I picked up on a new 'forum' while doing xpress this morning. It's from the CPRE and nothing more sophisticated than a Wordpress.com blog.

This is really a comment on Paul's latest post.

Following a long train journey and discussion with my colleague Brian Rich last October I produced a 'Green Paper' which described what I thought ruralnet|online 2.0 would look like. See the document Forum ideas.doc attached. The graphic here is part of that document and if you go to www.rsnonline.org.uk they look remarkably similar.

However, when I presented these ideas to my colleagues at ruralnet|uk they challenged me. "How do you know that this is what users want?" they said. And this co-design process was born.

So. Will we go through this exercise and come back to my green paper and implement that anyway? No, we will definitely not. One thing this process has reinforced is that ruralnet|online is not about information. It's about relationships. It's about making links between people and the ideas they have. For example, Experts Online is about putting one person in touch with another (an expert) who can help them. The shared information and resources this generates is a spin-off of the relationship building process.

So, I think, ruralnet|online should start with the ideas expressed here and here.

If we develop (and I think we will) a forum-type feature then it will be based on Web 2.0's ability to make links (relationships again) between people and ideas. It won't be an information system. See Ideas on Forums.

Added on 22/2/08
Another thing I should have said is that a key aspect of our strategy is the ability to deliver services through the websites of others (see thread 3). So we have already contacted the 'Rural Services Network' to offer free access to Experts Online (the RSSupport implementation) and a free 'rural services' newsfeed from our xPRESS Digest News Service.

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Wow you know it was a good day when it takes you a week to post anything about it.

It's not often you sit at the computer and go wow - but that just happened. I'm going through a list of movers and shakers in the social media world making an OPML to share with everyone and was adding Paul Miller to the list - another UKwebcampbargov attendee who picked up on the fascinating Farmsubsidy.org.

I didn't make it to the barcampUKGovweb (which to non-geeks probably sounds like some sort of some sort of alcoholic scouting trip for MPs) but loads of people who went have been enthusing about it online, including Dave Briggs who had an interesting