As far as I can see it is a well established fact that the current website is not working. So why is it stressful for anyone that we are trying to introduce a new development process????

Pelle: I am trying to address the fact that currently there are a lot of issues with the website, we gotta try something new. Both as in developing the website but also in giving the users/customers a view into what can be done and really how long will it take. I am trying to point out to Siegfried and yourself that maybe the changes necessary cannot just be working on pages and showing them to users again. This have been going on for 2-3 years now and it is not solving the problems so a new way have to be introduced. The fact that this discussion should only be available for members who are interested and not for everybody is a good example of how a new way of organising the information is required. Can you please clarify for me, have you been on the payroll by Siegfried before?

Virginia: I am trying to help addressing the point of laundering washing in public, we cant spend hours/days looking at homepages, spelling mistakes and images if we cant find a way of displaying the right information to the right people no matter the colour. and as this is an online group with people based across the world we have to have this discussion here but no "guests" should not be able to follow the "bickering".

The page on www.nabuurcamp.org is so far from anything that is shows none of what I am asking for. It looks fine and might be an improvement to the old one, but how is it going to address the cross references of data between groups, members and villages. How is the confidentiality issues for some of the threads that should stay private.

Nabuur is a communication tool and not a website. Like Facebook it is a way of bringing people closer together and letting them actually say their bit, if we can't even do that in developing the website how is it ever going to work for the aids kids in Africa???

Nabuur is not about posting declamations about charities in pretty colours but actually about bringing people and resources together and giving them room to do some work.

Can we just get on with it, I am meeting Pelle in London on the 25th and then we will try and get started and actually move on with the development and start helping people.

Thanks

Niels

Bravo Mary for speaking your mind!!! You are truly going to be a loss from the development group, and a TREMENDOUS loss to nabuur if you fade away.
I have had to totally turn my mind off with all the screaming matches (though culturally appropriate - I used to have a Chinese business partner and often had to wear ear plugs) it has become totally anti productive and has caused many people to leave - not just we old timers, but the arguments are spread all over the front page and any newcomer can see what a mess we have become. Often I am the only one on line - with perhaps 5-6 visitors. Bet they never come back. I sure wouldn't!
I have been asking for our 'dirty laundry' to PLEASE be aired behind a screen, to no avail..... PLEASE get working on that so we do not have to read the insanity unless we choose to - and Mary, your input will surely be missed.
Warm regards,
Virginia

Hi everyone

Four weeks ago we were in the middle of the NabuurCamp. I had many doubts about whether Nabuur had any sort of future and I thought that the event would either convince me to leave or convince me to stay. I enjoyed my time in Amsterdam a great deal, thought it was very constructive, and a lot of fun too! By the time it was over I felt a lot more positive and believed there was a chance for success. But a month down the line, it seems that there is more argument than progress.

Quite simply, after several months (years really) of discussing how Nabuur and its website should work, I have had enough of getting stressed about it all. I can't do it any more.

So I have decided that I no longer wish to take an active part in the 'organisation' discussions i.e. those related to website, resources, governance etc. As I signed up to the Website group at the Camp I would like to apologise to the other members for disappearing.

When I found Nabuur I thought it is a great concept, and I still think that now. Other sites have come along and are learning from (and maybe improving on) what Nabuur has done e.g. 1% Club http://www.onepercentclub.com/ and as I posted elsewhere, from the point of view of getting a working website maybe we should learn from them too. You know I am always encouraging LRs to talk to each other, maybe the same is true of online volunteering organisations!

Nabuur kind of works its way into your bones, so I don't think I am leaving totally. I joined because I wanted to help local communities find solutions, but over the last few months I have almost completely lost my focus on that. I need to find a way to get it back, either on Nabuur or elsewhere.

