[Mailman-Developers] Fwd: [NOSI discussion] Same planet, different worlds

[Tobias Eigen]

As promised - a message I posted this morning to the Nonprofit Open  
Source Initiative discussion list (see http://www.nosi.net for details  
on NOSI). Let me know, perhaps off-list if this discussion is starting  
to seem a bit off-topic, if you are interested in getting involved in  
this.

Check out http://www.penguinday.org for info about Penguin Day, which  
is taking place this year a day after the Nonprofit Technology  
Conference (http://www.nten.org/ntc). I will be at both events and look  
forward to opportunities to talk to people about Mailman usability and  
replicating Yahoogroups-like functionality using open source.

Best wishes,

Tobias

--
Tobias Eigen
Executive Director

Kabissa - Space for Change in Africa
http://www.kabissa.org

* Kabissa's vision is for a socially, economically, politically, and  
environmentally vibrant Africa, supported by a strong network of  
effective civil society organizations. *


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Tobias Eigen <tobias at kabissa.org>
> Date: February 17, 2005 11:51:45 AM EST
> To: nosi-discussion at nosi.net
> Subject: Re: [NOSI discussion]  Same planet, different worlds
>
>> On a related note, how many of you will be at NTC next month and the  
>> associated Penguin Day Chicago on the following Saturday?
>
> Ah! So that's when it's going to be! I've been waiting for news via  
> penguinday.org... now I can book my flight!
>
>> Anyone got something really profound or eye-poppingly cool that you  
>> want to demo, discuss, or proclaim at PD?
>
> For Kabissa, I've been tracking and actively participating in lots of  
> discussions about yahoogroups and replicating the best aspects of it  
> using open source. I would be really interested in taking advantage of  
> Penguin Day to raise awareness of the need for this and to generate  
> momentum to raise funds, find partners and recruit developers to work  
> on it.
>
> While alot of great work is being done on open source list managers  
> and on discussion forums/web collaboration tools, there is not much  
> progress being made on bringing the two together in an open source  
> project that can be replicated and made broadly useful by many  
> organizations. It's happening, but piecemeal and in the meantime it's  
> a shame to subject ordinary people to Mailman's web interfaces (try  
> accessing the private archives for the NOSI discussion list and you'll  
> see what I'm talking about) and to not properly take advantage of the  
> dynamic and empowering effect of connecting people through their  
> mailboxes as well as through a beautiful community Web site. For  
> Kabissa it's incredibly important because the people in Africa we  
> serve pay dearly for their Internet connection and we want to empower  
> them to make the most of their limited time oline.
>
> Now there seems to be a particularly grand opportunity because a bunch  
> of things are coming together at the same time:
>
> 1) Mambo was awarded a Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld this  
> week (http://www.mamboserver.com) - one of the things that makes Mambo  
> excellent is that it can be easily extended using optional components,  
> and it's easy to create and share components
> 2) Opendgroups is being developed to share the functionality of the  
> already successful dgroups.org service using open source (see  
> http://www.opendgroups.net). One of the models being considered is a  
> Mailman/Drupal integration.
> 3) Mailman developers are recognizing the need for making its web  
> interfaces more usable (see  
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ 
> msg08628.html and subsequent onslaught of messages).
> 4) Mail2forum, a phpbb add-on that provides bidirectional email/list  
> support, is now at v1.0 RC2. (http://www.mail2forum.com) - m2f  
> developers claim it can be easily ported to other forums and welcome a  
> project team to port it to another forum that integrates better with  
> Mambo (see http://www.mail2forum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=796).
> 5) Alot of reputable, open source friendly web developers are using  
> Mambo - i.e. Sangonet in South Africa (http://www.sn.apc.org) and  
> Picnet (http://www.picnet.net - also will be at NTC). Picnet is  
> interested in developing a CAN-SPAM act compliant Mambo newsletter  
> component (http://www.picnet.net). This could complement an integrated  
> forum component nicely and share code with it to interact with a list  
> manager like Mailman.
> 6) Kabissa's interest in all of this is that we want to deepen the  
> impact of our programs by integrating and improving our existing  
> online offerings through the development of a new integrated Web site.  
> We have 850 member organizations throughout Africa that are seeking to  
> make better use of ICT for the benefit of their communities, and many  
> of them are hosting their Web sites and domain names on Kabissa,  
> participating in our Time To Get Online training program, and finding  
> each other online through our member contact directory, bulletin board  
> and mailing lists. Having bidirectional functionality for newsletters  
> and discussion groups integrated into our site will really help us to  
> deliver on our promise to the African civil society sector. This user  
> group also provides a great source of willing volunteers for pilot  
> testing.
> 7) Kabissa is also involved in developing a community Web site for the  
> Africa Democracy Forum (http://www.africademocracyforum) which  
> currently interacts primarily through a Yahoo Group and face-to-face  
> meetings. We are planning to work with the ADF to move their Yahoo  
> Group to a Mambo-integrated forum, where we can then do alot more to  
> help ADF members to interact online, discuss key topics and share  
> information about opportunities. One of the key requirements for the  
> forum is to have bidirectional email support, in part also to ease the  
> pain of migrating from yahoogroups.
>
> Sorry for the lengthy list - I'm throwing this out there for  
> discussion. I'm sure I and others on this list could come up with even  
> more ideas. :-) If we could bring together a group at Penguin Day to  
> discuss some of these different pieces of the puzzle perhaps we could  
> come up with a collaborative plan for producing a very useful and  
> broadly replicable open source product.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tobias