Whups, accidentally sent this to the old list - so i'll take this
opportunity to remind everyone to sign up at
<http://groups.google.com/group/wagneers> which is the new home for
people into Wagn.

Life,
John

Ethan, Lewis and i just had our weekly Wagn meeting. Justin
Lowell-Bellew will be joining us next week. We intend to send out an
updates like this after each meeting, as part of focusing more
attention on the Wagn community (that would be you!).
<http://www.wagn.org/wagn/Community>

1 - Recently we've made a *lot* of progress on performance
(server-side averages down from 2-3 seconds to ~300 milliseconds on
connectipedia.org!). And browser compatibility will be greatly
improved in 0.10.3, bringing IE6, IE7 and Safari up to nearly par with
Firefox (we're also starting to look at Chrome; anyone know how we're
doing in Opera?).

2 - When the three of us were together in Chicago earlier this fall we
got clear that we want to put a lot of attention on Wagneers -- to
grow a community of people who build stuff in Wagn. This remains
important to us, and, we've realized that a good end-user experience
is just as important. So in the near term we will focus on fixing bugs
and polishing up things that will make Wagn smooth and wonderful for
regular users.

3 - By the time we release Wagn 1.0 we certainly want it to be easy
for people to download and install. But for now, we're going to focus
more intently on our hosting and consulting, both to build up our own
Wagneering chops, and to get some income flowing.

So, new draft pricing is up at
<http://www.wagn.org/wagn/Hosting_and_Consulting>. We want to make
sure this works for current and potential Wagneers, so if the prices
seem prohibitive in general, or for you in particular, let us know! We
are open to adjusting the pricing to get the right balance, as well as
to making special deals with people whose work we want to support.

(There will be no rate changes for existing users - we would never do
that without consulting with people first.)

Tangential Tidbit - Justin will be focusing on Wagn now. After he
spent a few months working hard to secure funding for Hooze, we have
made the sad but we think good decision to let Hooze go. We may come
back to a project like that later, but it would be a fresh start.

Life,
John

As i wrote the other day, Ethan and Lewis and i offered a "Wagn
Wednesday" last night here in Chicago, a demonstration & conversation
about Wagn. It was a great success - thanks to everyone who came! It
was good to see you all, and your obvious interest (in the form of
questions, ideas, and especially the willingness to support each other
to get Wagn set up and start playing with it) has me even more
energized and excited about Wagn than usual!

Some of my notes from the gathering are here:
<http://wagn.org/wagn/Demonstrations%2BWagnWednesdays>

In particular i have a sense of a nascent Wagneering
network/community. Wagn is at a point where this is a clear priority
for us - getting more people involved in building stuff in Wagn. If
this interests you, don't hesitate to post a note here or connect with
the community in other ways <http://wagn.org/wagn/Community> if you
want help getting set up, learning Wagn basics beyond what's in the
documentation, or whatever.

Life,
John


--
Consciousness is our oxygen challenge.        Domination is a sabre-tooth.
      /\/\
      \  /      John Abbe - Cat Herder - http://www.ourpla.net/
       \/       Nonviolent anarchonsensual process artist geek

Ethan, Lewis and i are in Chicago (where Lewis lives now) for a week
of Wagn workplay together. Michael Maranda is hosting a Wagn Wednesday
at his house, where we'll demo all the latest features, talk about
what we're up to, brainstorm new possibilities with whoever else is
there, etc.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=29284811765

Gather & eat pizza at 6:30pm, the demo begins at 7:30pm.

If you're interested to come contact Ethan at ethan@...
for the address.

Life,
John
p.s. Pass this on to any Chicago-area folks who might be interested...

We'd love to have a nicer look for Wagn, and Paul Bloch has offered
something for us to ponder.

To take a look at it, and leave comments, see
<http://wagn.org/wagn/Wagn_graphic_design>.

