Hi !
First of all, Congratulation to all members of the openguides project. It is really a great project and I feel proud to run the Belgium one.
As maintener of the Brussels platform, I am wondering to expand to others cities such as Liège, Brugges, ect.. As Belgium in size looks like New York... Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
But I was wondering witch languages should I focus on. In Belgium, we have 2 languages but english should be the best compromise for touristics reasons. But I will agree to keep words in the two nationnal languages because even the city name are different (Liège - Lutich or Mons - Bergen). Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
Cheers,
Dimitri Pasquazzo http://www.justbiit.com/cgi-bin/openguides/
ps: should we agree on http://brussels.openguides.org ?
SKYPE as Grammoux MSN as dpasquazzo@hotmail.com Linkedin as dimitri.linkedin@justbiit.com eBay http://members.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=dpasquazzo Jabber as dpasquazzo@jabber.org
Congratulations and good luck with Open Guide Bruxelles/Belgium, Dimitri!
Multiple languages is fine by me.... as you say, English is a tourist language but it depends on who the guide is for. I think in many cases the Open Guides are for local citizens of a place rather than tourists, so maybe local languages are more appropriate. I think this is one big reason why Open Guides are different from WikiTravel (http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page).
Certainly in our Milton Keynes Open Guide (http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page) we have many entries that are only interesting for local residents, such as schools, car mechanics, etc.
I think http://brussels.openguides.org is a good address. Would it be a problem to open up new addresses if other cities started having a lot of entries?
kind regards Mark
-----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces@lists.openguides.org on behalf of Dimitri Pasquazzo Sent: Mon 7/2/2007 7:29 PM To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org Subject: [OGDev] OpenGuides Belgium
Hi !
First of all, Congratulation to all members of the openguides project. It is really a great project and I feel proud to run the Belgium one.
As maintener of the Brussels platform, I am wondering to expand to others cities such as Liège, Brugges, ect.. As Belgium in size looks like New York... Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
But I was wondering witch languages should I focus on. In Belgium, we have 2 languages but english should be the best compromise for touristics reasons. But I will agree to keep words in the two nationnal languages because even the city name are different (Liège - Lutich or Mons - Bergen). Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
Cheers,
Dimitri Pasquazzo http://www.justbiit.com/cgi-bin/openguides/
ps: should we agree on http://brussels.openguides.org ?
SKYPE as Grammoux MSN as dpasquazzo@hotmail.com Linkedin as dimitri.linkedin@justbiit.com eBay http://members.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=dpasquazzo Jabber as dpasquazzo@jabber.org
On Mon 02 Jul 2007, Dimitri Pasquazzo dimitri@justbiit.com wrote:
First of all, Congratulation to all members of the openguides project. It is really a great project and I feel proud to run the Belgium one.
Hi Dimitri! Great to see the birth of a Belgian guide.
As maintener of the Brussels platform, I am wondering to expand to others cities such as Li?ge, Brugges, ect.. As Belgium in size looks like New York... Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
Unless you spend a great deal of time in these other cities, it might be best to start out by concentrating on one area, i.e. Brussels, and get some good and consistent coverage there. What we've found is that unless a guide has a dedicated team of contributors, it's very likely that the guide will just fall into disuse. Are you working on the project on your own, or do you have other people willing to contribute as well?
Once you're more established, though, expansion of the guide to other cities might work out well.
But I was wondering witch languages should I focus on. In Belgium, we have 2 languages but english should be the best compromise for touristics reasons. But I will agree to keep words in the two nationnal languages because even the city name are different (Li?ge - Lutich or Mons - Bergen). Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
The Vienna people might have some useful input on this. I think the plan there was to have content in both German and English, on the same page, so German speakers and English speakers can both contribute. (Actually, this gives a way for people to contribute to a guide even if they know very little about a city, as long as they know both languages of a guide - making sure that information is translated back and forth.)
ps: should we agree on http://brussels.openguides.org ?
I have no objection to that. I think it's Dom that needs to sort out DNS things?
Kake
On Tue 03 Jul 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
I think http://brussels.openguides.org is a good address. Would it be a problem to open up new addresses if other cities started having a lot of entries?
Shouldn't think so. Saint Paul has a couple of addresses, for example.
Oh, this reminds me - would it be a good idea to have http://vegan-oxford.openguides.org/ pointing at something that does nothing but redirect to the front page of the vegan guide (which is hosted somewhere that doesn't allow for proper domain hosting)?
Kake
Hello Kake,
Thank you for the precious feedback. We are 2 to work on it. "Doegox" loves to Flikr nice pictures of Brussels and helps quite much on technical system issue to run the platform (Debian Vserver Administrator) here is his wiki : http://yobi.be/mediawiki/index.php/Table_of_contents http://www.flickr.com/photos/doegox/558080108/
Have a great day !
Dimitri
Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Mon 02 Jul 2007, Dimitri Pasquazzo dimitri@justbiit.com wrote:
First of all, Congratulation to all members of the openguides project. It is really a great project and I feel proud to run the Belgium one.
Hi Dimitri! Great to see the birth of a Belgian guide.
