Two who last posted in May 2008 are Nathan Cryder and David Frayne.

I think the idea of Adaptive Blueprinting excited quite a few of us - anyone have any news of Nathan?

And as far as David Frayne is concerned: if he were still active here, wouldn't he have made just the most inventive and hyperactive of all Ned plotters? (It's not too late, Dav, to put in a re-appearance!) ;D

And exactly a year ago, on 5th June 2008, Chris Binkowski last visited Ned.

I used to enjoy his Better World Media videos and the discussions arising from them. A shame we didn't continue with them.

(edited to add link)

A year ago today, 6th June 2008, Gabriel Stauring last visited Ned. A few days later he set off on his return to Sudan and Chad, that is chronicled on the i-Act website

His departure seems to have hastened the end of discussion on one of the most popular series of threads on Ned as other frequent contributors to the Sudan/Chad discussions followed Gabriel into voluntary exile from Ned. over the following 6 months.

Tony Deifell last posted exactly one year ago - on 9th June 2008

Many of us took part in his Seeing Beyond Sight experiments and his WDYDWYD (Why do you do what you do?) thread, one of the most popular and influential threads on Omidyar.net, made a shorter re-appearance here on Ned, lasting just two months from its first to its most recent post.

One of the ideas in talking about social software is that people can only "groom" just so many people--about 50. On the other hand it seems people can can attend to a large number of people in their network.

When Onet shut down I worried about loosing track of many of the voices I valued highly there. It doesn't seem that's happened. And what's interesting to me is that it wasn't the case that everyone went around to a new community. People scattered, although Facebook has proven valuable for many. For Example It's interesting that Debbie Gleason has found Twitter a good fit for her voice. No surprise to anyone that the 140 character limit impedes my adoption of Twitter ;-) From Jean Russell's page of followers at Twitter I noticed Micheal Maranda. He's following 1,154 people there--lol.

I suspect that my experience of not loosing track of people is shared by most of us.

The Ned (Onet) platform excels at for collaboration. But the platform has a learning curve. The dilemma that creates is the need for a relatively large pool of collaborators to draw from and the learning curve scares off new users.

There is something attractive to me in a light-weight protocol like twitter ... so it typically gets more of my energy and attention.

I haven't really come upon toolsets (online spaces) that are satisfactory for online collaboration.

I've been drafting notes for a new vision for collaboration online ... we need an entirely new orientation. One grounded in the simple facts of the species. None of us are unique, and neither are the groups, or organizations or other institutions we form. We have to take that as a starting point and design better coordination between any sites and institutions we inhabit or frequent.

Michael, where can we find your draft notes? - or can you briefly summarise one or two main points. Sounds interesting.

A year ago today Christopher Caen, publisher of Aware magazine, last visited Ned.

Is Aware magazine still flourishing?

David asked a question about Aware magazine. There are pages still up but all the photos are down. My guess is that it's not actively being up-dated right now. I also note that the Facebook page hasn't been updated for about a year.

But something interested me in searching around the Aware site. On an article about Ruth Pearl, at the bottom was "Want to discuss this article with others, go to Ned." (Or something like that.) I thought it interesting to off-source the discussion part.

Managing discussions on blogs and online sites can be a real chore. I'm sure that Mark and Jim have their share of headaches that I don't know about in that regard. But Ned has community standards and a community that's up for almost anything as long as it's honest. And of course the point system that was famously contentious, but still useful.

What I'm curious about is how the idea of off-sourcing comments here fits with the site? The devil is in the details as they say, but such links do seem to have the potential to get people here.

Lovely to see your comment Michael. I think Google Wave when it comes out may really have an impact on encouraging people who haven't yet adopted social software. Others aren't so optimistic about that. Your points are very good, and by fits and starts I think we'll come around to better online collaboration sooner rather than later.

David Bale said:

Michael, where can we find your draft notes? - or can you briefly summarise one or two main points. Sounds interesting.

I'll probably be putting up a wagn shortly. (Wagn 1.0 was recently released! Kudos to Ethan and Lewis of http://www.GrassCommons.org)

However, for now, I am planning on circulating the document privately until it reaches a certain standard. Anyone interested in the work in progress, I'd be happy to share at the next milestone.