Mary

As I see it:
- 25 people came together in Amsterdam, more 'users' than 'developers'
- the outcome of the event were thus more requirements (on scraps of paper) than developed functionality/pages
- after the camp a few developers have gathered to organise the requirements, digitalize them, put on nabuurcamp.org what was developed...
- some of the requirements still need sorting out (which I'm working on). The idea is to keep the requirements discussion on Nabuur.com and have the more tech documentation in the issue tracker (http://svn.nabuurtest.com/trac)

So far the website team has done work fully based on the requirements defined during the camp (moving stuff to nabuurcamp.org and digitalizing/organizing the outcomes). I don't see how that would be the 'wrong things'

So far it's also been a fully voluntary job, including the organization of the camp. You've discovered the speed of a fully voluntary process by now. Hence the proposal to 'buy some time', still following the same process: requirements by Local Reps & other users - build - test/feedback & prepare next requirements

Niels - I think we're both favouring a different development method. I'm in favour of this iterative approach. Rather than building mockups, this allows us to get early feedback on parts of the functionality that have already been built. Think it would be good to discuss the approach while in London.

Cecilia - this is in no way similar to the 'old' process. There are more developers involved now, requirements were given by 20 people in Amsterdam, face-to-face. I'm fed up with being called 'old NABUUR staff' and being accused of making the same mistakes over and over again.

I don't see how the process of: requirements definition by users, then building a first version, immediate testing and feedback in an bi-weekly iterations (or longer, if we can't 'buy time') is non-democratic or going the wrong way - we're all just working on what we agreed on during the Camp.

Pelle

Hello all,

Just wanted to say I am back in Sydney now.

It looks like there is a lot of action and I don't want to step in the middle with what is happening.

I will be around if you need me to provide feedback in any of the developments.

While I might feel the direction to go is very different to what the direction things are taking there seems to be a strong and very dedicated group working form the central hub so I feel I might not add as much as I wish I could.

Again, if you need me to provide any feedback I would be happy to if I am directed to the things that need feedback.

If you asked me. I would start with a fresh Database, migrate users, villages and tasks and start building from a simple setup. Add a tab for villages with live filters, same for neighbours and same for tasks. Very simple, people wanting to help and people (villages) looking for help. Very simple and quick to make

All the best,

Raul

Once again...

I am in no way saying that what you all came up with at the camp is anything like a cosmetic change. If you look at the comments on this group you can see that everybody is looking for so much more than just a cosmetic change.

What I am trying to say is that nobody can provide documentation and technical descriptions on how to turn the users ideas into a great website.

First:
The users have told you what they want it is now the web development team's job to explain to everybody how they think they can provide that in the web site. So far they have failed completely in this. You gotta convince your users that they are going to get what they have asked for.

No developers can make that interpretation in one go and nobody from Sky TV's to Amazon's or anywhere else's development teams can get this right in one go. There is always a time for the users and the developers to talk and meet on a way to solve the problem of presenting an overload of information.

Second:
To develop a website the pages is just the cosmetic layer of a working website. There are quite a few details that need to be taken care of before the pages can be developed. An example is the database which needs to represent the interaction your users want.

When the above things are done you can start looking at how to create the web pages and find the technical limitations that means that not everything can be the way the users want it and then you go back and talk to them and find out if they can live with these limitations if not it is back to the drawing board.

So once again please, please, pleeeaaseee let me see some of the documentation produced by the developers and not just a series of hand written notes from the users.

If you want to start working now you should only do mock-ups in MS Power Point or something anything else is a waste of time and resources.

Very Kind Regards

Niels

Dear Siegfried.

There is no polite way of putting this...so we will just have to "get real" on an overview of what has been happening:

1) The users have had your IT team telling us users for a long time that we (the users) dont speak in the right language for them to understand us.

2) We have the Current Director saying that he would like a Democratic process....but not until after 1 June. So there! Tuff!

And we are not getting insurance if the current decisions made before the 1 June ends up getting nabuur sued after the 1 june. Also Tuff!

