Draft v.3
Craft Emergency Relief Fund
Sonny Cloward, Communication and Information Manager
March 3, 2005
Part I: Strategy
Goal:
To offer accessible and relevant web-based resources that help sustain and strengthen the career of professional craft artists nationwide.
Rationale:
The impetus to create a web-based resource for craft artists is rooted in our research that shows a significant demand for services beyond our emergency relief efforts. For 20 years CERF has provided sustaining(reactive) services through loans, grants and brokered in-kind gifts to craft artists hit by unforeseen calamities. Nowadays, in a more complex business world, there is also the need for relevant professional development resources, information and education that help strengthenthe careers of all craft artists (e.g. affordable business and health insurance, health and safety information, local art and business resources).
Competition:
Measurements of Success:
In Five Years
70% of the craft artists who have received emergency relief support in the past are reporting that they have business insurance coverage for their studios (CERF recipients from the last 3 ½ years report that only 33% have business insurance);
Professional craft artists have access to professional guidelines for health and safety in the studio and 40% of the craft artists who have received emergency relief support from CERF in the past are reporting that they have taken increased measures to ensure the health and safety in their studios.
CERF will have a web-based resource that serves 2,000 craft artists annually with information they need to maintain their small businesses;
Information gathering and data about craft artists that informs the craft community, arts service agencies, funders, economic development agencies, financial institutions, and other organizations;
Advocacy about the unique business needs and the economic development and job-creation opportunities of investing in craft artists to both the profit and non-profit sector.
Purpose and Offerings:
The following CERF programs would be served by a web-based resource:
Emergency Relief
Purpose: The need for affordable and accessible supplies and services after an emergency occurs.
Offerings: An automated system to broker in-kind gifts between beneficiaries and donors: A web based marketplace where suppliers, show producers, manufacturers, schools, craft organizations and others offer CERFs beneficiaries donated or discounted services, equipment, supplies, residencies, and more
Emergency Prevention and Protection
Purpose: CERF provides information and resources to help craft artists prevent emergencies and to protect themselves and their businesses when emergencies occur.
Offerings: An searchable on-line compendium of resources on health and safety in the studio developed in partnership with medium focused craft organizations;
An on-line compendium of resources on health, disability and business insurance
Professional Development
Purpose: CERF works to advance craft artists careers. CERF is:
An information clearinghouse for business training and development;
A partner in innovative technical assistance programs for micro and small business entrepreneurs.
Offerings: An searchable on-line compendium of information and resources craft artists need to succeed as small businesses; An artist-centric search that will enable craft artists to access business information as they need it and when they need it.
Part II: Background & Development
Last September, I was hired at the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (click here for more info on the organization) to spearhead the creation of a web-based resource for craft artists. In those six months, not only have I uncovered information in my research that has completely altered the original concept, but emerging technologyparticularly in search and the incremental webhave given the concept previously incomprehensible potential and functionality.
(FYI: Much of the information and ideas Ive been chewing on are collected on my del.icio.us account: http://del.icio.us/sonnycloward.)
Concept History
-Last summer I began to play around with the idea of making search more personal and relevant for the things I was looking for. I played around with multiple site searches (using Soople) and even the idea of purchasing a Google Appliance to create an enterprise topic/subject search. Then last fall search engines like Yahoo, Askand A9 began to incorporate personalize functions into their sites; creating a rich and somewhat confusing landscape of possibilities to customize and further filter search. (this is haphazardly captured on my blog).
-All the while, I was conversing with Marnie Webb at CompuMentor about content aggregation ideas; the best process to aggregate relevant content based on specific keywords. While I was stuck in personal search, Marnies was exploring the possibilities with social tagging, otherwise known as folksonomy. Since then, Marnie has been exploring and developing a nonprofit technology tagging project over on the Omidyar Network: here and here
-In October, I attended the Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Cleveland, OH and connected with Leveraging Investments in Creativity about a similar concept they were working on. Through this connection, I was invited to a December meeting in Boston that convened a dozen or so national art service organizations to more fully articulate the concept and brainstorm different ideas. It looks as though some of those participants are holding a session at this years NTC. At this meeting the issue of manual data aggregation (the creation of yet another static and labor-intensive online database) vs. a search/tagged/dynamic data aggregation system was breeched, but was never followed up on.
-Then the prolific Dave Pollard then came along with the concept of Dynamic Libraries:
We could create large virtual libraries of news, information and analysis by linking together in one, organized place, everything you could possibly want to know about a particular subject. I dont like the word archivebecause it connotes old and outdated, but its an up-to-date dynamic archive Im proposing. ... The blog is not a useful mechanism for this, because it sorts content by date and drops it off automatically after a certain period of time. Wikis might work. We need a mechanism for indexing and organizing all this content in simple, powerful ways, ways that allow us to see the context of all this stuffsearch engines arent up to this task. We need a way to filter all the content on a particular topic by relevance, by value, using some kind of voting mechanism that allows all users to rate articles, but discounts the brief frenzy of sensational news to produce some measure of enduring value. This is a resource that everyone, even the big media, would get value from. Instead of having to go to a hundred sites following link after link, you could just go there. Ill leave it to the librarians and the technologists to design this. I think it could be dynamite.
