The OpenIdeaProject is at least a historical resource. We've done mixed-mode collaboration, and have the notes to prove it. We have a better feeling for what we want, and when to use it. We know what works and what doesn't. We've made some mistakes along the way (and have the notes to prove it).

Tav's space gave me vision of many other projects, all within the OIP's scope. The #esp logs at http://irclogs.espnow.net/esp/index are a trove of fascinating links, as well as discussions around them, among other information. The quantity and scope of these projects gave me inspiration for where to take The Open Idea Project next.

I realized that the #esp logs are really the only place I've seen such a collection, and was moved to have the OIP solve this issue. As previously mentioned in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openideaproject/message/421, I've taken the liberty of making some modifications to the squishdot Topic list with hopes for the OIP being news-worthy. Such Topics will be a good way for like-minded gropus to start working together.

* Alternative Currency - economies, trade, commerce
* Alternative Government - community self-rule
* Collaborative Software - client and server software, p2p, FOAF
* Community Support - building/funding/managing communities
* People - just added - Individuals behind larger projects

The remaining original topics are:

* Communication & Networking - wifi, paper "translations", MeetUp?, conventions
* Crisis Team - sudden challenges
* Culture - language/translation, traditions, social ramificaions
* Global Issues - long term archives, climate change, WTO, OPEC
* Legal - copyright, patents, government, ethics
* Refrences - 'pedias, dictionaries, handy forms
* Thinking & Collaboration - group facilitation, lateral thinking

Here's the part about the upgrades we'll need. Squishdot hacking will begin again so we can have a topic list on the left side that brings users to a topic-oriented view, instead of a list, as well as better squishdot --> zwiki integration. How about creating a wiki for each Article? How about creating a chat archive for it too. And while we're chatting, chat sessions should be created on-the-fly, not one big...thing. Then think about replacing the venerable zrtchat with IRC integration. The wiki is at June2004Upgrades.

The other upgrades involve people to contribute. One thought that came to mind was using 2 groups. One groups collects links, the other group visits and writes about the collected links. The two groups can merge at a wiki of the links. The first group just adds links, the writers add a WikiName after each url, visits the link in another window, and starts writing.

Perhaps we should think about Topic "facilitators"...

Sorry...I'm thinking about what should happen before we're ready for a slashdotting. We'll need lots of working external links for people to visit by moving visitors through to make connections and use other sites' bandwidth for a while. Does a goal of 12 new assorted Articles plus the upgrades above sound reasonable? Bandwidth isn't an issue, only raw processor power (1.2GHz Celeron, 768MB of RAM). And a bill for the extra bandwidth we would consume in the process.

That brings me to funding. Care to help with grant material? Is PayPal? turning people away? I can always re-sell web hosting and use that income to pay the bill. That could work until we needed an upgrade - too man hosts on the same machine, using more than the bandwidth allotment, hard drives, backups, etc. This may conflict with Andrius' plan, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openideaproject/message/418, but then again, if that project can be self-funded the same way, we're all better off. Plus, we kindawannabe decentralize.d (sic) And we'd all like funding, right?

Your co-founding OIP'ers have reported in, let's see what happens from here.

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