Are you looking for feedback on that at the moment, or will all that happen at/after the Camp, with changes being made before it goes live?
I am sure many people do have thoughts, I am one of them but am a little reluctant to write them all down if the design is now totally fixed and no one will take notice of the comments.
If you are looking for it, should we post it here?
I have been reading miles of threads over the recent months on the attempts being made by nabuur to make the site workable, or re-designing it, etc etc...
Perhaps simply copying the Orkut model might solve all problems. Orkut has been around for years and is a tried, tested and proven platform. It provides all the features that nabuur has been continuing to explore over the recent years. These include:
- the facility to create an account
- the facility to build several features into the account
- the facility to create groups
- the facility to delete by the individual whatever is added by the individual
- and plenty of other features...
To simply copy this model, no meetings are required, no travel is involved, no discussions are required...
The time frame to create such a platform can be precisely calculated by a small committee of web-designers, since reinventing-the-wheel is not involved here.
Sorry that I have not been able to contribute lately. I have been on holidays and travelling to places with reduced internet capabilities.
I will comment here again rather than to one of the other few discussions that have been created and might get people lost.
Thanks Kester and Frans for your answer I just want to add that it is great to use some of the modules you are explaining but I still don't understand why the simpler things are not done better first and then put more time into the more complex ones. I know using the modules page as an example of site speed is not a measure of what a normal page takes to load but it is a great measure of the amount of modules you are using. My opinion is that things should be kept simple, get the simple things right and the rest will follow. You just need to a site to publish volunteer opportunities, villages and for users to be able to find their way through both. That really does not need a huge amount of modules. As an example, look at Kiva.org as an example. Not the best looking site but it is doing the work, why?, they are keeping it simple. Opportunities search based on 6 simple fields on a sortable table. The formula is really not that hard. Keep it simple.
I still have mixed feelings about the NabuurCamp but would like to hear what others think about it. Maybe there is another discussion about it somewhere else but did not get a chance to find it.
Getting volunteers involved in development and other things is great but expecting that it could run just with volunteers is what I am not so sure about. In any camp concept there is always a leader of the project that will do all the hard continuous work. I give myself as an example, I love helping and I thought I was going to have time while on holidays but the reality is other, we all have things we need to attend to survive and to continue our lives, time over a weekend is fine but in the long run I don;t think it is sustainable to expect people to put add a constant amount of time over a long period of time and on a volunteering basis.
Just one questions I would like ask before applying to be at the camp:
- How many volunteer web developers and designers with experience in community building and Drupal 6 have applied to be at the camp?
I do not think that Nabuur can sustain itself at this stage without paid staff, given that it has more or less stopped functioning altogether. Maybe at another time when it is stronger but I think now would be very harmful or even terminal for the organisation.
I have to say, I am getting a little cynical of the promised new great you-beaut Nabuur websites! Frankly, I think I preferred the very first wesbite. I could see who were the active volunteers and I could easily contact them, I knew where I was posting and threads were easy to follow, I could use chat, and I got notification of posts in my villages and personal messages via email. That's all I needed! I am over this current Nabuur website because it's so unuseable - and I am not the only one, as evidenced by the almost complete lack of online activity in villages!
I guess, like others, patience is running thin and I sense a general feeling of betrayal by Nabuur- to the volunteers and staff after all the time and energy put in over the years, and especially to the villages who put their trust, faith and hopes in Nabuur.
Anyhow, that's my response. I'm sorry if it sounds a little harsh. It's sad that Nabuur is so much on the brink of collapse, and there's nothing I or any of the other volunteers can do about it. I sincerely hope that I have this all wrong, and that Nabuur rises like the phoenix out of the ashes!!
:-)
I agree about keep it simple, as someone posted under one of these threads - learn from sites that work. Yeah I found some of the older sites easier, and they actually worked properly!
And about the problems of surviving without paid staff - 267 villages and growing, many of who don't have good computer skills so need some proper support, and virtually no activity on the site any more. No I am not convinced it can be done, maybe one day but not now.
