Convene Soon

[BenB]

I'd like to suggest again that we set a time (or two) in the remainder
of this month to gather in live council to formally adopt some
guidelines and goals for the group. I'm feeling ready to delve into
some committed work to reach a "launch" of some sorts going into next
year. I'd like to support bringing forward the BM 'enterprise' core to
achieve some notable steps quickly (and agile-ly!) I've found a strong
two-degrees connection to a pretty fabulous list of leaders, thinkers,
artists, experts, investors, networkers; very ready to uplift a well
defined evolutionary approach to viral Transition...sans-parasitism ;)

Please make a note in this thread of your availability and interest in
the next 10 days for say a 2-4 hour conference, and some suggestions
of what we might all prepare to 'bring to the table'. This can go on
BM too, but thought I'd throw the net out here first, and I'm not sure
where to categorize the intention there.

[timrayner]

Hi Ben,

Sounds good! But we're only 8 days from Xmas eve. Perhaps this might
be better scheduled for the New Year?

I agree that a 'live council to formally adopt some guidelines and
goals for the group' is a good idea. But it is an important step, and
we should should plan and prepare for it carefully. My feeling is
that, at this stage, jamming it in before Xmas might be rushing it.

But I'm keen to hear what others think.

If we decide to hold off, we could work on an agenda for the council
instead. Why not start by making some notes on a wiki page on BM and
we'll see how it comes together? Who knows: perhaps we'll reach a
quick consensus on topics and goals and find that it's possible to
stage something before Xmas after all?

Tim

[Gerry Gleason]

Before Christmas may be a bad idea, but what about between New Years and
Christmas. Many people some down/light time if they are not actually
traveling or something.

I haven't been able to track nearly as much of the conversation as I
would like, and I still see the developing low degree connections among
and great group of wave leaders. I see the networks converging. We
have to assume many groups have similar ideas and observations, but that
stewardship attention is in short supply.

With my head down in the Wagn code, I haven't invested any time in
Better Means, so I should go back and see what you folks have done there
and if the tool seems to be working for the group. Ultimately we have
to develop and evolve these platforms, but the more immediate work is to
get experienced enough in the currently available platforms to
coodinate, collaborate, brainstorm and all the rest.

To that end, shouldn't we be using the available platforms to coordinate
a series of convenings? Maybe on several tracks, specific and general?
Would that be Better Means, is that the current working platform?

Are we talking about Skype calls here? Irc sessions? Etherpads?
Combinations? I'm presuming we want more interactive group sessions
than the video based tools allow at present.

Gerry

____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D MARINE AQUARIUM SCREENSAVER - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas on your desktop!
Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/marineaquarium

[BenB]

True enough, I don't want to make this a rush job or pressure people
to get their words in, but felt that at least a preliminary live
meeting for anyone available/interested could make important steps
toward that more momentous occasion around the corner. I imagine it
will take a few sessions to zero in on the essential matters and
measures...

And practice process, too, this is all a bit tricky at a distance! So
yes, I'll put a brief on BM, see who's interested in a first go soon
(as I said, one or two before New Years), post progress, and meanwhile
prepare something more elegant for a full convocation early Jan.

Understand, I was rather worked up this morn to catch a once-forwarded
personal email to E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Paul Hawken, a couple
of Nobellists, some prominent conscientious funders and consultants
and media personalities...

No more cards down just yet, but I should be visiting with the sender
soon and our topics here are quite germane! Let's get co-creative
folks, in a calm and orderly fashion of course ; )

[Michael Maranda]

I figure any subsets of our wider community that want to meet/convene should feel free to do so. (My availability in the next 2 weeks is hard to predict).  Just make it known to everyone, open invite, and bring back to the group what you learn or otherwise arrive at.  Yes, Skype calls are simple for meetings up to a certain # ... and IRC channel is always available for anyone who wants to convene there!  (Or whatever other tools - propose topic and times and have at it.)

[BenB]

Just to update more widely on this, I opened a wiki page on BM for
people to add names, times, and other notes. Will add to a couple of
other pages there about process and priorities, your input welcome
too. If you are not yet a BM contributor, you won't be able to edit/
add there, but feel free to make comments in this discussion thread,
or other channels, and I will include them. This is not meant to be a
mandatory convention, but the first in a series to develop our remote
conferencing methods and move towards significant agreements and
planning. Especially good for newer participants. We want to keep
everyone tied in, however that works for you, so please ask and offer
in any way.

Here is BM wiki link: https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/164/wiki

And here is another spiffy meeting scheduler to try out:
http://www.doodle.com/xwvfxvasrd9ezxhv

Anyone can go to enter name and time preferences, and see what others
are saying. There is a green for "go", yellow for "maybe" and red for
"no" option at 4 time slots (with timezone adjustment) for each
possible day in the next two weeks. I will keep info from the
different sources current. Hope to talk soon!

