Here is my presentation of the new version of ruralnet|online delivered at collaborate|2008. Sorry that the audio is a but stuttery . . . I need more practice. but anyway I think it is still helpful.

[Addendum: at one point I say we had 40,000 users. I should have said 4,000 users and this is the number on the slide.]

if the slide transitions don't work automatically for you, you will have to advance them yourself. Or, you could go to slideshare and watch it there.

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All the insights gathered in this co-design exercise have been pulled together to produce a prototype for ruralnet|online 2.0. This prototype is a fully working system for the Rural Community Carbon Network and is live here: www.communitycarbon.net. It was launched at collaborate|2008 on 10/4/08. Click on the image above to view an annotated screenshot which describes each area of the 'root' page.

The Community Carbon Network is truly innovative and draws on the ideas expressed here over the last 3 months. The key factors that guided this implementation are: >>Read more

This is really a comment on Paul's latest post.

Following a long train journey and discussion with my colleague Brian Rich last October I produced a 'Green Paper' which described what I thought ruralnet|online 2.0 would look like. See the document Forum ideas.doc attached. The graphic here is part of that document and if you go to www.rsnonline.org.uk they look remarkably similar.

However, when I presented these ideas to my colleagues at ruralnet|uk they challenged me. "How do you know that this is what users want?" they said. And this co-design process was born.

So. Will we go through this exercise and come back to my green paper and implement that anyway? No, we will definitely not. One thing this process has reinforced is that ruralnet|online is not about information. It's about relationships. It's about making links between people and the ideas they have. For example, Experts Online is about putting one person in touch with another (an expert) who can help them. The shared information and resources this generates is a spin-off of the relationship building process.

So, I think, ruralnet|online should start with the ideas expressed here and here.

If we develop (and I think we will) a forum-type feature then it will be based on Web 2.0's ability to make links (relationships again) between people and ideas. It won't be an information system. See Ideas on Forums.

Added on 22/2/08
Another thing I should have said is that a key aspect of our strategy is the ability to deliver services through the websites of others (see thread 3). So we have already contacted the 'Rural Services Network' to offer free access to Experts Online (the RSSupport implementation) and a free 'rural services' newsfeed from our xPRESS Digest News Service.

A quick thought on the differences between a service and a network and getting real value from joining up online and offline services.

Service

We get people registering their interest in our Experts Online service, and it is now possible to even register online. Once registered, the end user can ask questions, search and browse answers. But although the knowledge is shared between all the users of the service, there is no real interaction between users (peer to peer) although is it perfectly possible for any users to comment on existing questions. In fact questions are deliberately anonymised where necessary, to prevent sensitive information being made public. However this does put a barrier to networking.

When we set up online systems for groups the specification usually includes 'forums'. These are online places where people who share interests can gather to share and exchange ideas, information and knowledge. However, forums are rarely very active. The next generation of internet tools (aka Web 2.0) offer new ways of thinking about linking people who share interests. The screencast below gives an idea of the possibilities.

This is just an idea. We'd be really interested to hear what you think. View the slidecast.

I have always maintained that there are more potential users of our services than existing users (all of whom we value very much).

I mentioned silos in my previous post and I think it's worth expanding on what effect they have on the business model of something like ruralnet|online.

In the beginning there was the flower and its petals