Life,
John


--

      /\/\                                            http://ourpla.net/
      \  /                          Cat Herder
       \/        John Abbe

I'm involved - both in the genesis and co-facilitating - this very
cool Open Space conference on wiki and community that's coming to the
San Francisco Bay Area for the first time. Although it's organized by
the geek community, one thing that makes RecentChangesCamp special is
how much we welcome and engage folks who may not be geeks, but are
active in community, activism, collaboration, bottom-up organizing,
and other offline activities that share the spirit of the wiki way. Of
course it helps if they're curious about what's alive in the tech
world and how it can serve them and their work/play.

It is free to attend, thanks to the gifts of our generous sponsors
(and the inexpensive nature of the event).

If *you* are interested, please come! I'll be demoing Wagn, including
all the latest features of templating, Pointers and WQL.

If you know others who might be interested, please pass this on to them...

Life,
John

======================================

May 9-11, 2008 in Palo Alto, California

See <http://rcc2008.blueoxen.net/attendees> to sign up.

RecentChangesCamp was born from the intersection of wiki and OpenSpace
(a very bottom-up way of organizing gatherings, see
<http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-Openspace.html> and
<http://www.openspaceworld.org/>). A lot of cool people into wiki,
community and collaboration will be there - what do you want to talk
with them about? Every participant is invited to lead their own
sessions; the guideline is to take responsibility for what you love.
In addition to general and technical conversations about - and actual
coding on - wikis and other software, session topics from past RCCs
have covered subjects from art to social organizing to philanthropy,
playing a creative conversation game, and individual & group coding
practices. See the past conference wikis for more complete lists and
session notes.

Anyone and everyone is invited to attend. You will especially enjoy
Recent Changes Camp, if you happen to be any of the the following:

* Member of any open wiki community or someone who uses wikis at
    work, school or in any other context
* Interested in community, action, collaboration, creativity or any other
    activity in which the self-organizing power of wiki might be helpful
* Interested in the OpenCulture and/or OpenTechnology movements
* Interested in knowledge creation and sharing knowledge
* A generally curious and inquisitive person

===History===

The first RecentChangesCamp was organized after a WikiVanning trip
from Seattle to San Diego to attend the first WikiSym, at the end of
2005. When we got into the van, we didn't all know each other, and
only a few of us were into OpenSpace. We held numerous OpenSpace
sessions in the van (sessions were 'announced' on post-it notes on the
dashboard), and by the time we got out of the van in San Diego we were
all good friends, and all so into OpenSpace that we did our best to
bring it to WikiSym. They were intrigued and somewhat open to it (and
have incorporated it into WikiSyms since then), but we wanted more!
Finally, WardCunningham, in true wiki - and OpenSpace - spirit,
suggested that if we wanted an OpenSpace conference on wiki, we should
just organize one ourselves.

So we did.

Nearly 150 people came from all across North America to Portland,
Oregon in February, 2006. In three days, we self-organized more than
70 working sessions to address our most important questions about wiki
technology and community action (you can also see a video made at this
RCC here: <http://www.ouroldhouse.com/geri/RecentChanges.mov> ). This
gathering happened again in Portland in February, 2007. In May 2007,
200 people from North America and Europe met in Montreal for the
RoCoCo Conference to continue the series.
<http://recentchangescamp.org/> links to the wiki for each conference.
Now for the first time, it comes to SiliconValley…

The first stab at templating documentation is here:
<http://wagn.org/wagn/templating>

Curious if it's helpful on it's own, and especially what's missing.
(much easier to write documentation in response to requests than in a
vacuum)

Life,
John

On 03/01/2008, Lewis Hoffman <lewis@...> wrote:
>
> I would point out that Mamading's link *is* on a wagn, which he set up.  nice!
> That said, I think what Michael is suggesting is it would make sense to focus
most of the documentation effort on
> Wagn.org, which I agree with--  I think more people will be more likely to
find it there.
> Mamading I don't see you having an account on Wagn.org-- I will send you an
invitation right away so you can edit there.
>

Ok, I've got my login now.  Thanks Lewis.