Part of me wants to quit right now because I feel that Nabuur gives false hope to communities by encouraging them to come online, saying they will get results, when in reality they get nothing. I think that is totally unfair on them and not really something I want to be part of. This has been going on for a while and it feels as though the leadership simply do not care as long as they can keep growing. In reality, I will probably stick around for a while becaues I know there are people who want me to and who value what I do, but I am certainly not happy about the current situation.
I am another who might be interested in attending the NabuurCamp - its fairly easy to get to Holland from here - but am waiting for Pelle to clarify exactly what will be discussed (info in NabuurCamp invite and wiki do not match) as I don't want to go if I will not be able to add anything. I have been asked to get involved, to give feedback, then been ignored too many times, it will take quite a lot of convincing for me to want to do it again.
I would like to thing that Nabuur can survive but at the moment I am really not sure. If Siegfried really is still the leader then he needs to start leading, and start listening!
Totally agree with Mary and Lynley - and I, personally, have sunk a considerable amount of support in time and finances. No - no one listened after the one year change over and promise to a new and better site, when the old one was functioning just fine. I wonder how much Nabuur spent on THAT year long process - and couldn't the money have been better spent? I'm just curious what ANYONE found to be better on this site??? And, I'm sure it's impossible to switch back to the old one. Raul had many viable suggestions - but never listened to. Disheartening, gut wrenching - not strong enough words....
I have been lurking as I have been a little busy with a newborn baby.
My thoughts, unfortunately echo those of the last few posts. I have actually dropped my support and have not been very active on Nabuur.
When I first discovered Nabuur, I was thrilled. I threw myself into helping communities with great enthusiasm. Then, during the site changeover, I saw the place deteriorate. Most neighbours dropped off and activity slowed to almost nothing. Several communities I was helping just literally died. There were always the core group of persistent neighbours who appeared to do all the work but not many new ones who were actually active. The site was so confusing that I nearly gave up myself.
After multiple promises of a "new improved" Nabuur site and the site actually getting more complex and confusing, I seriously started to lose my patience
Many people tried to explain this, and were ignored. Some of them have since given up.
I used to recommend Nabuur to people, now I don't. How can I recommend a site that doesn't appear to have hardly any activity? They join, click on village after village, that don't have any information. Then when they post in a village, no one responds because the village has been inactive for years! They soon loose interest and wonder why on earth I recommended it to them!
I too don't think Nabuur can survive being completely volunteer driven. I have worked with a lot of volunteer agencies in my life, and the hardest part is keeping volunteers active. You need a really strong platform for the volunteers to work from and Nabuur is no where near that.
I hope I am completely wrong, but in the mean time I will be watching from the sidelines as I do not have much time and my little girl is where I need to put my energy at the moment.
Does anyone REALLY think that Nabuur can be rescued??? and then run by volunteers? - it has been sliding down hill for over a year now - and I totally agree with Melissa - I too no longer urge people to join us.
Well spoken by everyone and they have echoed my sentiments....... lots of the people on Nabuur have left it spread too thin..the idea was novel and Ok lots of the Volunteers got tired.....i can actually say that after forming the Nairobi Meet up Group the Idea was to give a sense of follow up and ownership to members that were from various parts of the country....this would be able to be done at a meeting that would be at the end or the 1st of every month so that those projects that were on hold would be helped.It was to also give Monitoring and Evaluation to the head office on the projects that have been funded...without monitoring and evaluation and organization is doomed since you dont see where your money is going...lots of the organizations felt that Nabuur is a funding organization......and we were slowly letting them get the concept that it wasnt....we were having seminars and workshops after meeting up together and helping NOT just looking to Nabuur as the Silver Bullet to all the problems to villages.There was also the fact that lost of mis-communication and those villages that were being favored over others and replication of projects .....the camp should be held.....
BUT a question still lies with a GOAL and OBJECTIVE of what to rescue Nabuur?
