1. What is REALNEO?

1.1. What is a “Virtual Communityâ€??

“Virtual community� is a term used
to describe a wide variety of computer-mediated communication, particularly
long-term, textually mediated conversations among large groups. Such groups are
comprised of people who may or may not meet one another face-to-face, and who
exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer networks and a
variety of web formats, such as blogs and bulletin boards.

The range of available activities
is immense. People chat, collaborate, exchange physical and intellectual
property, and bring new information to their respective groups. They do
everything people do when they meet face-to-face. Electronic interactions in
which people don't know each other provide
opportunities for new kinds of communities.

Existing technologies provide for
the creation of virtually communities structured to serve a wide array of
social, business, and professional groups in a secure computing. Each group is
moderated by a group leader who can regulate group membership, decide on the
collaboration tools available to group members, and moderate postings and
discussions among group members.

1.2. REALNEO: Why is it needed?

Case
Weatherhead School
of Management organizational behavior professor David Cooperrider, developer of
the appreciative inquiry management theory, thus sums up the need for REALNEO
as follows.

•  For better human cooperation, the most advanced
  economic development organizations and leaders in Northeast Ohio
  use new forms of global interaction. REI’s Ed Morrison publishes a globally
  read blog, http://www.edpro.blogspot.com/.
  REI has a wiki, rooted at http://www.smartmeetingdesign.com/rei/.
  A group of area wind power industry proponents have a blog on that subject at http://makingchange.typepad.com/neowind/.
  Thus, there is clear evidence that smart local economic development leaders
  consider social networking necessary. The examples above illustrate three
  different solution providers.

•  In Northeast Ohio there
  are approximately 600+ economic development related organizations comprised of
  hundreds of thousands of stakeholders. Thus, there exist 1,000s of social,
  business, and project networks that conduct 1,000s of related meetings,
  seminars and lectures per year. Most of these organizations rely on virtualized
  management and content, and none of them interact or leverage any synergies.

•  By organizing all the related contacts, content,
  communications, and schedules of the Northeast Ohio organizations in one virtual
  space, we will be obtain the ability to leverage economies of scale and
  synergies, develop a centralized, optimized site for all, while providing
  control for every group over their section of the virtual community.

•  A virtual community environment will result that
  will provide a strong visibility for all participating groups along with a
  unique, powerful environment for collaboration among the members of these
  groups in a secure environment.

1.3. Don’t we already have virtual communities?

A number of social, business, and project networks currently maintain
web sites that serve their membership. The tools available for online
networking, the dissemination of news and articles, the exchange of information
among subject matter experts, event planning, and ad hoc collaboration vary
widely among these groups. The costs associated with developing an effective
web presence significantly inhibit the capabilities that many of these groups
are able to provide to their membership.

Thus, while many area network groups have established a web
presence, they are often limited in the collaborative services they can offer
their memberships due to fiscal constraints. They are further limited in their
ability to interact or leverage synergy with other groups. For example, the
co-hosting of events can reduce the cost of sponsorship substantially for
participating organizations while significantly increasing attendance.

1.4. What is different about REALNEO?

REALNEO is developing a uniquely
world-class open source content management system, by adding to the Drupal
project and helping drive and fund further optimal development.

2. The Drupal Project

Drupal is the product of an open
source project devoted to the development of a dynamic web site platform. A
community of developers works to constantly update and revise the project. This
platform allows an individual or community of users to publish, manage, and
organize a variety of content and information. This ability to manage
information makes Drupal a content management system (CMS). Users utilize
Drupal's browser-based interface to
communicate openly with one another. This enhances the revision process of
documents or projects on the site because of the centralized location.

Drupal is designed to be flexible
and powerful enough to meet a broad range of web technology needs, from simple
informational postings to large organizational sites and collaborative
projects. The focus of the Drupal Project is on the development of a platform
providing virtual communities and collaboration. 

2.1. Drupal Mission

“Building on and realizing relevant
standards and open source technologies, Drupal supports and enhances the
potential of the Internet as a medium where diverse and
geographically-separated individuals and groups can come together and
collectively produce and share rich bases of information and expression.�

2.2. Drupal’s Collaborative Capabilities

 User Management:
One of the most vital functions, of any content management system, is its
ability to manage its users. Drupal allows individual users to
["register" Drupal user registration and personal account
information] and authenticate locally or by using an external authentication
source. By requiring users to register, Drupal allows for ["private
messaging" Private Messaging & Notification] and other forms of
private communication with other registered users.REALNEO Virtual Community.

Weblog: One
commonly used feature on Drupal is the weblog. A single installation can be
configured to create a website with multiple individual weblogs. Weblogs allow
communication between members of the community. As opposed to e-mail or private
notification, weblogs allow the entire community to view and respond with their
own thoughts, ["comments" Creating and editing nodes and comments],
and ideas. Drupal employs Blogger API support, content syndication, ["a
news aggregator" Drupal News Aggregator and RSS Documentation], and permalinks
to assist in managing a weblog.

