The new Ning community - some central questions

[Holger Nauheimer (Change Facilitation)]

It is really fascinating to see how quick the new Ning group is growing
(http://openspaceworld.ning.com/). I predict that in 2 weeks, we will have
like 200-300 members, and growing. In particular I like that we will have
country specific subgroups, and that might be the main focus of the Ning
group in the future. But it might also be that it will become the major
platform for our community.

However, the Ning group raises a central question: in case, the group will
convert into a major network platform for the OS community, what will happen
with the OS Mailing List? 

As I have posted on the Ning today, I vote for maintaining this Listserv for
quite a while, and continuing to use this as the main discussion forum.
People got used to it, and in my experience, the OS folks are among the most
change resistant people that I have met in my life. 

In order not to divide the stream of discussion, I am in favour not to have
a discussion feature at the Ning platform (or, only for the subgroups).
Otherwise, people will be quite confused on where to post.

I hope that in future all the national / language specific groups will move
to the Ning platform (however, in the German community there is some strong
resistance to that).

What I would love to see is an integration of this list with the Ning
platform. The ideal would be that one can post from here and it appears in
the Ning platform and the other way round. I am pretty sure that this is
technically feasible but I have no idea how. It seems that the Listserv does
not support RSS feeds (and I am not sure whether RSS feeds are the solution,
probably not).

If we would agree that integration is a good step, I would do some further
research and also engage a developer to help us out. Ideas?

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist