A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

This is one of the best peak oil movies. A must see documentary.

Drupal for web2.0 / briefing 25th October – workshops 1st and 7th November

*Free* briefings and workshops to open source your creative business |

/Drupal for web2.0: how to move fast with this new Open Source toolkit/

__REMINDER___________________________________________________________
The ‘Open for Business’ programme continues *this Thursday* 25th October
with the Drupal for Web2.0 briefing: come get an overview and jumpstart
into using this emerging social software swiss army knife!
- more info/rsvp: http://nm-x.com/event/2007/10/drupal-web2-0-briefing
______________________________________________________________________

__Drupal for web2.0__

Drupal is a fast, flexible toolkit for building web2.0 sites without
having to rebuild any wheels. Part content management, part programmable
multi-tool, it is emerging as the do-it-all open source content
management system of choice for bloggers, charities, companies, NGOs and
large corporations alike.

These two workshops on Wednesday 1st Nov and Thursday 7th Nov. will give
you a chance to get some hands-on experience working on your own
project, with the expert assistance of the UK’s leading Drupal
developer, Peter Brownell of Drupal UK

__Workshops__
- a two evening hands-on workshop, on your own project:__
- Thursday 1st and Wednesday 7th November, 18:30 – 21:30
- Location: The Young Foundation, 18 Victoria Park Sq., London, E2 9PF
- Price: Free!
- Bookings: http://nm-x.com/event/2007/11/drupal-web2-0-workshops

__About Open for Business__

‘Open for Business’ is a programme of free workshops and briefings to
help creative entrepreneurs, small businesses and artists explore the
tremendous potential of Open Source software and related strategies.

The programme is brought to you by London Westside, funded by the London
Development Agency and produced by http://nm-x.com and The People Speak

more info: http://nm-x.com/project/open-business

The Corporation

Another must see documentary that we’ve screened a couple of times.

Watch it now! (and considering buying the book or original DVD, or just donating, at http://www.thecorporation.com/ )

Part 1

Part 2

Designing an Open Organisation

Another extract from a recent e-mail…

As for organisational structure, I think you and Imogen are both right. You need to define and be explicit about your structure, but operational units should have as much autonomy as possible within their defined limits/remit.

People investing more time and energy in the project can still have more say about how stuff is done. Afterall, it seems fair that those doing the more implementation work should have more say in decisions about how, and what, work is implemented.

I think you’ve had a look around the ud wiki already, but a few good places to start when thinking about such things (in no particular order) are:

The VSM – a guide for co-operatives and federations
How to design a healthy business: The use of the Viable Systems Model in the diagnosis and design of organisational structures …
www.greybox.uklinux.net/vsmg_2.2/

The Open Organization Project
http://www.open-organizations.org/

Chaordic Design Process
http://wiki.uniteddiversity.com/ChaordicDesignProcess

Co-op UK Governance and Participation Case Studies
http://www.co-opunion.coop/live/cme377.htm (there is some other interesting stuff there too, but some of the info about LLPs is completely wrong, i.e. it says you can only have 20 members, which is total nonsense. Thankfully their more recent publications have this corrected, but they still haven’t changed the site despite having had it pointed out to them)

Most likely see you at the meeting…

Josef.