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Prof Nadia raised a good point about needing to identify "selling points" of the ODBS, but due to time constraints, class was unable to discuss this critical issue. Some starter questions: - Who are we promoting to in the community? Band office? Schools/educators? Community leaders? Youth? - Should we focus on the technical aspects of ODBS or should we choose a higher level angle e.g. Self publishing and supporting a community's local knowledge, or developing a culture of literacy? Perhaps we could focus on making available certain texts? etc. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! |
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Hi Erica, Community leaders seem like a good start. Even though our targets are youths — when our team did our community assessment section for our proposals, some of the communities have the largest population in the 14 and under group — they will only know about it when their community leaders know about it. A generic package about the benefits of a program, and getting a line of communication open to the CR team would probably do a good job just to get the conversations going! The other place is myknet.org. We could talk to Brain Beaton, who could put up a link to our meeting place, to encourage people to come check us out. Of course, before we do that, we need to prep the meeting place with the limited resources that we have for guests. RIght now, as Adam mentioned in class, we don't have any helpful information. It's all very dry, and so far interesting only to KORI and KNET members, and our class. I thought about the idea of myknet.org page for us as well... but that takes a bit too much maintenance and content development, and we might as well use the same effort and put it into the meeting place. I'll talk to Nira to see if she can help me develop some content or marketing strategy for this meeting place. =) You can follow the conversations in survey suggestions to see what me and others have said about the focus/scope/selling point of the ODBS project. Margaret |
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Hi Margaret, thanks for your thoughts. In our last meeting, group members decided that the generic nature of the selling points could be offset by focusing on the ODBS system itself rather than the communities. We can't assume what the communities want and we want very strongly to avoid appropriating any cultural elements. Marta also suggested that we talk to create a myknet page. Perhaps you could explain why you felt this would not be feasible and the benefits over a meeting place. Creating a myknet page seemed to be one of the decisions in the meeting that had full unanimous support. In addition to a myknet page, attendees were also fully supportive of making a Facebook page, esp since Kitty (?) mentioned that youth in their community most frequently use FB. |
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Erica / Margaret ... The idea of creating and maintaining these different web environments might be great if everyone has both the time and energy to be updating and promoting these different online environments. I am not sure what you can do in either a myknet.org or facebook environment that you are not able to do in this meeting space environment. MyKnet.org was started back in 1998 for the folks in the far north. It is one of those social networks that has been around long before Myspace or Facebook. I thought it might slowly disappear with the start of facebook but instead we are seeing a continuous growth of the demand for this service from the people in the far north. In the remote communities in the far north (Treaty #9 territory), the people are using the local community network to access their internet service and in most cases this is a limited service due to the cost of the bandwidth and the lack of backbone infrastructure. The folks in the far north are able to do videoconferencing because their bandwidth is managed on K-Net (which is a private network that supports these different applications). But the bottom line is ... everyone in these communities are working with scarce bandwidth resources. The community of Big Grassy where Kitty works is a road access community in Treaty #3 territory. The K-Net broadband connection that serves the school and health centre was installed four years ago. Since then, the telcos introduced DSL service so community members are paying these corporate entities for their "high speed" internet connections. So I find it interesting to observe how communities that have no ownership, control, access or possession (ie. the principals of OCAP) to their own network tend to migrate to the commerical operations and services, like facebook. Maybe it is a "nice" service but it sure wastes a lot of time for a lot of people IMHO. I have heard the same said about MyKnet.org in the north but then I also hear about people making decisions about how they want to manage this resource in their own work and living environments. And this, I would argue, is because they have some ownership on this resource. Thoughts? Brian |
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Hi Brian/Erica, The idea of promoting on myKnet was an idea the systems team came up with. One of the major reservations (sorry for not responding sooner Erica!) was that it would be time consuming to maintain so many portals at this point, even though it may be something in the LONG term, one should consider for promotional purposes. As Brian pointed out, it is a great access point to people who are in the very remote North, which we may not be ready to deal with yet. I think we should focus on developing this meeting place (or any singular online presence) to reflect all the needs of the different teams. We have lots of ideas as to what might be good on here, but so far, we don't have a concrete plan as to what information we'd like to have up here, how we want to present it, and how it is suppose to get people to want to become involved in the discussions. Brian's suggestion of buddying up with a YICT worker and having them included in the conversation is definitely something we have been neglecting to do! The onus is on us to engage them, not for them to 'demonstrate interest'. While there are technical limits to moodle, it is very strategically placed, and suits well for conversation and exchanges. So far, we have been using it as a broadcaster/reality-show where people can see what we're up to (the discussions that happen online anyway). Any efforts we make on facebook/myknet/myspace will be similar in its effect. I think we should promote this meeting place on all those other social networks... but there's gotta be something we can offer and engage the visitors when they do make it here. =) The systems team take bandwidth consideration into account as well... thank you so much, Brian! Margaret |