3) Your IT team has shown us things can be done their "new" way for 10000 Euros, which is the same people and the same method as the last 2 years..now with a few pages of user inputs (from the camp, which I was there as well)

from there, you form the opinion that,"No, Niels, your experience building websites are in my opinion and in the opinions of my "camp users" (though no one is sure of that) not giving due credit to the improvements we are going to make."

4) Niels has already try to explain that your proposal is as it stands on paper right now is "looking cosmetic" and not dealing with the intricate boring details of actually "organising the data in a way that enables better retrieval and traffic flow in the long run according to what your users propose at your meetings and online (which he has taken the time to find out without pay!) "....

BUT with all this talk of "support from the camp input", you want the "same IT method" until 1 June.

SO in summary, we have a situation where those who actually CAN try something new are being told by those who "have done the same for the last 2 years"..."No, no, we are different now, cos we say so and who are you, the users who cant speak IT and the IT Developers from outside who dont know our users, to decide we are not different...cos we say we are and we all agree we are different now!"

I am finding this line of reasoning very hard to swallow objectively.

To boil it down to basics:

Pelle and Siegfried have both put up a lists of tasks in IT development and Governance and that will not change until 1 June, no matter what we the volunteers and users input.

***** Will people volunteer to work under the current paid IT team & Current Director without being allowed to "participate" in the real "structural development of nabuur" until 1 June when all major decisions about the future would have been made already by under the old Directorship with the same old IT staff team?

Well, hope I do not sound too mean...but if does sounds mean, sometimes the truth from different perspective bites..however we are all adult enough to see that professionals (as most of us are in our lives outside of Nabuur) can handle the truth even if it is not sugar-coated. Some things cant be.

cheers
Cecilia

Hi all,

On Wednesday 3 March a few members of the development group came together in Amsterdam to sort out the results of the NABUURCamp. (Unfortunately I wasn't there because of a severe cold)

They've copied the resulting pages from the development environment (sb2.nabuurtest.com) to www.nabuurcamp.org
Next to that they've put in quite an effort sorting out the requirements that came out of the Camp. A lot of the documentation has been put up here: http://svn.nabuurtest.com/trac/

For those who've taken a look and got confused: the links in red are links that will bring you to underlying pages with more specs/requirements. As it's a wiki, you can create an account yourself and add your bit to the requirements.

The pages/functional blocks that were defined during the camp are mostly here: http://svn.nabuurtest.com/trac/wiki/InterfacePages

I'm aware this documentation isn't complete yet. I'm sorting out the additional wireframes, notes etc as we speak. Most of it should be online now, it needs some sorting out.

I've also continued cleaning up the project room of this group so that it can be used to discuss requirements and post updates. Together with the wiki that should provide a good environment to share & discuss ideas.

Concerning the proposed development process:
- If you look at the proposal you'll see it's pretty open: at an accessible place in the Netherlands, any participants are welcome. Of course during the meetings the chat will be open for anyone outside to put in ideas.
- During (preparations of) the NABUURCamp we've put a lot of effort in getting volunteer developers. This lead to a number of developers and a designer being present at the Camp. And I'm convinced they did a great job. However, looking at the requirements that came up and their volunteer capacity, I guess some budget would help to speed up things.
- Rolf and I suggested a bi-weekly meeting for two reasons:
1. To enable the community to get the requirements sorted out in advance and be able to test the results before the next meeting. Mary - part of this is of course to also get more Local Reps involved. I'm very happy with the input Adnan, Denis and Biozid provided during the Camp. NABUUR needs that.
2. The whole budget won't be spent at once, so there's time (and money) to change course if needed
- I've copied in the proposal below. If you have ideas on how to make it more open, let me know.

Raul, looks like you've realised quite a lot in only one weekend. (I remember the feeling from 14 Feb)
I've taken a closer look at both sites and have a few concerns:
- The microvolunteering site is indeed pretty simple, but to be honest I can't yet imagine how it would host a NABUUR village. There are quite a number of requirements that would still have to be realised (discussion forum, user profiles & dashboard, chat, village profile & background, grouping of tasks to form a project.. just to name a few)
- You mention that one of the sites is built using RoR and the other using Django. I'm not sure how well they integrate with Drupal (the CMS for NABUUR)?

