SAC

December 4, 2009  by

Sustainable Alachua County Web Hub: Improvements Coming Soon

Update (July 2011): I worked on the SAC website as part of an internship in 2009. I have since moved on from the project and the site is no longer live.

I began building the Sustainable Alachua County website back in February 2009. The BETA web hub is now up and I have been excited to see it grow into a small but thriving community of 63 members and 27 groups.

Unfortunately, I have been kept very busy by 18 credits, two student organizations (Gators for a Sustainable Campus and enVeg), my iPhone website, and preparation for my upcoming graduation on December 19 (also my birthday!). I plan to spend more time on it this spring.

The opportunity began as an internship for Les Thiele’s Sustainability in Action course at the University of Florida, and nearly a year later I remain interested in and committed to this project. I think this web hub has a lot of potential and I am grateful for the opportunity and the helpful and encouraging people who make up SAC’s board.

I am thankful that people have been using the site. It says a lot about the energy and commitment of the people in this town. Gainesville is a model for sustainability in the state of Florida, and I believe its influence will become increasingly important as northern Florida continues to develop.

in Blog 0 comments
August 20, 2009  by

Sustainable Alachua County: A Web Work in Progress

Update: I worked on the SAC website as part of an internship in 2009. I have since moved on from the project and the site is no longer live.

It’s been a while since I last wrote about my internship with Sustainable Alachua County (SAC). Back in March of 2009, I started to build a social network for SAC using BuddyPress, a powerful suite of plugins for the WordPress MU platform.

But I put the BuddyPress project on hold when my colleague John Casey and I got ambitious and aspired to build a mega-site for SAC using Drupal, another open source content management system. After some time of tedious tweaking, we decided to revert back to the WordPress-based system.

I’ve now got a rough draft of the new Sustainable Alachua County website that I built using BuddyPress, and I recorded a screencast preview of how it works for the SAC board members. I’m still waiting on the SAC board members to get some feedback on the site, but I’m hoping we’ll stick with the general idea that John and I have proposed.

Update: Watch a video tour of the SAC social network below:

in Blog 0 comments
March 5, 2009  by

SAC: A Social Network for Sustainability

Update (July 2011): I worked on the SAC website as part of an internship in 2009. I have since moved on from the project and the site is no longer live.

Social network for sustainability

The website for Sustainable Alachua County (SAC) is evolving. Today I set up a community foundation for the site using BuddyPress, an open source social networking platform based around WordPress Mu. The website is starting to become what I want it to be.

Although the current design is nothing impressive — and a logo for SAC is still in the works — the functionality is in place, and the site has the potential to be something of a “Facebook for sustainability” in the Gainesville area.

Members can sign up, publish blog entries and make groups for their organizations, where people can discuss topics in forums and post items just like a Facebook group — the system even allows private messaging among members, and people can network and “become friends.” There’s also a central blog in place for SAC matters.

In the coming weeks I’ll be improving the design and tailoring the network more to fit the purposes of SAC.

in Blog 0 comments
February 27, 2009  by

Sustainable Alachua County

Update (Feb 2010): Watch a video tour of the new Sustainable Alachua County social network below. I created the video for the 2010 SAC stakeholder meeting. Although it was never played at the meeting due to technical difficulties, it served as a video tutorial for website users.

I’ve got a simple website up now for Sustainable Alachua County (SAC). We recently had an inspiring stakeholder meeting to discuss how SAC can be a virtual & physical hub for sustainability in Gainesville. My focus is primarily on the virtual part.

Sustainable Alachua County

The site right now is not much more than a few static pages with a simple blog and a donation page, but the goal is to turn it into a community-driven resource where people and organizations can interact, network and collaborate with each other over the web.

Over 120 people representing different organizations came to SAC’s first meeting, so we already have a lot of people who are likely to be interested in using the website.

Some challenges:

  • Making it useful. Building a tool that inspires and assists action, not just talk.
  • Building something that’s easy to use by members of the community who might not be too computer savvy
  • Building a site that can be managed by future “generations” of SAC members

I’m using WordPress as a content management system for the blog and other pages, and I’m working now on building a forum using bbPress.

Update (July 2011): I worked on the Sustainable Alachua County (SAC) website as part of a UF internship in 2009. I have since moved on from the project and the site is no longer live. In hindsight, the idea to build a social network for sustainability in Alachua County was exciting, but overly ambitious considering no web budget and the amount of time and expertise needed to sustain it.

in SAC 0 comments