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June 05, 2004

Small Pieces The Central Way

As Centralists, we plan things out at and strategize what we do. Here is how those that wish to join our camp for "Small Technologies Loosely Joined" can "play" for the winning team.

You will find details on what the purpose is for the blog, and the parts of the wiki we ask you to help build.

Read on for the details!

The Weblog
This is what you are looking at now. The weblog is where we post announcements, general ideas, summaries of activities etc. It is the "voice" of our team. While the ragtag Decentralists are setting up a blog where anyone off the street can post, the Centrlist blog will have a small number of authors. This is not, as some have tried to insinuate, a matter of authoritarian control or dictatorship, but of sensible meaning and purpose. The blog is not the open whiteboard-- that is the purpose of a wiki- why have a both a blog and a wiki that are wide open for open editing? Typical duplication of effort and wasted resources typical of DeCentralists. If our weblog was not open, why would we have comments enabled (unlike the complaining party who has no working comments), and we have Trackbacks enabled as well, none of which shall be censored or edited.

In addition, we will provide access for anyone interested in blogging on this site- just post a comment and we will send you the access details. I guess that still smacks of over control for some, but let them complain. How many weblogs out there are wide open to the universe?

If there are things you want us to address, or ideas/complains, then by all means publish as a comment. We will address each one respectfully.

Enough of that.

The inputs to us (which are all quite open to anyone) are the Centralist Wiki, comments submitted to this weblog, Trackbacks to what other bloggers are publishing at their own sites (gathered here and here), and the ideas we gather during our NMC session via the virtual chat experts. Those are the avenues into the Centralist camp,

The three areas we hope to compile and publish here include:

  • Central Benefits Documenting what the gains are for organizations, members, end users, etc by centralizing.
  • Case Studies Gather and summarize information that highlight the places where centralized approaches have been proven successsful.
  • Central Technologies Describe the technologies that are "central" to bening centralized.

The Wiki
Our wiki is a wide open editing place, a collaborative place (centrally hosted to boot!), for anyone in our camp (or not) to post resources, data, papers, ideas, opinions that support the Central Way. Anyone can edit any page, and it is very easy to do.

You should note that because Centralists are vastly experienced in creating systems usable to many people, we have created a common top level navigation bar for just the Centralist wiki pages:

central-nav

This allows you to get around easily to any of our 5 wiki pages and the main one as well (you may notice that most wikis do NOT provide this, typical of the rag tag, let 'em figure it out approach loved by the DeCentralists.)

All you need to do is to follow the Edit the Text of this Page at the bottom of any wiki page. You are then presented will the current content, that you are invited to add, edit, modify etc, using just plain text and some basic wiki editing codes You can use the current content as a guide or refer to the simple editing suggestions.

What should you do in this wiki? Well the wiki way typically is "whatever you like" but that may be a bit broad for interpretation, so here are some suggested avenues you can consider for the Central wiki.

  1. General Advantages of Centralized Approaches Go to the Main Centralist wiki page and add items, or descriptions, or ideas under the "Advantages" heading.
  2. Information Sources We have compiled a few web sites for locating information and data that supports the cause, but could certianly use more. Go to the Main Centralist wiki page and add new links under the heading "Information Sources".
  3. Sources for Advantages of Centralism Go to GeneralAdvantages and add titles, descirpitions, and links for resources that offer moire support for the advantages. Or add your own commentary under the "Thoughts, Ideas, Commentary" heading.
  4. Centralized Approaches to Web Content Go to WebContent to share resources that support how web content, information systems, etc are enhanced by centralized approaches. Or add your own commentary under the "Thoughts, Ideas, Commentary" heading.
  5. Centralized Systems and Open Source Go to OpenSource to dispel the myths open source is always better as well as to collect examples where open source content/code has been deployed centrally (it happens, a lot). Or add your own commentary under the "Thoughts, Ideas, Commentary" heading.
  6. Centralized Services and Infrastructure Go to ServicesInfrastructure to share information and examples of how centralized approaches work for supporting services and infrastructure support. Or add your own commentary under the "Thoughts, Ideas, Commentary" heading.
  7. Centralized Case Studies Go to CaseStudies to share specific examples of where centralized approaches have been effectively used in educational institutions. Or add your own commentary under the "Thoughts, Ideas, Commentary" heading.

    8. We need all Centralists to jump in and play now in the wiki.

    The Chat
    If you are not with us in Vancouver for the NMC session, than sign up to join us remotely. We are looking for anyone who can be available June 17, 2004 4:15 - 5:30 PM Pacific Time (check the World Clock for your local time) to add your name and AIM chat handle to the Chat Experts page.

    During the session, someone from the Centralists team will be contacting you by chat to solicit your opinions and ideas on Centralism. These will be summarized and published in this weblog.

    Well that summarizes all the ways you can participate. It is time now to start! Dive into that wiki and start building!

    Note! Content in this weblog is purely for the purposes of the "Small Technologies Loosely Joined" presentation at the June 2004 NMC Summer Conference and should not blindly accepted as the opinions of those who tread here. We are doing this to demonstrate a process of using technology.

    Posted by alan at June 5, 2004 12:09 PM in category General Info

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