All, Here is a summary of what I am proposing we develop. Hopefully this will shed some light on why software previously proposed is not an adequate solution for the Onion River Exchange, and other like small collectives.
I hope to setup a meeting with the Onion River Exchange to discuss this project and see if it is indeed something they would be willing to help us define the requirements for, and later implement to replace their current commercial system. *Proposal for development by the Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts of software to manage a Time Bank collective.* * * Stan Brinkerhoff 4/16/2009 *Executive Summary* * * A *Time Bank* is a community collective that prospers by members exchanging services with each other and collecting a currency for this transaction in the from of a logged unit of time. The *Time Bank* concept exists to foster relationships, services, and allow individuals to *work*, but not receive income that they would need to claim on their tax return. A bartering relationship wherein services were directly exchanged between members would be considered taxable, while obtaining a *community hour* for helping provide a service is not. The *Time Bank* is only as successful as the community that is built around the system, and how well those members can communicate and transfer the units of time earned. The Internet is a uniquely powerful tool for management, self reporting and communication of services offered, received, and available. It is important to recognize that a *Time Bank* is frequently used by those who have limited resources, possibly older or less skilled with computers, or without the knowledge of standard user interface paradigms. *Project Motivations* Purely by definition a *Time Bank* works by members exchanging services in luau of direct tangible payment. A *Time Bank* therefore has limited means of collecting funds, and therefore has a limited capacity to purchase commercial software to provide expensive hosting or software requirements for existing solutions. Additionally; there may be legal ownership of content concerns with the most appropriate commercially available software for smaller *Time Bank* systems. * * *High Level Requirements* * * A successful tool to promose and manage the *Time Bank* should provide the following services: - Primarily web based user interface. - Be able to be hosted on low-cost non-dedicated, non-private commodity hosting platforms. - Provide detailed general ledger style accounting services in standard units of a user determined *community credit*. - Provide detailed user management with user defined fields to capture demographics - Provide a user directory of offered services - Provide a communications system that allows members to communicate - Provide a reporting facility to the *Time Bank* administrative staff. - Easy to use by those with visual or physical limitations * * *User Cases* * * *Example 1. Member wishes to review services.* A fictional *Time Bank* member John signs up with his local *Time Bank* and is given credentials to login to the webbased management system the *Time Bank* has implemented. John wishes to review what services might be available and of interest to him. John should be able to retrieve a list of services either in a Craigslist style timeline view, by category (such as house services), or possibly by distance from his location (perhaps John does not have access to transportation and the Time Bank covers a 5 square mile area). *Example 2. Member wishes to contact service provider.* After John locates a service in *Example 1*, he wishes to contact the member providing a service. John should be able to communicate with the member via their preferred communication medium (perhaps the user has made their phone number, or email address available) or through the sites internal messaging system. *Example 3. Member wishes to log community credits* After the member provides the service to John in Example 2, the providing member wishes to log 2 community credits, or 2 hours of time for providing the service to John. The system should then allow John to alerted to this deduction, and provide a medium for John to comment on the service. Stan Brinkerhoff On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Stanley Brinkerhoff <[email protected]>wrote: > > >> >> Not that I'm pushing for Java (I do plenty of that already), but >> doesn't Google's App Engine support Java now, as of sometime in the >> last week or so? >> > > It supports a subset of Java with a series of heavy limitations, and you > need to likely work within an API. I doubt its a cut and paste adventure. > > Stan > >