Is it too late....and has Nabuur turned into something that wasnt expected?
I leave it for those at the top i dont think that it too late and i think if we can just narrow down everything to specific projects at a time and within a a specific place and concentrate on those that are IMPORTANT...it can be done.
I am also just so tired of trying so hard yet at times people especially when u have the expertise and you are African like me there is the fact that people feel that u know too much...and therefore you arent important.
I rest my case though these are just my sentiments!
Well spoken by everyone and they have echoed my sentiments....... lots of the people on Nabuur have left it spread too thin..the idea was novel and Ok lots of the Volunteers got tired.....i can actually say that after forming the Nairobi Meet up Group the Idea was to give a sense of follow up and ownership to members that were from various parts of the country....this would be able to be done at a meeting that would be at the end or the 1st of every month so that those projects that were on hold would be helped.It was to also give Monitoring and Evaluation to the head office on the projects that have been funded...without monitoring and evaluation and organization is doomed since you dont see where your money is going...lots of the organizations felt that Nabuur is a funding organization......and we were slowly letting them get the concept that it wasnt....we were having seminars and workshops after meeting up together and helping NOT just looking to Nabuur as the Silver Bullet to all the problems to villages.There was also the fact that lost of mis-communication and those villages that were being favored over others and replication of projects .....the camp should be held.....
BUT a question still lies with a GOAL and OBJECTIVE of what to rescue Nabuur?
Is it too late....and has Nabuur turned into something that wasnt expected?
I leave it for those at the top i dont think that it too late and i think if we can just narrow down everything to specific projects at a time and within a a specific place and concentrate on those that are IMPORTANT...it can be done.
I am also just so tired of trying so hard yet at times people especially when u have the expertise and you are African like me there is the fact that people feel that u know too much...and therefore you arent important.
I rest my case though these are just my sentiments!
Hi Pelle
In the Nabuur Camp invite, you posted a link to the new website http://theme.nabuurtest.com/
Are you looking for feedback on that at the moment, or will all that happen at/after the Camp, with changes being made before it goes live?
I am sure many people do have thoughts, I am one of them but am a little reluctant to write them all down if the design is now totally fixed and no one will take notice of the comments.
If you are looking for it, should we post it here?
Mary
I have been reading miles of threads over the recent months on the attempts being made by nabuur to make the site workable, or re-designing it, etc etc...
Perhaps simply copying the Orkut model might solve all problems. Orkut has been around for years and is a tried, tested and proven platform. It provides all the features that nabuur has been continuing to explore over the recent years. These include:
- the facility to create an account
- the facility to build several features into the account
- the facility to create groups
- the facility to delete by the individual whatever is added by the individual
- and plenty of other features...
To simply copy this model, no meetings are required, no travel is involved, no discussions are required...
The time frame to create such a platform can be precisely calculated by a small committee of web-designers, since reinventing-the-wheel is not involved here.
Migration to the new platform can follow...
Vijai
Hi All,
Sorry that I have not been able to contribute lately. I have been on holidays and travelling to places with reduced internet capabilities.
I will comment here again rather than to one of the other few discussions that have been created and might get people lost.
Thanks Kester and Frans for your answer I just want to add that it is great to use some of the modules you are explaining but I still don't understand why the simpler things are not done better first and then put more time into the more complex ones. I know using the modules page as an example of site speed is not a measure of what a normal page takes to load but it is a great measure of the amount of modules you are using. My opinion is that things should be kept simple, get the simple things right and the rest will follow. You just need to a site to publish volunteer opportunities, villages and for users to be able to find their way through both. That really does not need a huge amount of modules. As an example, look at Kiva.org as an example. Not the best looking site but it is doing the work, why?, they are keeping it simple. Opportunities search based on 6 simple fields on a sortable table. The formula is really not that hard. Keep it simple.
I still have mixed feelings about the NabuurCamp but would like to hear what others think about it. Maybe there is another discussion about it somewhere else but did not get a chance to find it.
