Diagrams to explain the Project Sharing Engine
By Ed Mitchell 8th December 2011
The Project Sharing Engine is a web service that connects Transition Initiative websites around the web, in the ‘Transition web constellation‘. Its purpose is to make Transition in local communities easier by sharing useful project information – the challenges, opportunities and findings – among the websites of local initiatives. It aims to do this via a simple embeddable widget with simple filters and search functionality that make sure only relevant projects are made visible.
Putting a widget on your initiative’s website shows that it is part of a big movement that is actively sharing information, adding weight and ‘content’ to your Initiative’s site. Making it more interesting to its visitors, and influential to its local councils and other strategic partners. As well as having a lot of useful information directly to hand.
You can read the who and what of it here, and keep up to date with the project by following the project blog, or emailing Ed the project co-ordinator.
How it works
(big thanks to Chris Wells for these lovely diagrams)
For us humans, it is a ‘widget’ that a Transition Initiative’s webmaster (person responsible for the website) can simply put into their Initiative’s website with a few clicks of the mouse.
Once in place, it means that visitors to that Transition Initiative’s website can easily search for, and read about Transition projects around the world, giving them the benefit of finding out about others doing similar things – and not re-inventing any wheels. It also enables visitors to that same Transition Initiative’s website to add their own project information to share with other groups around the world, thereby adding to the movement’s ‘knowledge’.
How it fits into a project’s life
(big thanks to Chris Wells for these lovely diagrams)
In a nutshell, Transitioners use it from their own sites to research other projects doing similar things, learn from them and connect to them, then bring that intelligence back to their own project meetings, thereby enhancing their local projects. Then they add their information, because it is useful, and frankly, the right thing to do. Naturally, adding information requires some effort from project people, as it’s not a psychic knowledge extraction engine, but we’re keeping it as short and sweet as possible to add to and search in, and browse.
Our experience shows that the projects that go from concept to live fastest are the ones that are inspired by other initiatives (usually with their own unique local twists). That’s why we’ve put so much effort into making this information so readily available and shareable across the network of Transitioners.