>
> On Wagn.org :  I'll make a link to Documentation on the sidebar, and keep
working on that card, which I think will
> address several questions.  We should also have some sort of FAQ card in the
format Mamading has suggested,
> either linked prominently from the Documentation card or directly from the
main sidebar.  Everyone is welcome
> to edit / contribute to all of these.
>

I've renamed wagn queries:
http://weflow.agoraworx.com/wagn/wagn_faq

And I shall be migrating it to wagn.org in due course.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

On 03/01/2008, Michael Maranda <tropology@...> wrote:
> Maybe there is a way to integrate the community discussion and
> community efforts at documentation with the staff efforts at same?
> And maybe we could do it on a WagN?  :)
>

That's a great idea and as soon as the staff get back from their
holidays and start responding to emails, I'll be happy to participate.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

Maybe there is a way to integrate the community discussion and
community efforts at documentation with the staff efforts at same?
And maybe we could do it on a WagN?  :)

On Jan 3, 2008 2:55 PM, Mamading Ceesay <mamading@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>  I've made a crude attempt at kickstarting some community documentation
>  for Wagn based on Jean Russell's helpful response to my Wagn newbie
>  questions. People can contribute by asking/answering questions on the
>  list or if they wish I can send them an invite so they can edit the
>  page directly.
>
>  http://weflow.agoraworx.com/wagn/wagn_queries
>
>  --
>  Mamading Ceesay
>
>  If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
>  http://www.invisiblechildren.com
>
>  "We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
>  --Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007
>

Hi,

I've made a crude attempt at kickstarting some community documentation
for Wagn based on Jean Russell's helpful response to my Wagn newbie
questions.  People can contribute by asking/answering questions on the
list or if they wish I can send them an invite so they can edit the
page directly.

http://weflow.agoraworx.com/wagn/wagn_queries

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

On 03/01/2008, jean russell <jeanmrussell@...> wrote:
>
>    Sidebar....
>
> Maybe John, Ethan, or Lewis can be more helpful.
>

Perhaps so, but right now it's just us chickens! ;-)

> The sidebar took me a bit to work out.
>
> Create a card
> Connect it to *sidebar
> Connect it to *open to have it open
>
> Modify contents by clicking on the card or choosing the edit option.
>

Thanks, that was just what I needed.

> I think the comment function is extraordinary, but I haven't had a chance to
really use it.
> In card options, if you have the authority, you can choose options. The forth
option is comment. > Choose who you want to have able to comment...I choose
anyone on mine so people who have > not gained sign on access yet can still
leave a message. You must do this for each card you
> wish to give comment function to.
>

Great, I've already started putting comments to use.

> The template capacity is great too, but I have yet to get a hang of it. Anyone
have simple directions for that?
>

Would be good to know.

> Thanks for getting conversation moving Mamading. I hope together we can help
each other. Your interests are aligned with mine, but I am not quite the maven
technically that you are.
>

I presumed our interests were aligned.  I'm not just a maven on
technical stuff, but you discover that in time.

> Wagn does work similar to a wiki in that it is community created...but it is
also more database
> like...so it is more of a community driven database for amassing collective
intelligence.

One reason I'm interested in it.  I can see a lot of potential in it,
but it needs to be more accessible than getting your hand held in
Oregon or gleaning what you can on a mailing list.  I hope
documentation is a key deliverable for the 1.0 release.

But I digress.  Thanks again for your really helpful and timely assistance.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

My first question to the list, how do I modify the sidebar?  This is
probably where the distinction between Cards and Pages come into play.
  I understand that conceptually, but I don't understand how to apply
it in practice.  Both wagn.org and Hooze have modified the sidebar.
It would be nice to know how to do this.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

On 02/01/2008, jean russell <jeanmrussell@...> wrote:
>
> And welcome to wagn...sorry about the pain of lack of documentation. I am
using it quite a bit ---several wagns for different purposes or projects. I have
been lucky enough to get lots of hand-holding over the last year as wagn has
developed. The GC guys know my gratitude. :-)
>

I'm in London, UK so lots of hand-holding isn't really an option.
Being a bootstrapping geek I'm used to fending for myself in most
circumstances, but I haven't grokked Wagn yet.  The concepts sound
good but applying them is something else and I'm speaking as a long
time wiki user.  Also I have people looking to me for guidance on how
to apply Wagn to their project and I'm not in a position to provide
that guidance as yet (a very unfamiliar and uncomfortable position for
me).

