matching to help with the match-making, and after working together, crew members rate the experience and quality of work produced by their cohorts. The viewer ratings of the shows also dovetail into the quality ratings to help amateur producers begin to develop reputations and garner valuable feedback.

The Bad News: Other parts of Public Access project (such as their program scheduling) have fallen into our lap because of various volunteers which have become otherwise occupied and unable to finish their related components. We are now doing those parts of the project too since our components relied on their existence. This has pushed back our timelines on some of our original accountabilities. I think we're now probably set back a few weeks to deliver something with Drupal admin tools and automated installation to this community. Sorry. :(

Other Good News: Another group (I'll anounce their link soon) has decided to capitalize on these tools and harness them for community energy planning, sustainability issues, and collaborative decision making. Their project should help us enhance the tools beyond the original scope of feedback & reputation ratings and take them into the social networking and decision making realms.

Arthur....

What is the status on the reputation engine?

I just attended a 2 day conference (Beyond Schumacher: Alternatives Approaches to Economics and Sustainability Perspectives for the 21st Century). My dean announced the formation of the "Schumacher / Buddhist Economics / Sustainable Economy Network". Looks like this is going to land up being my website to develop. I am going to need all the help I can get. When push comes to shove I am really no more than a geek- wannabe anymore.

Conference Details

Excellent Linda! Let's make this one of the sites where we implement the system.

We have launched components of the system for some of our customer projects. What we haven't been able to do is get it documented and all wrapped up in a nice package to load as a Drupal module. We actually just started on that part this week.

Also, there have been a recent influx of other voting/rating/feedback Drupal modules. We're trying to make sure our system is generally compatible with those and the VotingAPI they're mostly using.

If you can sketch out a bit about the kind of site, online community, kinds of partipation that you seek, maybe we can start getting you set up. Is that the kind of help you're looking for?

Any more news?

Really good question. I can't seem to find out.