Background:

Diss Connected is a community portal building upon the Plone CMS that has been developing slowly since about December 2006. Earlier versions of the development plan and the social background can be found here. Diss Connected has been in use in Diss, Norfolk since early 2007, but with limited facilities, its use has been quite light.

It has had some funding from the Diss Town Council and South Norfolk Council, but that has now ended. There is a volunteer support group creating content and trying to encourage wider use in the community, but they are widely agreed that more development is needed before a big promotional push should be attempted.

With the prospect of some serious developer time in the next few months, this document is an attempt to define the functionality that will be addressed in that period. We welcome your comments below.

Social purposes:

The social background for Diss Connected can be found here. It is meant to be the infrastructure for a ‘connected community’, initially in Diss, but then in many other communities..

More recently, as Diss is moving to becoming a Transition Town, we see Diss Connected as at least informing, and possibly providing infrastructure for the Transition Town movement. It is likely to be tried out in Bungay, Suffolk and Norwich, Norfolk in the near future, as well as in Diss.

Current status of Diss Connected:

Diss Connected is built upon the open source content management system, Plone (version 2.5) with enhancements to:

• the front page so that it provides a quick view of new content added in a range of categories: images, events, news, pages, and listings (part of the exchange)
• groups, so that it provides a right column with a logo or image, list of members, a basic mailing list for members, as well as a folder in which all the standard Plone content can be created.
• For 3 categories of object: users, groups and businesses, a system of default content has been created in which pre-defined starting content can be created.
• a limited first step towards an ‘exchange’, in which users can create listings with an offer or a want, either for free or payment.

The current development plan:

1. First upgrade:

Parallel work by the original developers is taking place for The Hub, a growing network of shared workspaces around the world. They are currently incorporating much of the functionality of Diss Connected into Plone 3 (the current version of Plone, not available when Diss Connected started), with a new skin and improved usability, plus other features specifically for The Hub. This is likely to be ready for deployment in Sept. 2008. It will then also be used as an upgrade to Diss Connected, with the current content moved over to it.

This will be the starting point for further development of Diss Connected, and the results will be available for other the Transition Town groups in Bungay and Norwich and others who want it. It's ideas will also feed into the broader discussion of a software platform for Transition Towns.

Beyond this we see short-term further development concentrated in 3 areas:

2. Usability:

We created a brief for this here, but that will need to be updated once the upgrade to Plone 3 has happened.

3. Discussion system:

There is a first description of this here, for public comment.

The intention is to create an online discussion system for groups that a) is much friendlier and usable than current email-based systems and b) has features that encourage coming to agreement and that promotes enhanced democracy.

4. Exchange:

There is a first description of this here, for public comment.

The intention is to create infrastructure for a system of exchange between people that avoids or reduces many of the difficulties of a competitive market. It emphasizes and recognises free exchange or ‘generalised reciprocity’ where giving and receiving is part of an ongoing relationship. It includes monetary exchange and will eventually include local currency support.