Niels, I'm not sure how you got the impression that the proposed changes are only cosmetic? If that were the case it wouldn't have taken so long to get an overview of the requirements

My two cents....

Pelle

========= Proposal as posted earlier =============

SITUATION

The NABUURCamp resulted in a list of essential pages, and quite a bit of
work needs to be done still. Given current capacity, and especially a
lack of designers and themers, this can take quite some time.

To get more capacity soon, we could buy time from developers, designers
and themers, to finish the core pages. At the same time, we'd like that
to be an open process where others can join and work on other pages at
the same time.

And we believe it will work best when the core team is working in one
place. It will also make it easier to invite others to join.

PROPOSAL

We propose to organise 4 afternoon sessions of 3-4 hours in an open and
visible place in The Netherlands, with a hired/committed core team of
around 9 people per session:

- Pelle and Rolf to prepare and facilitate the process, keep everyone
informed, make sure the web development team has a chance to participate
online.

- Kester as core developer

- Two teams of a graphic designer and a themer, each team trying to
finish one page in an afternoon.

- Someone as interaction designer, someone as copywriter to make sure
technology, user experience and texts are consistent. (Perhaps these
skills are partly or completely covered by the designer/themer teams.)

Pelle and I are thinking about a session every two weeks (to give time
for inputs by the community), Siegfried would prefer every week (to be
there sooner), and it of course also depends on availability of the
designers and themers to be hired.

PAGES TO BE FINISHED

From what we discussed during NABUURCamp, we considered the list of
around 9 or 10 pages that could form a "minimally usable set" for a
migration. They now mostly have wireframes, various levels of functional
implementations, some design, and part of the texts.

"General pages"
- Homepage
- pages following the "4 buttons"
- General about, etc
- FAQ, Help, ...

Village
- Village profile = connect
- Project page = collaborate
- Background info (could be added later)

User profile
- LR
- Facilitator (if a special version is needed)
- rest (if a special version is needed)

My Nabuur dashboard
- LR
- Facilitator (if needed)
- rest (if needed)

Overview pages (maybe one and the same in a sense)
- Villages
- Tasks
- Search

And there is some stuff that still needs to find its place on the pages
and in the system:

- messages, notifications
- tagging and finding related content
- chat?
- bookmarks, resources?

It is probably best to start with the project page and the MyNabuur
page, to see if we can quickly turn nabuurcamp.org into a working
environment for the Web Development Team first, and the other teams next.

...

We have a pool of people to get some of the skills needed from (Antje,
Lode, Roy, Frans, Hapee) but especially need to find more
themers/designers. And perhaps we can get pro-bono commitments, but
would like to be able to cover the minimal set of pages regardless of
whether that succeeds or not.

Dear all,

My apologies for being so silent; I had signed up for e-mail notifications, didn't receive any, had lots of other things to do and only found out today that there has been quite a discussion here.... Here's a short reaction.

In Amsterdam the users and the developers agreed on a number of pages that needed to be made asap. If Niels or Raul or James or Janet or Philipp or xx had been there, the outcome might have looked different, but this was the result of the meeting: it is what the very committed local reps, online volunteers and developers who were there came up with.

Now Niels, you are saying that what this group has come up with constitutes no more than cosmetic changes. I personally think that the pages as identified in Amsterdam constitute much more that that; those there felt that this was the basis of well functioning simple site, in other words real improvement. But I also agree that such a site will benefit a lot from the full set of plans which you mention (wireframes, database scheme, release and test schedule, iterative development plan, etc.) which, as you're pointing out, might get NABUUR in the position of becoming a market leader in the area of volunteer and group websites.

