Grass Commons - Grassroots tools for the common good

Wagn 0.8

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:46:26 -0700

We’re pretty stoked about the latest release of our Wagn software. It takes a big step in the direction of making Wagn feel less like a nifty nerdy data tool and more like a living website.

Check out user profiles or release notes on Wagn.org or browse around company profiles on Hooze.org and you’ll see what I mean.

Wallet Mouth

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:24:06 -0700

Hooze.org contributor, Friend-of-Grass-Commons, and all-around-groovy-person Bronwyn Ximm has started a new blog on ethical purchasing and related topics at WalletMouth.com. Check out her take on what’s being done now and can be done in the future to bring a deeper consciousness of our impacts to bear on our daily economic choices. Only complaint so far: we want more owls.

Commoner's Quarterly, April 2007

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:52:55 -0700

Digest version for busy world-savers:

Grass Commons celebrated its third birthday last month with a new and greatly improved release of its mighty Wagn software.
We’ve updated Hooze.org, a site for “organically grown” public data about products and companies, with the new, mightier Wagn features, and now we’re emboldened to ask for help:
- Vote before April 14th for Hooze & Wagn to win the NetSquared Innovation Fund Award. (more info and project endorsements below)
- Invite friends interested in the social and environmental impacts of products and companies to join Hooze.org.
- Lead a Hooze Digging research challenge by choosing a topic (coal, Walmart, recycled materials, bikes, etc) and seducing others with similar interests to flesh out Hooze content on that topic.
- Import! Do you have access to an existing database that you think should be on Hooze? Put together a plan to Hooze Your Data
- Donate to Grass Commons, a 501(c)(3) public education charity.
Grass Commons has just begun work on a Wagn website for greening schools. Volunteers interested in joining the early research on this project are warmly welcomed!

Green for Green, Tools for Schools

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:52:15 -0700

Finally! Heartstrings! We aren’t planning any emotional promotional videos any time soon, but after all our talk of data and economics and infrastructure, we welcome a little sympathetic resonance:

Green Schools. Healthy children. Healthy buildings that foster healthy children. Kids learning about sustainability, and even using online tools to judge the greenness of the buildings and communities they spend their days in. All of this accelerated by collaboration, sharing, and cooperative education.

This is the passion of Grass Commons director Shari Aaron. And now, thanks her efforts and a grant from the Connecticut Green Building Council, we will be starting work on a Green School Toolbox: a Wagn website devoted to means, methods, and metrics for helping schools lead the way towards a developed world that reflects developed wisdom.

Great thanks to Shari and CTGBC for their foresight.

It's the data, smarty.

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:16:35 -0700

Who can keep track of the human rights records of millions of companies? Or the fossil fuel spent on billions of products? So incredibly much to know, and yet we’re usually forced to rely on (1) sales pitches and (2) our memories.

Grass Commons was started by social-minded geeks whose heads couldn’t hold enough info to make ethical choices.

That’s a data problem.

We believe we as citizens should have access to information about products’ impacts on the things we care about when we’re shopping. We believe it should be simple to learn about companies’ practices before we support them. Cellphones that scan barcodes, widgets on websites, browser add-ons, in-store displays, social impact receipts. responsible investing, institutional purchasing, screening sponsors and suppliers… it all hinges on credible, meaningful data.

Hooze.org is for gathering and sharing that data. We’re about helping individuals and organizations present information about products and companies in a way that makes it easy to find, filter, and use. We believe this information should be public, and must be ubiquitous if we are to build a sustainable economy. To realize this vision, we need to be able to create and arrange information collaboratively, as on wikis, and then retrieve it precisely, as with databases. So we built Wagn.

Wagn powers Hooze by letting communities of users organize information on-the-fly. Its innovative design infuses wikis with database power, giving it great flexibility. Conceived a year ago, the open-source tool is already used for knowledge management, meeting records, documentation, personal information management, and, of course, building a sustainable economy ;)

Wagn 0.5 released

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:12:55 -0700

Wagn 0.5.0 was released into the world a few days ago. You can try it out online or download it and try it out on your own server. We've already found a few bugs, but you can help us out by reporting others; if your exploration sparks any feature requests we'd love to hear about those too.

New features since 0.4 include datatypes, a new look, permissions, improved administration, and much more. Read on for the details...

Grass Commons turns 3!

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:49:06 -0800

Grass Commons turned three today, and supporter Erika Lunkenheimer surprised us with a cake to celebrate! Lewis is visiting the San Francisco Bay Area, so we called and sang happy birthday to him, and promised to save him a piec-, uh, pictures. One’s visible to the right here, and we took a few more.

Almost in time for this celebration, we’re working full steam ahead on Wagn 0.5 and expect a release within a couple of weeks. It’s always good to have more reasons to celebrate.

