After the June 28-July 1 Media Giraffe Project summit at UMass Amherst, some 165 out of 300 attendees submitted comments in an online survey. One of the most common requests on the survey and during a Saturday, July 1, wrapup session was that some mechanism be created for post-conference followup and collaboration.
This MGP-FORUM is an answer to that request. Running on the open-source Drupal platform, and created by MGP2006 participant Ben Melançon (with other UMass-Amherst alumni in the Agaric Design Collective [1]), MGP-FORUM is a combination of several services:
1) An "announcement" service. Registered members (participants of MGP2006 and other invitees) can post announcements via email and they will both (a) be sent by email to other participants who accept e-mail and (b) appear at the web address: http://www.mgp-forum.org/forum/5 [2]).
2) A discussion forum. Here MGP2006 attendees and invited guests may engage in discussion of topics relevant to the mission of The Media Giraffe Project. Posts may be added by anyone who is a logged-in and registered user and the home page for the forum is http://www.mgp-forum./forum/4 [3].
3) A "blog". Here MGP2006 attendees who are registered may submit blog posts for approval by the MGP-FORUM administrators and other registered users may submit comments. The home page is: http://www.mgp-forum.org/node [4].
4) Newsfeed aggregator. Finally, we've created a newsfeed aggregation service. MGP2006 participants may recommend an RSS feed for inclusion in this feed aggregator, to build a resource of the latest news on topics of interest to the Media Giraffe Project participant community. The home page for the aggregator is: http://www.mgp-forum.org/aggregator/sources [5].
Also keep in mind that you have to ask to be added to the discussion forum, so you won't receive those posts by e-mail. YOu are already subscribed to the announcements list. If you don't want to received announcements by email, let us know at mediagiraffe@journ.umass.edu [6]
All posts are always available on the web site.
-- Ben Melançon -- Bill Densmore
1-508-737-0582 1-413-458-8001