economia alternativa

Uma experiência interessante de economia alternativa. Agora que a economia especulativa começa a colapsar.

Dear Complementary Currency Enthusiast,

This email was sent to you because you have shown an interest in my complementary currencies work for Drupal in the last few months. This mail is to tell you:

1. that this is not a regular mailing list, and subsequent news will be posted to my complementary currencies blog,
2. that the module has now been deployed and customised for Geneva,
3. that there is a copy of that site running as a demo, in addition to module's own uncustomised demo,
4. and that Tim and I propose to continue this work.

Details
1. Since I do not wish to bother you or myself with spam and mailing list management, future communication will take place on my blog. I may use this list one more time to remind you in February to vote in the Google Ten To The Power 1000 competition in which marketplace is competing for a share in $10m. Further information will be posted to my complementary currencies blog. I also maintain an rss feed of stuff pertaining to the next economic order, if you would like some wider reading.

2. Launch of Sel du Lac, Geneva. SEL du Lac is my local LETS group, and I've been working with Tim Anderson, co-chair of the group, to customise the module to conform closely to his original vision. We have tailored a drupal theme, translated the module, plugged in some extra modules, built a couple extra modules, (more below), tested with some of the users, imported all the data, rewritten the content, and tested some more! Much of the customisation is now available as options in the release. We are hoping that the other SEL in French Switzerland (yes they actually talk to each other!) will like what they see, and require something similar.

3. There is an anonymised demo site running which you can log into as if you were a member. Here are some of the features this site enjoys.

• Requests/Acknowledgements for the committee to advertise community tasks and to recognise those who contribute.
• Statistics module shows some data from the last 30 days transactions.
• Autocategorise ensures consistency and simplifies the user experience.
• Historical balance of each user is visualised in a Google chart.
• Users log in with their account numbers, but are referred to by name (in the demo the name is reset to 'User 123').
• A quick payment block appears whenever you are looking at another user's profile.
• Transactions for the user to complete are shown on their profile summary page.

This site is in French with a few scraps of English. To see the software running, unconfigured and in English, go to marketplace.matslats.net. Don't forget all this software is free and we're making it easier to use.

4. With the 'real' economies crumbling daily around us, Tim and I intend to continue working together building the alternative economy, and enabling communities to trade online in their own money. I plan to work on coding and architecture. That means new functionalities like:

• multiple currencies, leakage (taxation), more kinds of transactions
• more flexible information architecture
• more stats and analysis
  
• mass production and hosting of sites

Tim will be working to implement the tool for French-speaking markets, with the aim of creating a brandable product, that can be rapidly replicated.

This is an unfunded project aspiring to become sustainable without begging for grants. We are looking for communities who are ready to go online. We can customise this software further for those who can pay. Perhaps we might broker cost-sharing deals between several groups all wanting similar features. But first, we're going to take a seasonal break!

Matthew and Tim