RGB/Green.org Sustainability Challenge

About the Sustainability Challenge

2009-02-19T14:46:00.000-08:00

An open source CMS is a perfect tool for a developer to start something that can benefit their local community in a variety of ways: exchanging information, supplementing the local newspaper, providing a forum for discussion, opportunities for employment, barter and volunteer work, as well as educational material – which can be developed locally, or syndicated from other sources, such as rgbgreen.org.

The basis of the green.org Sustainability Challenge is to suggest that open source software can provide a basis for a sustainable local Web site, where the open source software makes it less costly to develop and maintain a Web site – more sustainable than relying upon commercial software, or a proprietary company.

One benefit of using open source CMS is the large community of developers who are there to help you navigate the waters of open source CMS. There are a variety of resources to help in these areas, and new projects such as CMS EDU, where you can go on and ask questions.

The hope is that readers, whether technically inclined or no, will consider putting a team together to develop a Web site on an open source CMS such as Drupal or Joomla, on behalf of their local community. Readers are also invited to join the open source CMS community, by visiting and registering at drupal.org, joomla.org, or other sites.

Welcome and Email List

2009-02-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the RGB/Green.org Sustainability Challenge! This site will serve as the temporary home and ongoing blog for the project.

Email List:
The easiest way to "register" for the Sustainability Challenge is simply to log in to Facebook (or create an account, and then join the Sustainability Challenge Facebook Group).

You are also welcome to email me at cftwgreen@gmail.com and asked to be placed on a list to receive updates about the Sustainability Challenge.

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About rgbgreen.org and green.org:
rgbgreen.org - the location where non-profit educational content is currently being developed and prototyped. This site basically represents what the non-profit side of green.org will become.

green.org - currently there are for-profit ideas being tried on green.org - the idea is to generate revenue to sustain the non-profit educational mission of green.org.

Proposed Community Sustainability Modules

2009-02-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

The following modules will be proposed and posted on Drupal.org (and maybe on other CMS sites if other cms communities get involved).

If you haven’t guessed already, the underlying agenda of the Sustainability Challenge is to suggest and reinforce these notions: “to whom much is given, much is required”, and “the sum of the whole is greater than the parts”. In the spirit of open source, there is a great need for collaboration to develop modules that can be used by local communities, especially as a hub for microbusiness, to help people survive tough economic times, and to deepen the kinds of local ties that can sustain them.

If you're interested, please feel free to email cftwgreen "at" gmail "dot" com.

LinkIndexing: a proven business model and system created by a friend, which leverages human-created links/comments to generate traffic and then generate revenue. Get in touch if your interested.

LocalBarter: as the headlines roll by on massive layoffs, barter is critical, and something clicked when I spent time in Detroit and discovered a B2B system that is used extensively there (10% unemployment rate, forefront of recession), where a painter can come into a hairstylist, swipe their card in a bricks and mortar transaction, and get what they need with no cash changing hands. The painter earns trade credit from painting, the hairstylist earns credit from cutting hair, and so on. It transcends the basic difficulty in “one to one” barter, where it’s sometimes a challenge to find a match for what you are offering – but this system I discovered has me convinced – it allows people to get by. And in the economic climate in the U.S. and around the world – there are people with reduced amounts of cash/income or no income at all – and I think barter can help people to get by. So I believe that the best of the bricks and mortar and the best of the online needs to be put together, and that it needs to be open, with the barriers as low as possible – and I think the impact can be tremendous, and also generate some revenue as well. Get in touch, a site can be made; help is needed. See JobLife, LocalBarter mention in Resources.

ReGiftCard: a concept for a method of ecommerce where a gift card can be purchased outright, and a portion of the gift card goes to the charitable cause of choice: “conscience based commerce”. The gift card can be physical or virtual. See www.regiftcard.net

FrameAds: a local microbusiness based on the display of advertisements using digital picture frames, which can be updated either manually via flash drive, or potentially using Bluetooth technology. See www.frameads.org

SMS Alerts: multi-channel broadcast alerts facilitated by the Drupal-SMS gateway – this may require more concrete estimates of costs involved but the essential value proposition is to provide a way to inform local citizens about non-emergency situations such as school closings, etc., but also to explore multi-channel emergency alerts to use every available means to reach local residents in an emergency situation, including rampage situations at public schools and area colleges, etc. (ex: Virginia Tech). This may be more of a public service than a business as module, but if the basic loopnote platform were purchased, it could be open sourced and made available for free (around the world). See www.loopnote.com but don’t bother the owners, they are busy with brightkite.com – if you are independently wealthy and a believe in this and would like to help free loopnote, see me. Or bother Todd Tomlinson from www.ahaconsulting.com to extend the fine work he’s been doing already with a broadcast sms module and see if he’d release it to open source.

Community Heritage/Digital Archaeology/LifeStoryNews: this is a joint project with Sophia Liu, which could help moms, scrapbookers and others to scare up some income by helping people to capture their life stories, and these stories could be posted on the local community site. See www.digitalarchaeology.org

Social Networking: A Status Report

2009-01-31T23:12:00.000-08:00

A fascinating article from Fast Company, pretty deep and technical, but a very good overview of the state of social networking, it's evolution, along with a few interesting thoughts that pertain to the notion and value of emphasizing local relationships.

http://tinyurl.com/sociatnetstatus

The Case for Local Relationships

2009-01-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

One of the inspirations for the Sustainability Challenge was a presentation that was created by Scott Linhart, who was taking a class in Cultural Geography, who remarked how he sensed that even with all of the "connection" that social networking provides, how people are still feeling a lack of significant relationships.

A presentation he made for class has more information about his perspective:

The Sustainability Challenge embraces technology, even social networking (there is a related group on Facebook, for example), but we think Scott has a point, and that it's worth thinking about limiting our use of technology. We feel that one way to make sure we're getting the best use out of the time we spend with technology (instead of being used by it?), is to ask ourselves: "How is it affecting our local, physical relationships? How is supporting our need to develop meaningful, significant relationships? How can it be put to use to strengthen our communities?"