As maintener of the Brussels platform, I am wondering to expand to others cities such as Li?ge, Brugges, ect.. As Belgium in size looks like New York... Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
Unless you spend a great deal of time in these other cities, it might be best to start out by concentrating on one area, i.e. Brussels, and get some good and consistent coverage there. What we've found is that unless a guide has a dedicated team of contributors, it's very likely that the guide will just fall into disuse. Are you working on the project on your own, or do you have other people willing to contribute as well?
Once you're more established, though, expansion of the guide to other cities might work out well.
But I was wondering witch languages should I focus on. In Belgium, we have 2 languages but english should be the best compromise for touristics reasons. But I will agree to keep words in the two nationnal languages because even the city name are different (Li?ge - Lutich or Mons - Bergen). Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
The Vienna people might have some useful input on this. I think the plan there was to have content in both German and English, on the same page, so German speakers and English speakers can both contribute. (Actually, this gives a way for people to contribute to a guide even if they know very little about a city, as long as they know both languages of a guide - making sure that information is translated back and forth.)
ps: should we agree on http://brussels.openguides.org ?
I have no objection to that. I think it's Dom that needs to sort out DNS things?
Kake
-- OpenGuides-Dev mailing list - OpenGuides-Dev@lists.openguides.org http://lists.openguides.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openguides-dev
Hi Dimitri
A buddy is always good! (me and Tom run the Milton Keynes Open Guide). We also found that by doing a small "launch event" helped build up a core of contributors, who continue to be the main posters for our guide.
Me and Tom put in 50 entries ourselves to get the guide started, so people would have a 'frame' and understand the sort of entries that could be put in. Then we invited people to come along to a workshop to find out about the guide, and enter something themselves. We're in a university so we had an advantage of access to a room with computers and a lot of interested people nearby, but bribing them with coffee and free cakes also helped :-)
We talked people through the idea of the guide and helped them put in at least one entry each themselves, so they could experience the system and give us feedback on what needed to be improved. That was it really... but it seems to have given us a core group of contributors.
Good luck!
Mark http://miltonkeynes.openguides.org/
-----Original Message----- From: openguides-dev-bounces@lists.openguides.org [mailto:openguides-dev-bounces@lists.openguides.org] On Behalf Of Dimitri Pasquazzo Sent: 04 July 2007 09:53 To: OpenGuides software developers' list Cc: dimitri@justbiit.com Subject: Re: [OGDev] OpenGuides Belgium
Hello Kake,
Thank you for the precious feedback. We are 2 to work on it. "Doegox" loves to Flikr nice pictures of Brussels and helps quite much on technical system issue to run the platform (Debian Vserver Administrator) here is his wiki : http://yobi.be/mediawiki/index.php/Table_of_contents http://www.flickr.com/photos/doegox/558080108/
Have a great day !
Dimitri
Kake L Pugh wrote:
On Mon 02 Jul 2007, Dimitri Pasquazzo dimitri@justbiit.com wrote:
First of all, Congratulation to all members of the openguides
project.
It is really a great project and I feel proud to run the Belgium one.
Hi Dimitri! Great to see the birth of a Belgian guide.
As maintener of the Brussels platform, I am wondering to expand to others cities such as Li?ge, Brugges, ect.. As Belgium in size looks like
New
York... Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
Unless you spend a great deal of time in these other cities, it might be best to start out by concentrating on one area, i.e. Brussels, and get some good and consistent coverage there. What we've found is that unless a guide has a dedicated team of contributors, it's very likely that the guide will just fall into disuse. Are you working on the project on your own, or do you have other people willing to contribute as well?
Once you're more established, though, expansion of the guide to other cities might work out well.
But I was wondering witch languages should I focus on. In Belgium, we have 2 languages but english should be the best compromise for touristics reasons. But I will agree to keep words in the two nationnal
languages
because even the city name are different (Li?ge - Lutich or Mons - Bergen). Does anyone feel unconfortable with this ?
The Vienna people might have some useful input on this. I think the plan there was to have content in both German and English, on the same page, so German speakers and English speakers can both contribute. (Actually, this gives a way for people to contribute to a guide even if they know very little about a city, as long as they know both languages of a guide - making sure that information is translated back and forth.)
ps: should we agree on http://brussels.openguides.org ?
I have no objection to that. I think it's Dom that needs to sort out DNS things?
Kake
-- OpenGuides-Dev mailing list - OpenGuides-Dev@lists.openguides.org http://lists.openguides.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openguides-dev
On Thu 05 Jul 2007, "M.B.Gaved" M.B.Gaved@open.ac.uk wrote:
Then we invited people to come along to a workshop to find out about the guide, and enter something themselves. [...] We talked people through the idea of the guide and helped them put in at least one entry each themselves, so they could experience the system and give us feedback on what needed to be improved.
I've been thinking of doing something similar for RGL; there are loads of people who keep saying "ooh, I keep meaning to add place X to RGL", and maybe if I got people round my house for food and drinks and laptopping they might actually do it :) I was thinking of combining this with some user-testing, e.g. having people show me how they use the site, and what they find confusing. It's quite likely that some of these issues, and maybe even new feature requests, could be fixed on the spot.
Kake
openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
-
Dimitri Pasquazzo -
Kake L Pugh -
M.B.Gaved