RSA Networks Version 2 - in testing

Dear OpenRSAniks,

I'm very pleased to announce that the next beta version of the RSA Networks platform is now ready for testing on the development site.

There's a full post on the RSA Networks live site about the changes we've made in response to the fantastic feedback we've received from users so far.

To summarise, we've internationalised the location mapping system and enabled 'find people near me' searches. We've also enabled skills and interest matching - so projects and people can now be matched according to skills offered, skills needed and matching interests.



This is really the most interesting development so far - it was a small brainwave of my colleague Andy Gibson's that all we needed to do was to separate skills from interests in how people describe projects and themselves, and we could draw lots more interesting inference about what people might be interested in.

We have already implemented this separation on the live site, in preparation for the integration on the 15th February - so please do edit your profiles and projects there, and get ready for a whole new level of relevance!

We've also tried to improve the navigation, tracking and accessibility of new information and discussions on the site, as well as enabling users to post images and video from popular media sharing sites (picassa, flickr, youtube, blip.tv etc.) to their discussions.

We hope all this makes the site easier to use, and that it generates another round of feedback so we can make further improvements before the changes are implemented on the live site after a forthcoming off-line meeting on the 15th February.

This meeting will be an opportunity for users of the system so far to meet and feedback live, talk about potential futures for the RSA Networks project and site, and bring some of their own projects to the table. My colleague Andy Gibson will post more about that meeting shortly.

In any case, please feel free to play with the development site, and feedback here or on the live site.

NB: Changes and content added to the development site will be wiped out on the 15th February. Some features of the new site will not work properly until then: eg. it won't send email (to prevent too many test recommendations being sent out) , and especially those features requiring your input - like separating out your skills and interests - will not work properly until they integrate with the live site on the 15th.

The RSA Networks site is rubbish!

There. That's the elephant in the room dealt with.

But you wouldn't know how flaky this first version of the site is from reading the brilliant discussions and project ideas that over 150 patient, benevolent fellows have been posting to the site, and then discussing with passion. Warts and all, the site does seem to be buzzing!

After the event on the 22nd, Andy and I were amazed by the levels of participation and activity that exploded on the site - so at least the prototype we built didn't obstruct that! To be honest, we didn't expect that kind of success immediately, and so it's taken us a bit of time to collate that feedback and respond.

So I am very pleased to echo Anshuman's announcement, and let you know that we are going to be starting the next few rounds of development tomorrow - fixing some of the niggly problems and usability issues that have frustrated many users. There are also a few obvious bugs that we hope to squash, and some basic gardening work like creating an FAQ and some help files - all of which we hope to do before Christmas.

I have written a few posts on the RSA Networks site laying out the three stages of this plan:

1. A pre-christmas bug-squashing fest, where we aim to get the most obvious design and usability issues fixed.
2. An early January development cycle, during which we aim to implement some feature requests and try out some experimental collaboration processes.
3. A hand-over to a production team, who will take the prototype into production.

We are also going to be organising an event in late January, where we are hoping to reconvene some of the groups who met on the 22nd to take stock of the development so far, to look at which features should go into production, and to make decisions on other key issues that have been flagged up during the consultation process. As soon as we have a date for that, we'll send out an announcement with more details.

Of course, as with the first development cycle - which was great fun, we are again asking for your help in shaping the process itself as well as the technology.

We are still looking for the magic combination of factors, and the right way to ask the questions that will start to really activate projects, to move from 'discussion' to 'action', and to 'mesh the cogs' of the RSA - as Don calls for in his post.

Your ideas on those fronts, and comments on the three development phases, as well as your continued use and feedback on the site are much appreciated!

Building the RSA Networks Prototype

Hello openrsa readers.

I'm going to blog our progress on the RSA Networks Prototype here so we can benefit from even more of your comments and guidance.

After collating a huge mass of material, ideas and suggestions over the last week, we finally fixed on some simple first steps and put our noses firmly to the grindstone.

When I say 'we' - I should introduce the rest of the development team (as David did such a nice job of introducing Andy and myself on this blog): Liz Turner on design and user interface and Peter Brownell (left, with loud hailer) on code and architecture. This is the same team that I put together to develop nm-x.com - RSA Fellow Neil Johnston's initiative to network creative businesses in West London.

But enough preliminaries - you are probably all eager to hear what we're actually going to do.

The most important function of the Network Prototype by all accounts is to foster online and offline discussion and development of new projects amongst the RSA fellowship. There are many other functions that can be added later, but these are the ones we are focusing on for the prototype.

To explain how we are going to do this, allow me to introduce more new faces: Norah, Simon, and Trevor - our hypothetical group of RSA fellows.

The idea here is that ideas are contributed by fellows, and through discussion (online as blog posts and comments) and offline (as events) they are refined and developed into projects.

Of course there will be a lot more to this process than we are outlining here, but this is the very basic flow between idea, discussion and project.

We also have some key principles that we are going to use in the development process that will inform how we achieve this:

• We are using Drupal, an Open Source toolkit as our starting point.
• We will be building this fast, explaining what we are doing (here) and releasing our results and trying to do two or three micro-iterations by the 22nd November.
• We don't want to re-invent the Web(2.0) or create a walled garden for fellows (facebook style), so we will be using a lot of RSS aggregation to pull in discussions and media from other sites (such as flickr, youtube, technorati, blogger etc.) and show them alongside relevant projects.
  

I hope that gives you some indication as to what direction we're going in with this.

Please do give feedback and ask any questions you have about what we're doing - here or to saul@theps.net, and I'll try to pry myself out of the process for long enough to respond!

Until tomorrow then...