Off and on: drawing the line

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:22:39 -0800

So wouldn’t it rock if while you were reading online about carrot gloves you could see they’re on sale a few blocks away at Wabbitmart for $4.50 — 3 pairs left on the shelf? Not the sort of thing that sounds ridiculous these days (product aside), but it’s not close yet. Certainly not among anyone other than large retailers, and even they haven’t deeply integrated their online and offline stores. Why not? Why are the two worlds so far apart?

Well in part because brick and mortar retailers aren’t wild about signing up for direct comparison with e-commerce. And in fact, they’re already finding their role in comparison shopping unsavory.

Meyer Trust on the WagN

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:52:42 -0700

Meyer Memorial Trust, Oregon’s largest private foundation, is funding a round of further development on Grass Commons’ open source WagN software, which allows communities of users to collaborate democratically on indexable research and record keeping.

Marie Deatherage, Meyer Memorial’s Director of Communication and Information, explains “This is a logical extension of Meyer Memorial Trust’s support and use of Open Source Software. This project helps further our values of openness, innovation and service leadership. We utilize and support development of OS tools because we think the future is open, and because we think it is a smart investment on behalf of nonprofits.”

Look Hooze Launching

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:25:41 -0700

Commoner’s Quarterly, July 2006

The juicy news from Grass Commons is that we’ve just launched Hooze.org beta. Have a look around. (Note, only invited users may edit content. You can request a password at info@grasscommons.org)

WagN

Hooze is the first public site based on our open source WagN software, which is aimed at helping communities of users organize information. In the office we’re already using WagN for keeping track of contacts, minutes, todo lists, bugs, and goals. And for writing this newsletter, naturally. We’re biased, of course, but it’s been great to see how well WagN adapts to these tasks.

Thanks, oNet

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:57:31 -0700

Grass Commons was again picked by the omidyar.net community to receive funding in support of their contributions to public interest software.

The Omidyar Network, a creation of eBay founders Pierre and Pam Omidyar, offers its suite of web tools to philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and anyone else working to make the world a better place. The foundation often seeks the help of this online community for distributing funding to worthy projects. The most recent giving strategy, entitled the Collaborative Funding Project, involved teams of oNet members nominating 501(c)3 charities for the approval of the broader community.

back on the WagN

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:44:50 -0700

Sometimes programmers, at least us pathetic ones, feel little parental about our programs. After the pregnancy of design and the labor of mock-up, there’s the moment when you get the first little glimpse of your code doing what it’s ultimately supposed to do. Programmers with emotional problems, if you’ll excuse the tautology, have reported hearing the sound of a baby crying.

Well young WagN has given its parents considerable joy recently by reaching a number of milestones. Most importantly, the kid’s getting to be fun.

We’ve been using the WagN for keeping track of contacts, minutes, agendas, todo lists, bugs, and goals (in addition to researching companies and products), and it’s way better of a time than any of those things should be. The neat part is that you can essentially structure and restructure information organically, which is where all the unintended uses are coming from.

Why buy nigh?

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:07:03 -0700

Buy local?? Isn’t that like mercantilism? Haven’t you nutters ever heard of comparative advantage? Frankly, nobody’s ever asked us that, but the rationale for buying local can make for a good dig. And the bone worth digging for contends that there are good reasons for local purchasing, particularly of raw goods, that anyone but the most devout worshippers of price can respect.

Saying “the rationale” is already a feint, since reasons abound from all over of the political spectrum, especially the extremes. NAFTA made pillow partners of Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, and many of the same sentiments have hippies and ultraconservatives dancing around the same buy-local may cross. Is “buy local” just a happier, less riot-to-mind-calling way to say “anti-globalization?” Well, no not just.

NearBuy

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:47:08 -0700

We’ve got a bit of a rep for grandiose plans, but we’re also very keen on having our software used in meaningful ways now. That’s why we’re keeping it real these days and putting more energy into going local.

Grass Commons interns have been using early versions of Hooze.org to compile research about local food producers in Eugene, Oregon. In collaboration with local nonprofits, we’ll be distributing wallet-sized “NearBuy” info-cards through area merchants and restaurants in recycled mason jars decorated by local students. Shoppers can then spot food from local sources at local grocery stores using their handy cards (printed locally on local paper, of course).

An Inconvenient Truth

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:00:53 -0700

I saw Al Gore’s movie on global warming last night. The basic message wasn’t news to me, but the potency of the presentation made a deep impression. This is more than a movie- it’s arguably the reference presentation of one of the defining issues of our times. It should be seen by any citizen of the world in the 21st century. We can help it reach it’s deserved place as part of our common culture by seeing it and encouraging friends and acquaintances to see it and spread the word.