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Dear Brian/Margaret, Thanks for the feedback. The reason why I think everyone was supportive of myknet and facebook was b/c we wanted to bring in non-class members onto the Moodle. Perhaps we are not ready for that kind of involvement? I agree that we need to take the initiative to engage community members, but I think before we get to that point, it would behoove us to really solidify what pod/odbs is and who the players are. As Brian mentioned, hammering out a better introduction etc. I think we should be very clear about the limited nature of the class' involvement (b/c it would be difficult for members to build good relationships w/the class that will end so quickly) and to separate that from the longer term potentiality of pod/odbs. I am hesitant to focus so much attention on us students who will be unable to continue on with this project unless Prof Caidi wishes to involve us in any further capacity - and it would be impossible for her to accomodate us all. p.s. No worries about a "delay" in reply Margaret - we all have other classes, our jobs, other responsibilities so I don't expect an instant reply! |
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In addition to the ownership issues you've mentioned, the structure of a Facebook group is not suitable for the type of communication we need. You can post messages but he communication is really one way. I post, you read. The Moodle forums are so much better. Not only is communication two way, but it's open and transparent. Not only can everyone see what we're talking about, but they can see our work as it progresses. If we want to create a sense of shared ownership Brian, Angie, Kitty et al... should be able to participate in our process, not just read about it. Brian, you mentioned K-Net broadband infrastructure. This is something I'd like to know more about, but we can go into it at our upcoming teleconference. |
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Erica ... I am concerned about the concept of "selling points" for a number of reasons. We get a lot of stuff "sold" to us by fancy and very smooth salespeople that end up sitting there unused and another example of a wasted resource. I think it is Margaret who talks about the benefits of these tools and this resource. Personally, highlighting the benefits of this service makes more sense to me so people feel they can either get involved because they believe in what is being presented or they can hopefully introduce someone from their community to the service so it can be supported locally. Thoughts? Brian |
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Hi Brian, Thanks so much for your feedback! I personally have had reservations about pushing a product/service that a community does not want/need. Because our team was formed to be promotional, and because we have had so little information to work with, our team's focus has shifted toward the technology itself. Basically we would like to create materials to present pod/odbs in an attractive and efficient manner, so that community leaders and members can easily judge for themselves whether this is a service that they would like for their community or not. It is a situation of delivering a sort of "faq" about pod/odbs so community members can make an informed decision before committing any resources. "Selling points" is problematic, but for the sake of everyone understanding what I am talking about, I'm using the term that has been used in our class discussions and meetings. Perhaps "potential points of value" is more appropriate, or as you said, "benefits". Again, thanks for your input  |
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Erica ... Glad that you want to create something that the First Nations want and need [smiles] ... I think it is important for everyone to be moving forward with this work and inviting others to be part of it so they can learn more about it. Putting the information out there so everyone can make their own decision about how best to develop and work with these opportunities is an important first step. So ... what is the cost for setting up a POD service in a First Nation? Brian |
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Hi Brian! The associated costs depend on the type of equipment bought. The technology would consist of: - online database (The content would already be online and free which limits the scope of materials. However, communities could also use this system to publish their own materials.) - computer system with an internet connection - cutter (for pages) - printer (cost would depend on quality of printer, ink cartridges would be an ongoing cost, possible maintenance costs although ) - paper (cover stock, normal) - binding materials (Marta is examining different binding methods) - scanner (for self produced materials) Other considerations include shipping costs for this technology, any maintenance fees for tech glitches. Other resources would include staff needed to - manage/develop the online database portal (does not have to be onsite) - execute the bookbinding process, possibly train others - promote service - IT personnel to aid troubleshooting Questions like these are really important, so I'm going to try to create a Q&A forum here and will post the link to the YICT area! |