This is where we are with the taxonomy for Transition US as it relates to "assets" on our website. I appreciate the needs of a national hub are very different than a group in the weeds but perhaps you can glean some value from this list.
Organizational (relating to TI organizational needs)
-Diversity
--Social Justice
-Dynamics
-Fundraising
-Governance
--Conflict Resolution
--Decision Making
--Event Production
--Initiating Group
--Meeting Facilitation
--Partnering
--Structure
--Working Groups
-Tools
--Mapping
--Story Telling
--Unleashing
--Open Space
--Visioning
--Backcasting
--Reskilling
--Energy Decent Action Plan
-Promotion
--Brochure
--Newsletter
--Poster
--Presentation
--Press Release
-Technology
Awareness (trying to keep this at a high level and use tags for more granularity)
-Transition
-Peak Everything
-Energy
-Climate
-Financial Instability
-Food
[the following are working groups or "themes"]
Arts & Crafts
Economy
-Business Exchange
-Local Currency
Energy
Food
-Permaculture
Health
Heart & Soul
-Grieving
-Healing
-Elder Care
Housing
Local Government
Transportation
Waste
Comments
What are our requirements?
Are we looking to spec the features for a hub or national site now, or do a basic site and iterate on those later?
BTW, for things like skills and other info that could be generic and canonical I'd like to propose whether a reference list could be built up in Freebase and use that as the input, updated every so often. See http://skills.freebase.com/ as an example of what I've been doing in that area with this in mind.
One possibility is to
One possibility is to concentrate on making a basic site for communities first but probably the IA team could get both designed in the time we have. The US has a national site and so does the UK (which means much of the IA might already be worked out) but other countries will likely want their own.
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com
national hub sites
Yup - US and UK have national sites.
Ireland using Ning and thinking of moving to drupal - will point him here. NZ have their own (rather nice too), Aus have a basic one but good drupal folks in there. France has Villesintransition, Netherlands has a good wordpress config (afaik). Other national hubs not sure. Ben Brangwyn (Network, UK) is behind pulling the national stuff together; he's writing up a national hubs page on the UK site which we'll be able to refer to.
UK one is primarily focused on projects and initiatives directories for one central, but shared source of accurate and up to date owner-owned information. The rest of the content is valuable (news and blogs, forums etc.) but we're all about directories, and reminding all that the national hub sites are not seen as Social Networks (more about Knowledge). We are very keen that there is a directory of initiatives managed in one place so we know it's up to date etc. (there are a few eco-portals with half-finished lists of initiatives which I'm trying to negotiate proper data sharing arrangements with), but shared widely as far as possible.
The purpose of these directories is to be able to be share-able with other platforms (e.g. wiser earth, 10:10, permaculture association and other partners) so for e.g. the projects directory appears in searches on partner sites and vice versa...
Situation in Canada
Canada has about about 15 'official' transition initiatives and some mullers.
About 6 months ago, 'Transition Canada' was formed to provide coordination, support and resources for the individual initiatives. So far, they are just using a Facebook page but are looking.
Here at Transition Ottawa, we use Ning. Ottawa is a 'hub' within which there are several local communities, initiatives, each with web-based components.
One particular requirement in Canada for the national entity and for some of the hubs and local initiatives is for members to be able to participate with equal ease and comfort in both English and French (I may have made this point somewhere before, so I won't hammer on it further :).
Appreciate everything that's going on here.
- John Davidson (Transition Ottawa www.transitionottawa.ning.com).
Multilanguage
We haven't finalized the requirements for version 1.0 but I'd definitely like to see multiple languages be a part of it. Canada certainly won't be the only place in the world in which a community will want multiple language access.
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com