[Darren Hill]

Merry Christmas - been a bit caught up in stuff but finally got round to
posting here. Much respect to all who take the time to read and/or post
to this mail group.

I've added my availability for a COTW meeting / Coalition Charette (had
to look that up on wikipedia :) to the doodle scheduler

I've also added a wiki page which lists all the collaborative documents
relating to COTW as I was lossing track of them all.
http://cotw.cc/wiki/Collaborative_documents

A couple of days ago I had an IRC chat on the #RBOSE channel with people
involved with http://rbose.org/ they are a collaborative / open project
that have quite a lot in common with COTW. I'm thinking that it would
be mutually beneficial to share experiences/ideas with them about open
online collaboration - One of their contributors suggested a RBOSE &
CTW meeting. For their meetings they use a combination of audio (mumble
http://rbose.org/wiki/Mumble ) and text via IRC.

I dont know if there are others here interested in progressing with
this. I suppose we could involve/invite them to the Coalition Charette
or try to schedule a meet at another time? Also maybe we could try
using mumble?

I've also begun to tag web pages that I think are relevant to COTW using
Delicious and the tag 'cofthew' http://www.delicious.com/tag/cofthew .
I'm not sure that Delicious is the best social bookmarking tool to use -
I found this collaborative list/review of social bookmarking sites/tools
- http://s.coop/6mq

Best wishes to all

Darren

[Chris Watkins]

Merry Christmas!

On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 11:24, Darren Hill <ma...@vegburner.co.uk> wrote:

Merry Christmas - been a bit caught up in stuff but finally got round to posting here.  Much respect to all who take the time to read and/or post to this mail group.

I've added my availability for a COTW meeting /  Coalition Charette (had to look that up on wikipedia :) to the doodle scheduler

I've also added a wiki page which lists all the collaborative documents relating to COTW as I was lossing track of them all.
http://cotw.cc/wiki/Collaborative_documents

A couple of days ago I had an IRC chat on the #RBOSE channel with people involved with http://rbose.org/ they are a collaborative / open project that have quite a lot in common with COTW.  I'm thinking that it would be mutually beneficial to share experiences/ideas with them about open online collaboration -  

Would definitely be interested in hearing from them, especially if they have clear ideas and experiences. It seems to be a software project that's deciding on its direction, but I don't know if the software is central to their ideas.
 

One of their contributors suggested a RBOSE & CTW meeting.  For their meetings they use a combination of audio (mumble http://rbose.org/wiki/Mumble ) and text via IRC.


I dont know if there are others here interested in progressing with this.  I suppose we could involve/invite them to the Coalition Charette or try to schedule a meet at another time?  

Cool - we definitely want to include such people, and I'd be happy with inviting them to any Coalition discussions/chats.

Also maybe we could try using mumble?

I'd like to hear from anyone who tries it. I'm skeptical that it would work well for me, being on almost the opposite side of the world from their server in Sweden. :-)

I've also begun to tag web pages that I think are relevant to COTW using Delicious and the tag 'cofthew' http://www.delicious.com/tag/cofthew .  I'm not sure that Delicious is the best social bookmarking tool to use - I found this collaborative list/review of social bookmarking sites/tools - http://s.coop/6mq

Cool - I've requested access to that - thanks.
 

--
------------------
Coalition of the Willing ------------------
The Coalition occupies several spaces for communication and action.  Keep the discussion on this list civil & assume good faith.  Strive for brevity.
 For the what-why-where of Coalition work, look to http://cotw.cc.   That wiki functions as a routing-portal and a locus for some of the work. All group efforts should maintain an updated statement of current focus, channels and spaces of work and anything necessary to support orientation & keeping up-to-speed.

"BetterMeans" is where we coordinate our work: making proposals, endorsing & signing up for work, and tracking tasks. https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/163
-----------------
You are subscribed to coal...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe send email to coalition+...@googlegroups.com
For more options http://groups.google.com/group/coalition?hl=en

--
Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

blogs.appropedia.org
community.livejournal.com/appropedia
identi.ca/appropedia
twitter.com/appropedia

[Darren Hill]

I received and had time to read the P2P Foundation daily mail out today
- I accidentally clicked on a link there that led me to this interesting
presentation about learning and Web 3.0 -

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html

Which indirectly led me to stumble upon Protégé. After a quick scan I
thought it would be of interest to people here.

Protégé - http://protege.stanford.edu/overview/

"Protégé is a free, open-source platform that provides a growing user
community with a suite of tools to construct domain models and
knowledge-based applications with ontologies. At its core, Protégé
implements a rich set of knowledge-modeling structures and actions that
support the creation, visualization, and manipulation of ontologies in
various representation formats. Protégé can be customized to provide
domain-friendly support for creating knowledge models and entering data.
Further, Protégé can be extended by way of a plug-in architecture and a
Java-based Application Programming Interface (API) for building
knowledge-based tools and applications."