>
> What can we do together to help each other out now?
>

What I need help with is howtos, more content on the pages brought up
by this search would help:
http://www.wagn.org/wagn/*search?view=content&s[_keyword]=howto

As for what I can do to help you, you'll have to tell me.  I'll tell
you a bit about myself as it might help.  I'm a techie with a deep
interest in social change (one of the reasons I'm interested in Wagn
is because it looks like the Grasscommons guys have values similar to
mine).

I'm a bit of a maven which means I know about all sorts of stuff in
various domains and I have an active network in the UK and Europe
around social change and social enterprise.

Last November, I attend Be The Change 2007 http://bethechange.org.uk/2007.cfm

Amongst the many things I'm connected to, one of them is a group of
people looking to organise an event in London around the launch of
Muhammed Yunus' new book: Creating A World Without Poverty - Social
Business and the Future of Capitalism, see http://tinyurl.com/26uzne
for more info.

One or more of the above may be of interest to you, but perhaps none
of them are.

>
> And Mamading--what is your wagn?
>

To support some folks in a project, I recently put up
http://weflow.agoraworx.com/wagn/WeFlow where you will already see the
first query from a end user.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

On 02/01/2008, Jean Russell <jeanmrussell@...> wrote:
> Can you clarify the poll?
>
> Are you asking if I am an admin who installed a wagn or if I am the
> content developer of a wagn?
>

Content developer, the poll is about usage not administration/installation

> I like the idea of the poll...and I think lots more information could
> be gathered that would be useful. :-)
>

Right now, I'm a Wagn newbie who's successfully installed it on a
server for a project, but am now feeling the pain of a lack of
documentation and would like to know if people beyond the Grasscommons
crew are actively using Wagn and how/where they are sharing their tips
and tricks (if they are).

> Thanks for the wagns!!! Love 'em.
>

Don't thank me, thank the Grasscommons guys.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

Can you clarify the poll?

Are you asking if I am an admin who installed a wagn or if I am the
content developer of a wagn?

I like the idea of the poll...and I think lots more information could
be gathered that would be useful. :-)

Thanks for the wagns!!! Love 'em.

Jean

--- In WagnEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com,
WagnEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
>
> Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
> WagnEnthusiasts group:
>
> Hi, I'm trying to understand how members of this group are working
with Wagn right now, so I've created a quick poll.
>
> Select all of the following options that match your usage of Wagn?
>
>   o We/I have our/my own Wagn.
>   o I use/edit somebody else's Wagn.
>   o I don't use Wagn at all, I'm just an interested observer.
>
>
> To vote, please visit the following web page:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WagnEnthusiasts/surveys?id=2633471
>
> Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
> not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
> web site listed above.
>
> Thanks!
>

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
WagnEnthusiasts group:

Hi, I'm trying to understand how members of this group are working with Wagn
right now, so I've created a quick poll.

Select all of the following options that match your usage of Wagn?

   o We/I have our/my own Wagn.
   o I use/edit somebody else's Wagn.
   o I don't use Wagn at all, I'm just an interested observer.


To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WagnEnthusiasts/surveys?id=2633471

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

--- In WagnEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com, Tim Howe <thowe@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all.  I just installed a new WagN 0.9.0 site.
>

Me too.

>
> First of all, I had to install json, which for me was as easy as:
>
>        # gem install json
>

Yes, after running rake db:migrate a few times I managed to figure out
that the json gem was needed and did as above.  This is a
documentation and packaging issue.  There should be a clear and
complete list of requirements both on the wagn website and in the
INSTALL doc.

>
> Secondly, if I ran it as anything other than webrick (I always spawn a
> fastcgi process and connect to the socket with lighttpd) then it would
> fail thusly:
<snip>

I haven't had this issue but then my deployment of wagn is a mongrel
process proxied via nginx.

