Mission Statement Conversation

(This seemed more like a discussion topic. The Project Page can hold our best effort to date.)

What is the best way to go about creating our mission statement? It was always my intention that Appropedia be not just a repository of Appropriate Technology projects, but much more alive. I hope that our mission statement can meet that. The original mission statement/description, unfortunately too simple, stated: Appropedia is a living library of appropriate technology.

An expert facilitator has offered her services in cocreating a mission statement. See http://www.holonconsultants.com/ for some of her work. Any suggestions on some ways to develop this? A teleconference mixed with Appropedia editing? Just exchanging thoughts here? While we work on this, I think it is important to note that we can keep tweaking and changing our mission as Appropedia develops. I think it is an important part of appropriate technology, and an ability of wiki, that we change to meet the needs of our stakeholders. --Lonny 11:27, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

Great idea! I think we can make some good progress (already have) via postings, then when we get a little stuck, or even if we think we are there, we can engage with your expert and "put a bow on it". --Curtbeckmann 15:58, 1 October 2006 (PDT)
I believe she will be posting some questions here to help guide us. Look for them soon. --Lonny 18:45, 1 October 2006 (PDT)

Mission Statement 1

Appropedia seeks to facilitate successful and practical hands-on application of appropriate technology and processes in field or academic venues by all interested parties. We welcome content documenting field and academic projects world wide, including the technologies and processes (e.g. assessment efforts) used, plus the results and any potential pitfalls to avoid.

We've identified the following categories for contributions:

Mission Statement 2

Appropedia seeks to facilitate and support successful individuals, organizations, programs and applications of sustainable development, and appropriate technology and processes. We welcome all content from individuals and organizations working in these fields.

This content could be:

  • Documentation of field or academic projects world wide, including the technologies and processes (e.g. assessment efforts) used, plus the results and any potential pitfalls to avoid.
  • Organization or individual information, serving as a sustainability nexus.
  • Collaboration work serving as common working area (with benefits such as track and compare changes, and opening up the dialog to a much wider community).
  • How to instructions.
  • Lecture notes.
  • Common errors to avoid.
  • this is included just for an idea, it is obviously not fully developed and not part of a mission statement. In fact only the first sentence is really part of a mission statement.

QUESTIONS to consider as the mission is developed

APPROPEDIA MISSION KEY QUESTIONS: As you envision Appropedia 5 years into the future:

  • What are your highest hopes for Appropedia?
  • What do you see happening as a result of Appropedia: within your field, locally, nationally, globally?
  • Who is involved in Appropedia?
  • What has changed from the present state?
  • What are the greatest accomplishments?

Starting comments, from the About page, that precipitated this page

All this "About" investigation was prompted by a desire to develop something along the lines of a "mission statement" (we might choose to call it something else) for Appropedia in order to help guide contributors a little bit more with respect to the content. What I'm looking for is something along the lines of:

Appropedia seeks to facilitate successful and practical hands-on application of appropriate technology and processes in field or academic venues by all interested parties. We welcome content documenting field and academic projects world wide, including the technologies and processes (e.g. assessment efforts) used, plus the results and any potential pitfalls to avoid.

We've identified the following categories for contributions:

After which we have our existing categorization discussion, which I would like to follow with a note saying "If you've got some interesting content that doesn't seem to fit those categories, drop us a note by clicking on the discussion tab above."

The importance of a mission statement (whether so labeled or not) is to give all the assorted bricklayers an awareness of the cathedral we are building together. I certainly welcome comments about "mission statement", and will also toss that into the About page (and potentially the one sentence version might make it into the main page?) shortly. --Curtbeckmann 16:12, 30 September 2006 (PDT)

Well spotted (I wasn't aware of the two different "About" pages) and good work. --Singkong2005 talk 17:03, 30 September 2006 (PDT)
Related to this, I was just poking over at Village Earth's ATwiki (http://wiki.villageearth.org/Main_Page) and I really like their main page. It's colorful (or colourful :-)) and informative, and they have something that I would consider a mission statement. I would like to borrow from that, but modifying main page seems like needs consensus. --Curtbeckmann 18:05, 30 September 2006 (PDT)
I think you can safely be bold to some extent. If you think it looks good, give it a try - it can always be reverted. Something radical that you're unsure about could be discussed first.
I agree there's some good features on the Village Earth wiki that we can adapt for use here. --Singkong2005 talk 18:51, 30 September 2006 (PDT)
Funny that you mention the formatting from Village Earth ATwiki. I had just finished looking at their page, as well as couple others, when I wrote the following summary:
20:09, 26 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Main Page (fixed grammar; added link to voting; replaced Topic editors getting started with Organization Page Creators Getting Started; added Recent Praise (we need some nice formatting for this main page)) Start making changes, and we will all jump in I'm sure. Maybe we should play with a content copied test duplicate... Main Page tests, until we like it. Either way let's make it look nicer. If you see any other wiki sites you like please post links at Talk:Main_Page_tests.
I am all for a mission statement. Let's start a seperate page for this discussion, Appropedia:Mission. I am also all for a call to action. I think that we should not try to get contributors to fit into any category. Instead, we should just try to get them to post relevant content, and we will help sort it out. --Lonny 02:31, 1 October 2006 (PDT)
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