[Mark Roest]

WOW!!!

[timrayner]

Looks very interesting. But web ontologies are a foreign land for me.
I'm keen to hear people's thoughts on how we could use this thing.

On Dec 28, 1:08 am, Darren Hill <m...@vegburner.co.uk> wrote:
> I received and had time to read the P2P Foundation daily mail out today
> - I accidentally clicked on a link there that led me to this interesting
> presentation about learning and Web 3.0 -
>
> http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html
>
> Which indirectly led me to stumble upon Protégé.  After a quick scan I
> thought it would be of interest to people here.
>

> Protégé -http://protege.stanford.edu/overview/

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Thanks for forwarding the "Protege" link !

http://protege.stanford.edu/overview/

" suite of tools to construct domain models and knowledge-based applications with ontologies "

Yes, I can see a use to it!

I can see how it can benefit the Coalition, and other projects,

by using it to facilitate the definition of semantic web ontologies, enabling metadata to be combined and built on.

There are already various semantic web ontologies which exist, such as

http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology

We could use protege to define our own purpose built ontologies.

----

Just to give an idea I have in mind for a possible ontology architecture that could be defined :

For example,

"Transaction Contracts", which themselves can be a form of "Meta Currency".

[Darren Hill]

Hello Tim,

Its only since my involvement with COTW that I've known what ontology means!

I ran into Protege after looking at slide 18 of the Presentation -

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html

then looking at OWL as it is the standard the author sees as most forward looking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language

the pages about 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

and -  (relation to stuff that is being discussed amongst COTW regarding interoperability etc. - the social/human side of it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_web

Basically creating ontologies allows computers to understand data - it defines the data. - ie London is a city, is in England, is an urban area, etc. etc.

Explained -

"Wikis have become a great tool for collecting and sharing knowledge 
in communities. This knowledge is mostly contained within texts and 
multimedia files, and is thus easily accessible for human readers. But 
though wikis are very good for storing and retrieving individual facts, 
they are less useful for getting queried or aggregated information.. As a
 simple example, consider the following question:

«What are the hundred world-largest cities with a female mayor?»

Wikipedia should be able to provide the answer: it contains all large cities, their mayors, and articles about the mayor that tell us about their gender. Yet the question is almost impossible to answer for a human, since one would have to read all articles about all large cities first! Even if the answer is found, it might not remain valid for very long. Computers can deal with large datasets much easier, yet they are not able to support us very much when seeking answers from a wiki: Even sophisticated programs cannot yet read and «understand» human-language texts unless the topic and language of the text is very restricted. The wiki's keyword search does not help either.

Semantic MediaWiki enables wikis to make their knowledge computer-processable, e.g. to answer the above question." from 
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_Semantic_MediaWiki

This TED talk video of Tim Berners Lee presentation explains more
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

Protege appears to be a nice interface for building ontologies and exporting them as OWL files.

This is all a bit meta for my head to get a good grip on exactly how and when it will become useful to use this stuff but I suppose its worth bearing in mind.  I also note that there are Chris authored some pages at Appropedia related to semantic functions - http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Appropedia_semantic_functions

Best

Darren

[Mark Roest]

I still need to explore it to say anything certain about it, but it sounds like what we need to organize knowledge and wisdom wisely [within the bins of ecosystems and cultures]. I believe that once the structure is set up and a few groups take advantage of it to display a comprehensive set of knowledge, it will become a meme.

To help that happen, we could approach a game company about putting good behaviors and practices in to a game and giving points for them. We could also suggest that they include things that make a big difference (like making structures with the Captive Column structural system, or relieving stress with yoga and meditation, or using the CCARES methodology (developed in a collaboration between Buddhist scholars, the Dalai Lama, and the Stanford School of Medicine) to manage emotions, and assign 'powers' to them that are equivalent to their potential impact if widely adopted.

Cityville had 69 million players in one month, and Farmville had 57 million players, on Facebook, whose value went from 26.4 to 41.2 billion dollars from June to December this year.

The values we are writing about to each other have value! In the right context, they can galvanize the gaming world's nonviolent sector. In fact, one way to harness the support of many of those who have seen the video is to enroll them in helping to build a new game, or a new edition of an old game, in which, through play, millions (billions, if we translate it) of people can learn collaboration, the partnership paradigm, and sustainability in a favorable setting, and prepare to take it into the world. More specifically, we can create different approaches to sustainability for each ecosystem, and create a pathway in the games for people to assemble the best of their heritage of solutions for living in specific ecosystems and cultures, and put it into the game for appropriate regions of the world.

Good night!

