Focus Group throughts

It was a great day today at the focus group for RuralNet|online. Got to meet Simon and Paul for the first time, which was ace, as well as a bunch of other cool people. Even better, they were people that cared about rural affairs, community building and were interested in using online tools, even when they weren't too experienced in using them.

The purpose of the day was to provide some feedback and consultation about the future approach of ruralnet|online, and I came away feeling rather guilty that not much was said on the subject! Hopefully there were enough nuggets there for Simon, Paul and the others to take away. Here are some ideas from me, anyway:

1. A system that pulls together three different types of information on ruralnet related issues:
a) content produced by Ruralnet or people connected directly with them (premium content)
b) content produced by people using Ruralnet as a publishing platform (user generated content)
c) content produced by people using their own blogs, aggregated in using RSS and tags (aggregated content)

2. Some kind of social network so everyone can register for free, have a simple profile and can find other people with similar interests and problems to them. Keep it simple though, no need to recreate FaceBook ;-)

3. Some quick, simple but useful tools: a personalised search engine for rural issues; a community edited wiki of rural information and resources

4. Simple guidance on social media and web 2.0 tools and how they can be employed in a rural context. Could be in ebook form, screencast, video, podcast etc etc

I suppose the issue is how can this be monetised? I like the idea of giving a little away to entice people into paying for a lot more, and there certainly is the possibility of doing that with some of the stuff above. It should also be possible to push people in the direction of services like Experts Online.

Another option that was mooted at the meeting was some kind of Social Media School. Using a virtual learning environment, it should be possible to put together a pretty comprehensive curriculum of lessons based on the various social media and web 2.0 tools, from beginners to more expert use. A simple charging system could be made, maybe £25 a course, so individual as well as organisations could invest in it. The tools exist to set this up now - such as Moodle - and they are free and open source.

Other opportunities could emerge as a result of these exercises, such as other organisations approaching ruralnet saying something along the lines of "we like what you are doing here with (say) the social media school, any chance you could create something for us like that?" in which case a nice big consultancy fee could be charged.

Will stop blethering now.