At the moment most users (including me) would desperately like to see a more effective site, whether that makes us a market leader or not. Hence my decision to start working on the pages jointly outlined in Amsterdam. There is a lot of work to do and it won't be done tomorrow. So there is plenty of space for Niels (good to see that you're meeting with Rolf and Pelle in London) and Raul (thanks for the update Raul) to join forces with the little group of developers and carry out their important elements in addition to the work already done. I can't see anyone object if that creates a more effective site! And this forum is the place to discuss possbile conflicts in e.g order, priority, etc.

Again, my apologies for being so silent unintentionally.

Regards,

Siegfried

PS1. Yes, Mary, I for one would certainly favour proper local rep testing as part of the job
PS2. Are the relevant links/docs now visible to all? I asked Rolf and Pelle some time ago to make sure they are as these are necessary for us all who would like to follow and contribute to the work of the developers.

Hi Siegfried

Could you please let me know if there is any point in me going to London to meet with your developers?

I am not sure if your silence means that the decision to go ahead with the cosmetic change have been made and the money have been spent?

I have asked for some information about database layout, technical specifications and user experience designs but have not received anything from neither you nor Pelle.

Are you going to look at the plan and look to improve the website in the longer term?

Raul, Mary and many others have given a lot of input to segments of the development and there are many of your users who are excited about building a great website, but if you are more interested in the cosmetic look of the site there is not really any reason for the effort.

So please let me know is there room for real improvement or will it be a situation where you at any time can veto the work and push forward with what you have been talking about since the camp?

Please let us know if we have your backing for real improvement?

Regards

Niels

Hi Raul

Well for as long as we are all still trying to volunteer to make nabuur.com better and to not pay through the nose of 10K in euros.....lets have a look at it.

I am going to suggest that you and Niels have a quick chat because he is working on similar upgrading issues for British NHS National Health Service now.

Why dont you too link up online somehow?

And in theory, Niels will be meeting with Pelle and Rolf whose proposal of 10K Euros to do a new website over 16 days was what Siegfried indicated he has accepted....lets see ....if something can be done so that in the end, all the users get some of what they want.

Cheers for sharing.
Cecilia

Well Done Raul!!! have a great week wherever you are off to!
--
Ginger :)

Hello all,

I am about to leave for the full week but I thought I'd give you an update from what happened at the Social Innovation Camp I was managing.

The 2 winners, one of them who is the microvolunteering site I was telling you about and for which I had high hopes before the camp demonstrated what I have been trying to say about simplicity.

Have a look

http://beta.twobobsworth.org.au/

http://refugeebuddy.org/

They are both still in Beta version but this is what the teams achieved in less than 36 hours.

I'd be happy to discuss possibilities of getting access to the code of the microvolunteering site and then adapting it to what Nabuur needs which is not hugely different from what they have done I think. Maybe the developers that got involved in this could be hired for a few hours to do the required changes. This site was developed on RoR and the Refugee site in Django. Both Open Source languages.

Anyway, I'm about to leave but I thought I'd leave you for something to think about for the next week

Let's have peaceful and constructive discussions

Raul

Anyway, just something to leave you

Greetings to everyone,

Bonjour!

I am also new to nabuur I just signed in a few weeks ago. When I first came across the nabuur site I did not find it difficult to navigate.

Just stay a bit longer and you will find that it is much easier to use.

Other sites of the same types where much difficult to navigate but nabuur I think is much easier. The only area it needs to improve is on the chat area other sites with chat area are complete with pictures of the people who are online and it just stays on the site I mean the discussions just like on the discussions area.

Best regards,

Jeremy Ecle

--
.. I came that they may have life that they may have it abundantly ..

Cecilia, you captured what i would be interested to happen in nabuur beyond affinity, skills and experience facilitators may have in your last paragraph:

'If villages are guided to present their ideas and needs more transparently and with the right statistics from nabuur.com database, there can be better ways of targetting and marketing to the right volunteers to match the skills needed for the village.'

This is what LRs need and when this is achieved that organic process of selection for villages won't matter.

--
Stanley Okurut