Regards,

Mark

I am developing a strategy for approaching the company that made those two games to urge this idea on them, along with offering some specific resources. Does anyone in the 'stewardship council' have thoughts about this, or contacts who could help us get to them?

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Thanks Darren and Mark for these links.

To add to it,

One Ted video I could suggest as introduction

when it comes to the use of games for "making this a better place"

is Jane Mc Gonigal's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_McGonigal ) ted speech :

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

which I discovered when browsing an interest to use games on this Open Source Ecology project page

http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/GVCS_game?old-url=true&title=GVCS_game

I also feel like bringing up a quote from SimCity game creator Will Wright wikipedia page

" to empower the players by creating what he dubs “possibility spaces”, or simple rules and game elements that add up to a very complex design. "

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Following up on our thread,

I am new to the semantic web paradigm,

and do not know how to use "Protege" ...yet.

We could learn together / in a community of practice - if you like,

or create another list to discuss what ontologies we would be interested in using, or even in creating.

Perhaps discuss the specific purposes we want to use them for ?

Perhaps there are already existing ontologies that can be used for the purposes ?

I somehow understand it is possible to create ontologies with the MediaWiki semantic web extension, in a more simple way ?

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Semantic_Web

and use other existing vocabularies within the mediawiki setting ?

---------------

Back to "protege" :

I am not a programmer - just trying to learn this via the web as a novice amateur.

A programmer friend confirmed that midst other softwares with similar aims as "Protege", he finds "protege" one of the most capable open source RDF/OWL development softwares.

I downloaded it from

http://protege.stanford.edu/download/protege/4.1/installanywhere/

( http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html )

If you know of any nice ( video ) tutorials for "protege", feel free to let me know

----

Also, back to the broader semantic web topic,

concerning "Querying" , I find the following "Metaweb" introduction interesting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfrNo3Z-DU

I somehow understand till now ( correct me if you understand differently )

that relations can be defined by having databases of "triples" ( stored in Triplestores )  in, using for example a RDF syntax

such as "RDF/XML" syntax, or other like "Turtle" or "N3" syntax.

A triple example :  subject-predicate-object, like "Bob is 35" or "Bob knows Fred"

http://www.isi.edu/~argos/matthew/triple_by_example.html

nice intro : http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/

by the way, slide 17 of the link Darren gave

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html

shows an interesting chronological overview.

It seems that after ( building on ? ) XML, and RDF,  there is OWL , and Intelligent Agents

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html

---

By the way,

regarding examples of queries

here is an example of a tool called "Freebase" ( sponsored by metaweb, which was bought by google ), 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF-yMfRCkJc

[paul horan]

Darren,

Thanks for this response of yours to Tim = a good, clear explanation = it's quite helpful for me, too.

paul

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Further note - I bcc ed the programmer friend,

who informed me of the following :

----


http://wiki.syncleus.com/index.php/dANN

is an artificial intelligence software project which uses semantic mediawiki to organize metadata about the project itself.  the reason for this is described here in the mission statement:

http://wiki.syncleus.com/index.php/Syncleus_Wiki:Mission_Statement

:)

[Mark Roest]

Hello Dante-Gabryell and all,

I followed a link from McGonigal to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyamsZXXF2w&feature=player_embedded
and got an education on / way beyond what I have been saying about games for sustainability!

It is sounding more viable every day.

Regards,

Mark

[paul horan]

Mark,

"THANKS!!!" so much for sharing this link to Tom Chatfield's TED talk = YESSS!!!!!!!!

Appreciatively,

paul

P. S. = we've gotta talk soon ...

[George Mokray]

I also feel like bringing up a quote from SimCity game creator Will Wright wikipedia page

" to empower the players by creating what he dubs “possibility spaces”, or simple rules and game elements that add up to a very complex design. "

Back in the early 1990s I asked Will Wright about using SimCity for ecological design.  He said it was very possible.

[Darren Hill]

I've put a document up on etherpad as I appear to be talking about the same thing in quite a few places and am keen for others to contribute.

http://etherpad.openstewardship.net/co-operate

"Co-operate, collaborate and participate

Communication, interaction and interoperability

There  is a growing realisation that people actively collaborating freely as  equals holds great potential in addressing our shared needs and desires.

This  realisation is nothing new and has been a common feature of much human  interaction.  Collaboration between equals towards common goals is often  very effective and rewarding.  This collaboration tends to be highly  regarded by those participating.  Early groups of humans banded  together  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_society) often acting as equals sharing decisions .  Ancient Athens gave us a formal direct democracy where citizens held equal power."

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

as a variant on the same theme and tool,

a possible approach to collaborative web editing of ontologies ?

http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/wiki/WebProtege

WebProtege is an open source, lightweight, web-based ontology editor. Our main goal in developing WebProtege is to support the process of collaborative ontology development in a web environment.