>
> Can't wait to play more with the new version!
>

As a new wagn user, more documentation and examples would be very
handy.  Right now, it seems the only way I can see some useful
examples is if I signup to the wagn.org site and see how existing
cards/pages have been setup .  This is less than ideal.  Hope the
documentation deficit will made up with the 1.0 release.

--
Mamading Ceesay

If you only watch one movie this year, watch Invisible Children.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

"We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is."
--Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

Hi all.  I just installed a new WagN 0.9.0 site.

I had to do a couple things to get it going that aren't in the instal
instructions..

First of all, I had to install json, which for me was as easy as:

	 # gem install json

Secondly, if I ran it as anything other than webrick (I always spawn a fastcgi
process and connect to the socket with lighttpd) then it would fail thusly:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`gem_original_require': no such file to load -- lib/wagn (MissingSourceFile)
         from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`require'
         from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.4/lib/active_support/depende\
ncies.rb:495:in `require'
         from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.4/lib/active_support/depende\
ncies.rb:342:in `new_constants_in'
         from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.4/lib/active_support/depende\
ncies.rb:495:in `require'
         from /home/condega/bend-condega_wagn/public/../config/environment.rb:11
         from /home/condega/bend-condega_wagn/public/dispatch.fcgi:21:in
`require'
         from /home/condega/bend-condega_wagn/public/dispatch.fcgi:21

I tried setting this value to "../lib/wagn" and got the same results so I
finally just set it to the full path and it seems to work.

Can't wait to play more with the new version!

Yours,
   TimH

We met today, and came up with a few Wadget uses:

Company and product information - people can show up-to-date
information about a company (or products) from Hooze on their own
e-commerce site or other web pages. So if you have a shopping site
your users can find out a company's ecological impact, how it treats
it workers, etc.

Sharing movement information - Many people are supporting schools to
engage in greener practices. Our own Green School Toolbox project has
started a Wagn to gather and share information about these efforts.
Others can use Wadget to include information from
greenschooltoolbox.com on their own site.

Event promotion - Other sites can easily list up-to-date schedule and
notable participant information without having to edit anything. They
just include a Wadget pointing to your schedule and notable
participant cards, and when people look at their site they'll always
see the latest information. Last minute changes become widely known as
quickly as possible.

Update changing information in a single place - It's easy to keep
information on a single Wagn card current. Imagine maintaining a quote
of the day card, or a restaurant listing their special of the week.
Any number of other sites could add the Wadget code once and display
these regularly-changing cards.

If you have any others, please share!

Life,
John


--- In WagnEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com, "johncabbe" <john@...> wrote:
>
> Ethan and i are meeting Wednesday at 11am (west coast time) to explore
> how Wadget will be used with Hooze, and brainstorm other uses. I wrote
> about Wadget last week - it lets you pull a Wagn page onto another
> website with just a few lines of code in your HTML.
>
> If you want to join us, just e-mail and let us know and we'll
> teleconference you in (of course you're also welcome to come
> participate in person at the  Grass Commons office in Eugene :-)!
>

Ethan and i are meeting Wednesday at 11am (west coast time) to explore
how Wadget will be used with Hooze, and brainstorm other uses. I wrote
about Wadget last week - it lets you pull a Wagn page onto another
website with just a few lines of code in your HTML.

If you want to join us, just e-mail and let us know and we'll
teleconference you in (of course you're also welcome to come
participate in person at the  Grass Commons office in Eugene :-)!

Lewis has developed Wadget - a way for people to show a Wagn card on
any web page. You can see an example on Lewis' blog on the Grass
Commons site: <http://grasscommons.org/blog/3>. Notice you can open or
collapse the card, and when it's open you can click on the link at the
bottom and go to the card's page on Wagn
<http://www.wagn.org/wiki/Wadget>. If anyone edits that card, the next
time Lewis' blog is loaded it will show the changes.

One reason we developed this was for Hooze - so that people could show
up-to-date information about a company or a product on their own web
pages.

We'd like to come up with as many other uses as we can - what can you
imagine using this for?

Life,
John