[wp-edu] Educational Focused WordCamp?

[James Groom]

Hey all,

As for wpmued.org domain, a relic of another time, though I do love it so.
Fact is, Andre Malan of UBC was the brains behind http://dev.wpmued.org, and
that was pulling in posts from various blogs that were related to wpmu and
buddypress development. I think a lot of the work folks are/were doing there
is relevant to what you all are thinking. And I'll talk to Andre and the
others (though Andre may even be on this list), but I'll venture to say this
content could move smoothly to another domain, particularly because it is
all just feeding in using FeedWordPress anyway (a feature that should be
built into the core of WP :) ). So if nothing else, you will probably have
some starter content, and then I can turn wpmued.org into the spam blog
domain it was always meant to be.

Also, I like the idea of a wiki raised, and the marriage of MediaWiki and wP
could be very useful for sharing tutorials, documentation, and the like. We
could really use this site to make using WP for education very easy, and it
sounds like there are a lot of interested parties.  I also like the idea of
keeping the wp-edu.org site (or whatever it will be named) syndication
based, so folks can share their thoughts from their own blogs if they
choose, but still allow authorship on the site. But this may be getting
ahead of ourselves, because I don;t think it is clear, as others have
pointed out, whether this is a space for sharing resources, a wordcamped, or
a slumber party. But the fact is, a relatively central and somewhat popular
place to share stuff folks are doing with WP in highered would certainly be
cool, and is what wpmued.org and dev.wpmued.org are aimed for. And before
James Farmer sold his soul to the devil that is what wpmudev.org was all
about.

But to be clear, I would suggest everyone own and maintain their own
content, and syndicate it in, and put your plugins on wordpress.org lest
this become an app machine like wpmu.org/premium.wpmudev.org. A lot of good
work was lost in the process of that transition, and that is the only thing
that would make me a a bit weary of zealous leadership in this regard.
Though it just so happens that hope springs eternal, and as long as we are
clear from the beginning this is a site dedicated to the communist/commons
ethics that should always undergird open source projects (i.e. owned by no
one) I think this is groovy.

Best,
Jim

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Jay Collier <jay.collier at thecompass.com>wrote:

> While we're discussing these important topics of purpose and identity, I
> also wanted to bring up governance. From experience, I believe a little
> forethought goes a long way later on that ;)
>
> The site we're discussing may eventually have real value -- collegial as
> well as financial -- and we probably want to avoid the challenges of split
> or unclear ownership. (I can think of a CMS where an individual has
> copyrighted its name and an organization owns the rest.)
>
> I'd like to suggest that this site be public, with no restricted content,
> and that all content submitted to the site (other than Fair Use excerpts) be
> owned by its creator, with a perpetual Creative Commons Share Alike license.
> Finally, I'd like to suggest that all intellectual property (such as domain
> names and hosting accounts)  be held by a trusted entity.
>
> To do some of the things already being discussed, such as aggregation a la
> wpmued.org, there are costs -- my experience is that commercial plugins
> are the best options in some cases. Not much cost, but they add up. So, we
> should consider a way to accept minimal donations (in kind or money) in a
> way that respects the donor.
>
> My 2 cents. Thoughts?
>
> -Jay
>
>
> On Sep 9, 2010, at 6:20 PM, Jane Wells wrote:
>
> > On 9/9/10 6:15 PM, Helen Hou wrote:
> >> It’s true, saying “double you pee dash ee dee you” is awkward, but I
> think it might be the more appropriate option in that it doesn’t limit to MU
> or WordPress as a learning tool (and also parallels this mailing list name
> nicely!)
> > For the record, there is no more MU. The multisite features are now part
> of core WordPress. Anyone still using MU should really upgrade to get the
> 3.0 CMS features.
> > j
>
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