Wednesday, June 14, 2006

FLASHMOB

The word on the street is that a flashmob/meetup is coming!

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** When: Saturday, June 17 **
** Where: Matthews Farmer's Market **
** Time: 8AM, sharp!!! **
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http://www.matthewsfarmersmarket.com/

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Adopt-A-Food

Hi Everybody,

I ran across these recently and thought of Slow Food:

www.nudo-italia.com/
www.sthelenawinery.com/adopt.html

Not to be "un-Slow Food," but Noll, I have absolutely NO interest in killing chickens this Sunday. Please don't eject me :)

Peas,

Beth

Monday, June 12, 2006

Some more interesting things...

I've been tracking down various things that have piqued my interest lately, so I'll just toss them out on the table for discussion:

  • Real Milk a "true dairy" source, but no Charlotte chapter. Can we [slowfood] absorb this as a sub-committee? Or at least incubate it's birth into reality? This site also dispells a lot of the rubbish you hear concerning unpasturized dairy products.
  • Local Harvest an offsite directory that is similar to what we desire, a Slow-cator (ha, I just made that up) that uses metadata to create some sort of mashup with what we want to promote (restaurants, farms, stores, etc)
  • Southern Exposure Seed Exchange Something for the home gardeners out there. I'd like to see some "backyard gardener" component become an intergral part of the Charlotte Convivia. A lot of the neighborhood groups typically have plant swaps, etc. but you don't really see this for the gardens. I remember stories from my childhood when my grandfather and my neighbors used to trade from their backyard gardens all the time - tomato seeds, onions, garlic, grafting vine stock for grapes & currants.
  • It looks like I'm going to go kill some chickens with Michael Sison next Monday. Anybody care to join?
As always, chime in with your thoughts. There is a comments section for every post you know ;^)

We also should be thinking about a place and time for our next meetup. I'll volunteer our brand spanking new front porch (well, new to Josie and me) if no one comes up with a place.

Viva la cuisine lente!
Noll

Monday, June 05, 2006

Website template news

Here's an excerpt of an email exchange that Andy and I had regarding the site and its components. It is what we have been discussing all along, so there shouldn't be any big surprises. Questions? Comments?
For the future design, it might be best to keep it as simple as possible with some real minor template modifications (like getting a logo or maybe header graphic in there) but to not mess with the underlying CSS and whatnot. Then once the group has local momentum you can have someone lead up a conversion, take it to one of many inexpensive (relative) skin shops and have Josie or whoever, work together with a site skinner and build us something custom. Right now thought there aren't enough cycles in the day I think to hammer on all fronts w/o making this a paid job.

Roles/ACL's.. Right now we have these type of roles:
(I created the taxonomy so if we need something different we can do it if the system can allow for it)

Anonymous
Authenticated User
Member
Contributing Member
Event Coordinator
Editorial
Web Developer

Roles are additive in rights.
  • Anonymous: pretty much can't do anything. In the future we can restrict anon to a page describing the group and gets them to register.
  • Authenticated User: Just that, they have an account this granting them basic read rights for forums and such.
  • Member: Member's can create forum posts, do some basic contacting, sign up for events. Generally can't cause harm but can participate.
  • Contributing Member: A member that is able to write their own blog entries and stories. Blog entries are not editorialized and get posted to the system (not front page) immediately, while stories are front page material and require editorial approval.
  • Event Coordinator: Can create and edit Events and in the future other Event Types. They also have signup admin authority.
  • Editorial: Can approve contributions and write and approve their own. Editorial is a clearing house of approval, anything needing moderation this group can do.
  • Web Developer: Basically an administrator of the system. Can do anything.
Alright.. enough babbling.. right now I've figured out enough to make forums and basic events work. I thought I had a review module but I don't like it.. we can make static pages and a number of dynamic boxes based off site content.. I'll quantify this more and bring a bunch of print outs to go over.