world brain and global game

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Wibowo Sulistio

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Apr 19, 2011, 1:21:06 AM4/19/11

to building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com, sures...@gmail.com, robert.david...@gmail.com, Jon Lebkowsky, Kaliya, poor_r...@att.net, ProM, Wibowo Sulistio

Hi everyone,

This is Bowo from WiserEarth. Jumping in after Suresh forwarded me
this thread :-)

First of all, I need to do more reading on the topic of this thread:
"world brain and global game"... and I haven't read through this whole
thread. So, will just respond to some points related to WiserEarth for
now.

>> Robert said: "yes, I know Paul Hawkin and Peggy Duvette, and admire what they tried to do, but it never took off as an enabler that I know of. They are featured
in the collective intelligence book I published. "

Fair enough. But you know... working for WiserEarth, I prefer to say
"it hasn't took off yet"... we're taking a hard look at why it
hasn't... http://www.wiserearth.org/article/WiserEarth_Goals_2011
...and it'll be wonderful to get some more feedback.

>> Kaliya said: "They didn't listen to the advice we (Planetwork) gave them about
distributed digital identity and people's empowerment along with
giving organizations tools to connect to people with these kinds of
"digital identity tools"."

We're not there yet. Sounds like a good idea though. Need to do some
more reading on that.

>> Kaliya said: they also overbuilt their directory of organizaitons... they should have populated it with 1000 groups and then opened it up. Instead it was "done" when they opened it with 300,000 groups in it. Why edit that?

Well... we make mistakes. I guess it's sort of a chicken and egg
kind-of-thing... and we decided to go with the egg. Probably not the
best kind of decision, but FYI, the directory is still growing by the
day... albeit slowly. We also do annual directory update campaign, and
organization representatives (some of them) are coming back to update
their listing.

>> Kaliya said: Groups had no ability to organize their members on the platform
either. (it shouldn't be a platform either :) - it should be a
distributed network of tools for people and matching ones for orgs
that do VRM (vendor relationship management) and CRM in a mutual way.)

Not sure what you meant by "no ability to organize their members"...
here's an overview of the current groupware:
http://www.wiserearth.org/article/wiserearthgroups
VRM and CRM sounds like a whole different ball game though :-)

>> Poor Richard said: "I signed up. They passed 50k members in March 2011 but blog activity is low and there is no update on site development since Jan 2011. Maybe the groups are more active. I haven't looked into that yet. "

Tech development is ongoing. Have a look at the latest at
http://www.wiserearth.org/group/WEtech In the coming month, we'll have
status update and newsfeed a la facebook... brewed with some
WE-specific features. v1 of it is already live on the site.

>> Poor Richard said: "...It might be interesting to propose
something to them if we had a better description/specification of what we
wanted. "

Talk to me some more on that. Not sure we have the technical capacity
to handle it anytime soon though... email me at bo...@wiserearth.org
... meanwhile, we do have an API that you can use (read only, write at
request): http://www.wiserearth.org/group/API

>> Jon Lebkowsky said: "Like Kaliya, I talked to the Wiser Earth folks (via my role at
Worldchanging). They weren't engaging users, weren't sure why, but weren't
open to advice. I had the sense that they weren't very collaborative -
though this is from brief conversations some time ago. "

Not sure who you talked to in WiserEarth, on what, and when... good to
know nevertheless... :-) ... and do clarify here if you want.

>> Kaliya said in response to : " Wiserearth looks like it overlaps with social networking and database methodology we are discussing. I signed up. They passed 50k members in March 2011" --> "A joke... How many people are members of enviro and social change groups around world - millions! "

Fair enough :-)
We're not planning to stop at 50k though... :-)

We've secured funding to keep the platform alive for the next 5 years:
http://blog.wiserearth.org/fundraising-reflections/
... and hope to secure another 5 years of funding at the end of this year.

More on our plans this year:
http://www.wiserearth.org/article/WiserEarth_Goals_2011

Hope that clarifies things a bit.
Feel free to shoot additional question here or directly at bo...@wiserearth.org

Thanks for listening :-)

Bowo
Online Community Manager at WiserEarth.org
http://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo
bo...@wiserearth.org