Getting volunteers involved in development and other things is great but expecting that it could run just with volunteers is what I am not so sure about. In any camp concept there is always a leader of the project that will do all the hard continuous work. I give myself as an example, I love helping and I thought I was going to have time while on holidays but the reality is other, we all have things we need to attend to survive and to continue our lives, time over a weekend is fine but in the long run I don;t think it is sustainable to expect people to put add a constant amount of time over a long period of time and on a volunteering basis.
Just one questions I would like ask before applying to be at the camp:
- How many volunteer web developers and designers with experience in community building and Drupal 6 have applied to be at the camp?
I would love to hear what others think.
Raul
Hi Raul
I do not think that Nabuur can sustain itself at this stage without paid staff, given that it has more or less stopped functioning altogether. Maybe at another time when it is stronger but I think now would be very harmful or even terminal for the organisation.
I have to say, I am getting a little cynical of the promised new great you-beaut Nabuur websites! Frankly, I think I preferred the very first wesbite. I could see who were the active volunteers and I could easily contact them, I knew where I was posting and threads were easy to follow, I could use chat, and I got notification of posts in my villages and personal messages via email. That's all I needed! I am over this current Nabuur website because it's so unuseable - and I am not the only one, as evidenced by the almost complete lack of online activity in villages!
I guess, like others, patience is running thin and I sense a general feeling of betrayal by Nabuur- to the volunteers and staff after all the time and energy put in over the years, and especially to the villages who put their trust, faith and hopes in Nabuur.
Anyhow, that's my response. I'm sorry if it sounds a little harsh. It's sad that Nabuur is so much on the brink of collapse, and there's nothing I or any of the other volunteers can do about it. I sincerely hope that I have this all wrong, and that Nabuur rises like the phoenix out of the ashes!!
:-)
HI guys
I agree about keep it simple, as someone posted under one of these threads - learn from sites that work. Yeah I found some of the older sites easier, and they actually worked properly!
And about the problems of surviving without paid staff - 267 villages and growing, many of who don't have good computer skills so need some proper support, and virtually no activity on the site any more. No I am not convinced it can be done, maybe one day but not now.
Part of me wants to quit right now because I feel that Nabuur gives false hope to communities by encouraging them to come online, saying they will get results, when in reality they get nothing. I think that is totally unfair on them and not really something I want to be part of. This has been going on for a while and it feels as though the leadership simply do not care as long as they can keep growing. In reality, I will probably stick around for a while becaues I know there are people who want me to and who value what I do, but I am certainly not happy about the current situation.
I am another who might be interested in attending the NabuurCamp - its fairly easy to get to Holland from here - but am waiting for Pelle to clarify exactly what will be discussed (info in NabuurCamp invite and wiki do not match) as I don't want to go if I will not be able to add anything. I have been asked to get involved, to give feedback, then been ignored too many times, it will take quite a lot of convincing for me to want to do it again.
I would like to thing that Nabuur can survive but at the moment I am really not sure. If Siegfried really is still the leader then he needs to start leading, and start listening!
Mary
Totally agree with Mary and Lynley - and I, personally, have sunk a considerable amount of support in time and finances. No - no one listened after the one year change over and promise to a new and better site, when the old one was functioning just fine. I wonder how much Nabuur spent on THAT year long process - and couldn't the money have been better spent? I'm just curious what ANYONE found to be better on this site??? And, I'm sure it's impossible to switch back to the old one. Raul had many viable suggestions - but never listened to. Disheartening, gut wrenching - not strong enough words....
--
Ginger :)
I have been lurking as I have been a little busy with a newborn baby.
My thoughts, unfortunately echo those of the last few posts. I have actually dropped my support and have not been very active on Nabuur.
When I first discovered Nabuur, I was thrilled. I threw myself into helping communities with great enthusiasm. Then, during the site changeover, I saw the place deteriorate. Most neighbours dropped off and activity slowed to almost nothing. Several communities I was helping just literally died. There were always the core group of persistent neighbours who appeared to do all the work but not many new ones who were actually active. The site was so confusing that I nearly gave up myself.
