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Do-It-Yourself Internet
22 June 2008 Introducing ... Made on the Barrier: Working together on the web aotea.org: An online community of websites, Barrier style - all together, but everyone for themselves.
The Idea / Vision "Made-on-the-Barrier" is about islanders putting their own ideas forward, rather than importing them from elsewhere or letting experts rephrase the home grown ideas. The idea came from John Harrison (a born and bred islander now working as a website designer in London) and Rendt Gorter talking (on the Internet) about how the Internet could be used to support projects on the Barrier and to connect Islanders on and off the island to show what makes the island unique: its people, nature and heritage.
Self-expression
and deliberation are fundamental prerequisites for a functioning
democratic society, from a village to a country. This is about lifestyle, choices and identity. The
Internet is a medium with increasing opportunities for communication
and self-expression, that could be used much more by initiatives
originating from people on Aotea.
Access to computers and Internet is slowly improving. More groups and individuals are ready for new opportunities to show what they are about and to interact with others. There is interest to know more about what is happening on Aotea. There are lots of different ways to do this.
Made on the Barrier There are several good Great Barrier web sites that have already gone a long way. Getting more non-technical people involved and strengthening mutual support can only create more momentum.
Purpose This is a not-for-profit collaboration to facilitate more presence on the web: From, About and For the Barrier Community.
Web sites, home pages and a support network A
web site is like a building that contains the offices of one or more
projects. Sometimes people only want a "home page" for their hobby,
small business or holiday photos. Often different home pages and web
sites are associated because of shared interests, being in the same
location or identifying with the same purpose. This leads naturally to networks being formed around common interests.
Linking up with other "Made On The Barrier" websites about the Barrier has many benefits. It can help people find the different sites, it can create better exposure, and improve search engine ranking. A "support network" where the sites link to each other can help achieve this, maybe also with a common page that has up-to-date site listings. This would make it easy to share resources, tips or ideas and to give mutual support. This is the idea for the "Made on the Barrier" logo rather than a website of its own.
We are used to big or smaller institutions having big websites, like aucklandcity.govt.nz or mulberrygrove.school.nz. A domain such as these needs looking after, maintaining consistency, updating functions such as feedback forms, setting up email services, and not the least, remembering to pay the registration every year.
Aotea.Org: An online community of collaborators These
days there are different solutions for sharing web services and
resources, for what is called content management. Recently, Google has added new services that make this very
easy for small groups, institutions and communities to easily
build webpages and to collaborate with others without too much fuss.
So for people on the Barrier to begin working with the Internet there
are some simple entry doors. Everybody who registers is called a
collaborator of this online community. Often collaborators will work
togther to create and change web pages. Web pages that want to involve
people or get comments can permit any registered collaborator to make a
comment. Outside visitors will not be able to make any changes within
the online community because they do not have a log in. The aotea.org online community Using the domain aotea.org of John Harrison makes it very simple ...
Working together on projects Most importantly, with such a community resource it becomes very easy to work together on new projects, collaborate on funding proposals, get feedback on draft documents, without getting sidetracked on administrative headaches or simply by being able to work together even when meeting up is difficult because of distance or transport.
For
those that want to keep a little distance (an innate instinct on the
Barrier), it would not be too difficult to copy the model and set it up
with a separately owned and paid for domain name. That is quite
possible for anybody with some elementary Internet skills. And that
certainly would still count as "Made on the Barrier" although maybe not
quite as smooth to set up as just plugging into aotea.org with a
separate sub-domain. Getting involved Get an aotea.org email address to log in by sending an email to help at aotea.org. Return to the Welcome Page
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