 Discussion Based
Community: The primary advantage of Drupal comes from its ability to allow
users and members of the community to reply to weblogs or posts made by other
users. This ability can also be expanded to include comments and possible
revisions for information stored in the content management system. By allowing
users to utilize the Forums Module to create discussion boards, Drupal empowers
individuals and gives them a unique voice.

Another advantage, to having an online discussion based
community, is that the postings allow for the whole revision process of
projects and information to be shown. This means that users can become involved
in a project at any given time throughout the revision process. The environment
remains controlled by administrator(s) so that comments and updates are
constructive and relevant to the task at hand. Administrators also have the
ability to let the community moderate the content management system.

Collaboration:
Enabling collaboration is a primary feature of Drupal. Many features and
functions of the Drupal are focused on user and community interaction towards a
common goal. Through the use of the weblogs and the discussion based community,
information and thoughts from individual users are focused on single or
multiple projects. This input helps to dramatically improve the quality of any
collaborative project. By providing a centralized online location, Drupal
breaks down geographical barriers between people.

2.3. Community News Portal

Drupal can be configured as a Community News Portal where
the stories are provided by the audience. Incoming stories are automatically
voted upon by the audience and the best stories bubble up to the home page. Bad
stories and comments are automatically hidden after enough negative votes.

2.4. News Aggregator

Thousands of web sites, especially news sites, trade
publications, and weblogs, syndicate their most recent site content for others
to display. The syndicated content always includes titles, also known as headlines,
for the newest published stories. Each headline acts as a direct link to the
stories on the remote site.

Drupal has a news aggregator built in as a standard feature.
With it, you can subscribe to feeds from other sites and display their content
for your site users. You can define categories in the news aggregator to enable
the assignment of categories to news stories. This provides users with the
option of viewing news stories based on category or news source.

2.5. Drupal Security

Drupal has a strong focus on
security. Drupal allows the administrator to control the flow of information
into the content management system through the use of content approval. User
accountability is also taken into consideration by tracking user login history
and creating an audit trail. This results in a moderated public forum that
encourages the free exchange of ideas while maintaining user privacy and
accountability.

3. REALNEO: Professional Benefits

3.1. Multiple Modes of Content and Contact

The Drupal site content hierarchy
is based on nodes. A node begins as content on a page, which can take on
various forms such as books pages, articles, forums, and personal blogs. Drupal
sites have an option that allows users to be emailed when new comments are
posted to a topic that interests them. Other administrative options allow users
to view comments, have total control over comments, have the option to rate
comments, and post comments without approval. The permissions that you have
will vary depending on the Drupal site and what the administrator chooses to
do.

3.2. Blogs

Drupal's blog module allows
all registered users to maintain a personal weblog on site. Blogs can be used
as an online journal or diary, where users post daily thoughts, poetry,
valuable experiences, writing experiments, critics on current facts, fresh
insights, and chronicles for public consumption. From a more practical
standpoint, blogs can be seen as a means of personal knowledge publishing, a
place for researchers or enthusiasts to build and share knowledge about their interests.
In project oriented sites, Blogs can serve as a workspace for project members
to post ideas for commenting by others in a group.

3.3. Collaborative Book or Documentation Writing

“Books� organize Drupal site content into a nested
hierarchical structure. It is particularly good for manuals, Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs) and the like, allowing you to have chapters, sections, etc.

A book is simply a collection of nodes that have been linked
together. These nodes are usually of type book page, but you can insert nodes
of any type into a book outline. Every node in the book has a parent node which
"contains" it. At any given level in the hierarchy, a book can
contain many nodes. All these sibling nodes are sorted according to the weight
that you give them.

Book pages contain a log message field which helps your
users understand the motivation behind an edit of a book page. Each edited
version of a book page is stored as a new revision of a node. This capability
makes it easy to revert to an old version of a page, should that be desirable.

Like other node types, book submissions and edits may be
subject to moderation, depending on your configuration. Similarly, books use
permissions to determine who may read and write to them. Only administrators
are allowed to create new books.

4. Successful Drupal-Based Virtual Communities

MacMegasite -  Macintosh news from a developer's
point of view. The latest Macintosh news, tips, and rumors from a developer's
point of view.

burngreave.net - Developing Community IT
tools. Ensuring that all the residents of Burngreave benefit from the
opportunities ICT brings.

Arizona Legislative Watch - Helping citizens shape
Arizona legislative policy.
Arizona Legislative Watch (AZLW) is an educational, privately funded
organization, which provides information regarding the legislative activity of Arizona
elected representatives. AZLW also educates citizens about important issues
within the framework of a strong committment to God, Family, and Country. We
hold intellectual honesty to be the most important indicator of that
committment.

Carmel Center Indiana - Your community
connection to the internet. Carmel Center
is central Indiana's
connection to the internet. Our community begins in Carmel
Indiana and extends throughout the greater Indianapolis
area and all of Indiana. Our
extended community includes Kentucky,
Ohio, Michigan,
Illinois and the rest of the
world.

Synfibers -  Synthetic
Fibers: IT Consulting, Web Design & Hosting. Synfibers.com provides high
quality, low-cost web design and hosting services, including hosting of MySQL
databases and PHP scripts. We currently host several sites that use version
4.3.2 of the Drupal content management system.