What has happened to all of our Kenyan friends?

• Eric Wanjamah
• Etukei Brenda
• Gitau Francis
• Karanja John
• Kariuki Daniel
• Kariuki Moses
• Kathambi Charity
• Kimambo Dennis
• Kirui Kipng'etich
• Kongere Samwel
• Mayodi Anthony
• Mutua David
• Mwangi Daniel
• Nderitu Monica
• Ngotho Samuel
• Njenga Paul
• Omondi Ronald
• Wanjohi Josephine

I will contact all of these people over the week-end.

Michael wrote:

I've been drafting notes for a new vision for collaboration online ... we need an entirely new orientation. One grounded in the simple facts of the species. None of us are unique, and neither are the groups, or organizations or other institutions we form. We have to take that as a starting point and design better coordination between any sites and institutions we inhabit or frequent.

I think there is an interesting comparison to be made between the last sentence of Michael's post - where he says "None of us are unique" and a recent post of David Braden in the Resilience thread. He says:

I also think of my community work that way. Every person I encounter contributes to the community the best way they know how. But, if we step back and see what others are doing, what others need, what others have to offer, then we can start to build the mutually supporting contributions that characterize a garden in balance. We don't do that by trying to control what happens in our community - we do it by being open to all potential contributions - I think.

I stumbled a bit over Michael's apparent assertion that "none of us are unique" since this flies in the face of experience, but I think it may just be a matter of semantics.

The way I would express it, is that "What we all have in common is that we are all unique".

But in respecting each other's common-uniqueness, we are also honouring our biodiversity. By valuing that which is different between us, we are sharing in a common belief and working harmoniously together (ie different notes striking fuller, richer and more satisfying chords between us)

So, returning to the theme of this thread, I wonder if creating a garden, developing user-friendly community online collaboration and retaining a vibrant online community forum (ie without losing too many valuable members over time) may all be versions of the same striving for a natural or sustainable balance between the organisms making up the whole. For when we have depleted our diverse stock of common-uniqueness, a social forum will also loses its power to retain the attention of its remaining members.

Without positive nurturing of our assets (finding ways to let them flow, rather than cutting out whatever fails to conform to our short-term, unsustainable goals), the end product will inevitably be weakened. Soil will lose its richness, online tools for collaboration will lack utility and community forums will become slow and stale. In each case we will see decline, not growth.

I thought we might continue exploration of the "unique" (or not) here: http://www.ned.com/group/communi ty-general/news/322/

But I will quickly mention that in my assertion above, what is more important than the question of individuality of the person is the same question applied to our group formations... as conventions, as forms, we can configure them differently, in light of this point of view.

Hi. Saw Michael's post of personal news on Twitter and thought I'd drop by.

A good point .. if we want to promote Ned as a space, it is important to post elsewhere like on twitter when there is an important or interesting discussion here.

Welcome, Debbie! Long time no see!

Well, what a nice surprise!

Good to see you Debbie!

:)

I vaguely recall Mark forming this forum, but then real life interferes with forums.

Good to be seen.

good to be bck thanks Linda for the note

Dear All,

am happy to see that the good work continues on this forum. am currently in St. Louis, MO working towards a Masters degree and am glad to reunite with you all and hopefully participate in some of the initiatives here

welcome back friends! nice to hear u Eric!

Eric Wanjamah said:

Dear All,

am happy to see that the good work continues on this forum. am currently in St. Louis, MO working towards a Masters degree and am glad to reunite with you all and hopefully participate in some of the initiatives here

Chicago is only a hop, skip and a jump away

Eric,

Today I met with a Zambian - a Bill Gates Scholar at Cambridge University - who will be moving to Washington University in September, I think. I also think you share similar views e.g. on the importance of the Brain Gain. So perhaps I could arrange that you might meet up in St Louis.

Maybe on your return from seeing Michael in Chicago.

;)

Happy to back in the group of people who are world changers. Linda thanks for the invite.

Michael,

I've been to Chicago twice during the winter, I liked everything about the city except the cold.

I am planning to come on Fri, 24th July for the Ghana fest and I hope this time I will really enjoy myself.

David,

I will be glad to meet the scholar, it is a great chance to network. Feel free to pass my name and contact to him.