Coalescing and Convergence
I have been wrestling with these seeming opposed ideas:
-The Reference Web (traditional search: Google, Yahoo, Ask)
-The Incremental Web (RSS aggregators: Feedster, Technorati, PubSub)
-The Social Web (social tagging and collective filtering: del.cio.us flickr, 43 Things, Amazon, A9, Yahoo Local)
Two first two terms come from a topix.net blog posting (i.e. traditional search vs. RSS/XML driven content aggregation). The third is a general term Im using for tagging, folksonomy, collective filtering sites. (There is also what is known as the dark web but Im not going there at this time. See: MITs Technology Reviewarticle on Google and the future of search)
There are several models that are beginning to integrate these facets of the web into a single interface and are informing my ideas of a web resource for our constituency.
These are the ones I like most:
-A9: I like how A9 allows users to customize the interface and see web results, reference, yellow page directory, etc all in on one view. Furthermore, A9 uses Amazons peer-rating system for its products to allow browsers to rate different sites and organizations.
-Findory: Takes the same concept and applies it to Web Search, Blogs and News. Findory also keeps a personalized history similar to A9, Ask and Yahoo Personal; but that history also creates a relevancy filter the more you use it (I admittedly, have not explored this much).
-Find Forward: Is an interesting beta site that aggregates web search, RSS Aggregation, Tags and a bunch of other stuff. It needs some polish and more work however. The comment section is particularly intriguing to me.
-43 Things: The integration of tagging, social networking and collaboration is ingenious; not to mention that now it is location specific.
-Amazon Light 4.0: I like the use of Amazons APIand the integration of other tools like Dropcash, Del.cio.us and Blogger.
Two other sites are of interest, but I havent quite developed a grasp of how best to utilize them:
-Y!Q from Yahoo
-Clusty
And then there are just good ideas flying around that integrate these emerging parts of the web.
-Taggle: "federated tagging" If someone were to index all the tags from these various sites.... [create] a service where you type in a keyword, and you get back all the hits that have that word as a tag. If Flickr, del.icio.us, and umpteen other sites cooperated, thenan uber-tag-search service might just work . . .
PART III: Project Concept
Preface: To the extent that it is possible to tap into Google or Yahoos API, Amazons API, 43 Things or Craigslist to create the following menu of services, I dont know. That is where I need help. Additionally, how economically realistic and feasible this concept is eludes me as well.
The CERF Web Resource for Craft Artists
Interface: I like the interface of A9 and Findory where a browser can click between the different web areas using the same keyword search field.
Facets: Search | News and Publications | Share | Exchange | Locate | Discuss | Connect
-Art Service Filtered Web Search:
A conventional search function (Google, Akamai, Yahoo API) that searched art specific domains, or resources that serve/potentially serve the artist community. Working with partner organizations (LINC, NYFA, Chicago Artists Resource, Artists Trust) to tap into both public as well as dark webdatabases, such as NYFA source.
-News, Information and Publications (Topix; Google News, Findory)
Search specific new sights for craft art related news; also a place for CERF and partner organizations to publish research and news. The interface would distinguish between public news and partner publications.
-Share (43 Things; Del.ci.ous; Google Suggest)
A folksonomy user informed resource site, where logged in users can refer a resource. In doing so, they will give the resource a rating (collective filtering) and several classification tags: location, medium and otherclassifying tags (a program that would also give suggestions to limit the number of almost the same tags)
-Exchange (Craigslist, Idealist, Matchbin,)
A Marketplace where artists and suppliers can exchange resources (tools, services, supplies) for barter, auction, give away or money.
-Locate (Yahoo Local, A9 Yellow Pages)
Find a resource in your area and rate it.
-Discuss (Omidyar Network, Google Groups, forums, blogs, wiki, bliki, listserv/email discussion group)
A moderated space for constituents to make announcements and participate in facilitated discussions.
-Connect and Collaborate (43 Things, Basecamp, Social Networking)
Based on common interests in the above functions, constituents can connect with one another to directly share information and potentially collaborate.
Platform
Marnie has suggested looking at Civicspace as a possible base platform for this project. I have only skimmed the surface of Civicspace and Dupral. Bryght is also intriguing for the collaboration facets of the concept.
Additionally, Mambo (because of its simple implementation) and Midgard (because of its use of Ruby) are also interesting. I confess to being easily seduced by the few projects that I see using Ruby: 43 Things and Basecamp. The simplicity and quick adoption of Ruby seem promising, as well as a coding that I could use to integrate our database into the system.
Part IV: Implementation
Timeline
Phase 1 (March 05 Dec 05):
CMS/Platform selection
Website redesign and overhaul
Database integration into website
Exchange Marketplace development and beta launch
Phase 2 (Jan 06 Dec 06):
Art Service Filtered Web Search Beta Launch
Share and Locate Beta Launch
News and Publication Beta Launch
Phase 3 (March 07):
Discuss and Collaborate Integration
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