[olug] http://omaha.towncommons.com

[Adam Haeder]

Hello all,
I've been involved with the Omaha Wiki ever since it was a class project 
in a Creighton University Marketing class. Last year, Dr. John Workman, 
Professor of Marketing at Creighton University, took the idea of the Omaha 
Wiki and started a company called towncommons.com. The idea of a 
wiki-based regional site for the Omaha area fit in very well with AIM's 
mission, and I've been happy to be a part of the project. The 
towncommons.com site is ready for public beta, and I'd like to invite you 
all to be a part of it. Please read the introduction below from Adrian 
Blake, the CEO of towncommons.com. Thanks for taking a look and I hope you 
find this as useful as I do.

I thought this would be relevant to the OLUG list because it's an Omaha 
company, it's all linux (mediawiki based), and I think you guys would be 
good beta testers for this. Thanks for looking.

--
Adam Haeder
Vice President of Information Technology
AIM Institute
1905 Harney Street, Suite 700
Omaha, NE 68102
402-345-5025 x115
adamh at aiminstitute.org
www.aiminstitute.org



To the members of the Omaha Commons Community:
We have some exciting news for you, and would like your help.
What We’re Doing
As you may have noticed, development on the Wiki portion of Omaha Commons 
has been somewhat dormant. That’s not because we don’t value the 
community; it’s because we’re working on something new. We hope you’ll 
find it exciting.
Life in Omaha is great, but there’s a consistent problem—it seemed that we 
all hear about cool things going on in town (music, speakers, 
performances) after they are over. Events just aren’t covered well in 
Omaha. The media companies in Omaha, whether print, TV, or radio, just 
aren’t set up to cover everything that’s going on. We’ve all seen their 
websites, and it’s clear that the web is not a priority for them.
The Omaha Wiki was originally set up to help Omahans get more out of 
Omaha, and judging by our traffic we’ve done a great job. (We’re currently 
the 9th biggest Citywiki in the world—not bad for a city of half a 
million.) But we think there’s something more. Our community has done a 
wonderful job capturing the history of Omaha and pointing users to the 
many resources and institutions of Omaha, but we haven’t been set up to 
cover all the cool things that are happening in Omaha every day.
That’s why we’re introducing Events.
We’re excited to offer this new functionality, which will act like Google 
News for Events in Omaha.
We capture every event that’s going on in Omaha (Hip Hop Shows, 10K runs, 
Craft fairs, business conferences, etc)
We tag and classify the events
Users pick the categories they care about and get a constantly updated 
list of events that fit their specifications.
We’re very excited about this development, and think it will allow us to 
create even more impact in Omaha.

What We Want from You :
We’re launching the Events functionality in a private beta, and we’d like 
you to give us your feedback.
Our one disclaimer: It’s a beta. (Not enough data, not all the 
functionality works, you know the drill.)
Please come on in and tell us what you like, what you hate, and how we can 
make it better. The things we’re most interested in are:
What’s missing
What doesn’t work
Would you use it regularly? Why or why not?
We have feedback tabs all over the place, and would appreciate it if you 
use them.

Here’s the link: http://omaha.towncommons.com

What All This Means
We’re trying to build something special in Omaha, and then export it to 
other cities around the country and around the world. We think that cities 
our size are consistently under served by their local media, and we think 
we can do something better by leveraging the community.
We want do something cool for Omaha. Please help us.

And let us know what you think.

All the best,
Adrian Blake
CEO
TownCommons.com
http://omaha.towncommons.com/User:AdrianBlake