After multiple promises of a "new improved" Nabuur site and the site actually getting more complex and confusing, I seriously started to lose my patience
Many people tried to explain this, and were ignored. Some of them have since given up.
I used to recommend Nabuur to people, now I don't. How can I recommend a site that doesn't appear to have hardly any activity? They join, click on village after village, that don't have any information. Then when they post in a village, no one responds because the village has been inactive for years! They soon loose interest and wonder why on earth I recommended it to them!
I too don't think Nabuur can survive being completely volunteer driven. I have worked with a lot of volunteer agencies in my life, and the hardest part is keeping volunteers active. You need a really strong platform for the volunteers to work from and Nabuur is no where near that.
I hope I am completely wrong, but in the mean time I will be watching from the sidelines as I do not have much time and my little girl is where I need to put my energy at the moment.
Melissa
Does anyone REALLY think that Nabuur can be rescued??? and then run by volunteers? - it has been sliding down hill for over a year now - and I totally agree with Melissa - I too no longer urge people to join us.
--
Ginger :)
Well spoken by everyone and they have echoed my sentiments....... lots of the people on Nabuur have left it spread too thin..the idea was novel and Ok lots of the Volunteers got tired.....i can actually say that after forming the Nairobi Meet up Group the Idea was to give a sense of follow up and ownership to members that were from various parts of the country....this would be able to be done at a meeting that would be at the end or the 1st of every month so that those projects that were on hold would be helped.It was to also give Monitoring and Evaluation to the head office on the projects that have been funded...without monitoring and evaluation and organization is doomed since you dont see where your money is going...lots of the organizations felt that Nabuur is a funding organization......and we were slowly letting them get the concept that it wasnt....we were having seminars and workshops after meeting up together and helping NOT just looking to Nabuur as the Silver Bullet to all the problems to villages.There was also the fact that lost of mis-communication and those villages that were being favored over others and replication of projects .....the camp should be held.....
BUT a question still lies with a GOAL and OBJECTIVE of what to rescue Nabuur?
Is it too late....and has Nabuur turned into something that wasnt expected?
I leave it for those at the top i dont think that it too late and i think if we can just narrow down everything to specific projects at a time and within a a specific place and concentrate on those that are IMPORTANT...it can be done.
I am also just so tired of trying so hard yet at times people especially when u have the expertise and you are African like me there is the fact that people feel that u know too much...and therefore you arent important.
I rest my case though these are just my sentiments!
Well spoken by everyone and they have echoed my sentiments....... lots of the people on Nabuur have left it spread too thin..the idea was novel and Ok lots of the Volunteers got tired.....i can actually say that after forming the Nairobi Meet up Group the Idea was to give a sense of follow up and ownership to members that were from various parts of the country....this would be able to be done at a meeting that would be at the end or the 1st of every month so that those projects that were on hold would be helped.It was to also give Monitoring and Evaluation to the head office on the projects that have been funded...without monitoring and evaluation and organization is doomed since you dont see where your money is going...lots of the organizations felt that Nabuur is a funding organization......and we were slowly letting them get the concept that it wasnt....we were having seminars and workshops after meeting up together and helping NOT just looking to Nabuur as the Silver Bullet to all the problems to villages.There was also the fact that lost of mis-communication and those villages that were being favored over others and replication of projects .....the camp should be held.....
BUT a question still lies with a GOAL and OBJECTIVE of what to rescue Nabuur?
Is it too late....and has Nabuur turned into something that wasnt expected?
I leave it for those at the top i dont think that it too late and i think if we can just narrow down everything to specific projects at a time and within a a specific place and concentrate on those that are IMPORTANT...it can be done.
I am also just so tired of trying so hard yet at times people especially when u have the expertise and you are African like me there is the fact that people feel that u know too much...and therefore you arent important.
I rest my case though these are just my sentiments!