Emerald Publishing has started an online community based on the open source Elgg platform. The news release compares the community with MySpace and Facebook:
Amanda Briggs, Head of Research and Development at Emerald, says, “InTouch was developed with our research and contributor communities in mind. Online technologies have had a dramatic effect on the educational and learning environment and students regularly use informal social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to communicate with their classmates. Now, Emerald authors and editors can take advantage of these technologies in a space that is designed specifically for the academic and business community – InTouch. Users can create online communities based around journals or research interests, share ideas and expertise with (and learn from) their peers. This service supports our commitment to building and facilitating communities around key management research areas.”
This is great to see, but most of that functionality comes from Elgg, which only gets a quick mention. You would think that they could have at least put a hyperlink to Elgg in their news release, n’est-ce pas?
Yeah, fair point re: mention of the Elgg platform on the press release .
There are links to the elgg platform from the home page and the registration pages, as well as thoughout via the footer. All our promo emails to our editors and editorial teams highlight this fact.
I’d hate to think we weren’t giving due credit to the Elgg community. This version of their platform could have only been developed with their help over the last 8 months or so.
I’m looking forward to presenting our work to the first ElggJam in Brighton in July where I’ll be able to share our experiences over the last 8 months.
In the meatime, I’ll have a word with our PR/Comms people, it’s a fair point Harold. I’m a huge fan of Elgg and the work of Dave and Ben.
Elgg is such a great project. This is well deserved for them
Had a word with our PR people and they tell me that the original release did include due credit to the Elgg platform.
I have asked them to edit the release and make it a more embedded part of the text so that editors publishing the release are less able to remove teh bit about being built upon Elgg.
Thanks for the quick response, Paul. I wasn’t trying to be too negative, just getting some more recognition for Dave, Ben and team. There isn’t much like Elgg in the OS community at this time and they deserve to be called pioneers in the field.
Kudos to Harold for making this point and for Paul in quickly agreeing – David and Ben are pioneers in this field and I hope more recognition flows in – I’m driving the use of Elgg here at the U of Alberta – a slow process but worth the effort.
Thanks, Michael. Elgg is still the only OS CMS that I have come across that has flipped the basic model so that the individual is the centre of action and control. It’s had the typical growing pains, but has had nowhere the uptake it deserves, especially in the learning community.