Archive for March, 2011

Community Currency

Author: The Tea Lady

Mar 22

A chat with The Tea Lady about………..

Community Currency

Oh, gosh, there you are.

I didn’t see you waiting here in the kitchen for me, so sorry, let me put the kettle on so we can have a piece of me mums coffee sponge and a cuppa before we get started.

That’s better….. you know there is such a lot of commotion going on here at the moment, seems like the world is calling to know more about social networking services.

While I am in and out of everyone’s offices and cubicles I hear everyone talking on the phone about Facebook this and My Space that, you know those two sites don’t you? And what they do.

Connecting this person with that person and then this one finding someone they didn’t even know, I ask you, it is incredible isn’t it.

And how they have pictures and videos of everyone doing almost everything, it’s amazing.

Well anyway, this is what every day is like here because these social networking things are what they do here.

If you’ve ever been interested in starting your own online community or you already have one and are looking at how to upgrade to a more exciting and rewarding system, then pull up a chair and have a listen to me.

I don’t know about you but I know it is very important that when you are looking to have an online community it should resemble your physical community as closely as possible.

We all communicate online with everyone now through email, message boards, message walls, instant messaging and newsletters etc, and we can have our little groups or clubs of close friends as well, but have you ever thought what it would be like if you could have your own community currency?

You see the community system these little sods here have designed has its own Secretary of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Inland Revenue Service , US Mint and Fort Knox built into it (it even has its own Police).

And just like in real life, these things are connected to every part of the community right down to everything you click on.

This system is designed with ”for profit” and “not for profit” websites and organizations in mind which I think is pretty clever.

With your own community currency (which are called credits/points), you can charge people for almost everything and even pay them for doing things.

A whole new thing to do online, this can not only be rewarding to you or your organization or club money-wise but it can also be a lot of fun.

You know if you wanted to, you could stretch your imagination and have some real community currency printed to share amongst your friends at real live social gatherings ha ha ha, when you think about it you could have a lot of fun with it.

Just think if you were an elk hunting community and you had a party where members actually attended you could charge two “bucks” for a beer ha ha ha, that is of course if you had a picture of a “buck” printed on this play money.

So when people join your community you can pay them for doing so, you can pay them for whatever information they give you about themselves and you can pay them for inviting friends or family to join.

Just think about it, when were you last rewarded for joining something on the internet, it doesn’t happen very often does it? And what if you got a recipe from the tea lady for joining, think about that one I ask you.

Whenever someone wanted to advertise something for sale they can be made to pay a fee using their community currency, or if they want to download a file or upload a photograph they can be made to pay a fee with it.

You can pay members for commenting on people’s photographs or for reading articles.

If someone runs out of money they can be restricted to everything that requires a payment to use or do.

Members can also give other members some or all of their points, like a gift or reward.

In the community store, people can earn credits when they purchase items, just like a real reward program.

For more ideas of what you could do, here are some chat room examples.

  • You can set the number of times someone can talk if they don’t not have enough credits.
  • You can set a new members ability to talk at all in the chat room. 
  • Make people pay to have private one-to-one chats with other members.
  • Have them pay to create private chat rooms.
  • Allow only paying members to use Action commands or play chat games.
  • Allow only paying members to have special chat room entrance and/or exit messages. 
  • Even allow chat room moderators to pay the member’s for joining in the chats.

If you wanted to take it to the extreme you could have them pay with real money so they actually buy points to use within the community.

If you are involved in a charity this could be a great way to raise funds, charge $10 membership per month and members get 1,000 credits/points, but this is a whole cup of tea session on its own.

Now then, please let me know what you can think of to use these community credits on.

Anyway, I’ve got to go now as I’m making a real big pile of my old nanas potato scones tomorrow and I have to go and dig the spuds from the garden.

Kindest regards,
The Tea Lady
Bye bye.

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Nanas potato scone recipe

Author: The Tea Lady

Mar 22

Ingredients:

  • ½ lb boiled and mashed peeled potatoes
  • 2 ½ oz flour
  • 3 tablespoons melted butter
  • Half teaspoon salt

Method:
Boil the potatoes to where you would for a normal meal.

When they are ready, drain them off and mash them, at this stage add the butter and salt.

Add in enough flour to make it a very “firm” squished up dough, but without making it too dry.�
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You want it sort of like a bread dough.

Just keep sprinkling the flour in as you go until you get the right texture, you might need more than the recipe says and that’s just fine.

When it’s ready pour flour all over the table and put the squished up potatoes on it.

Roll out the squished potatoes into about 6 circles of about a quarter of an inch thick.

Then you cut these circles into quarters.

Make sure they have a good dusting of flour on each side, not to much, not to little.

Prick them all over with a fork and cook in a fry pan or on a griddle which has been lightly greased.

Cook each side for about three minutes or until golden brown.

Once you have cooked enough and start to get a little crazy, stop cooking and start eating.

Close your eyes when you put on the butter though, I mean it, because your conscience won’t allow you to put on enough.

They are also great cold with berry jam.

Winter spring is coming and they are just great then.

They are great all the time stupid.

Regards
the Tea lady.

PS.  If you have a recipe you would like us to pass on to others here please email me and write in that you are happy for me to publish it.

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Filed under: Recipes

A chat with the tea lady about… Community Hierarchy (or who’s who in the kitchen)

Author: The Tea Lady

Mar 22

I know you don’t all have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen listening to an old windbag go on about stuff you most likely already know so if you want to know the basic ingredients for setting up your own social network system, just ask me, as I would be only too happy to give you my opinion.

I don’t know what happens at your place in cases like this, but sometimes when I am next door or out in the yard, certain high ranking staff members who will remain anonymous (for now) who have access to the kitchen leave their cups and saucers on the table, spilt sugar on the bench and more often than not leave their tea bags still stuck in the teaspoon with wound around cotton, and sitting right at the edge of the counter with the trash bin right there!, its frightful.

No accountability.

And when you ask who did it, no one knows, I know it isn’t the kids from the coding department because none of them have a key for the kitchen.

If you’re wondering what I am getting to here is extremely clever because as you know there are directors, executives, managers and workers in a business hierarchy and they are all accountable to the one above, it is just the same structure in a social network too and these clever little sods here at netvillage have built exactly that.

Multiple levels of access to almost every facet of the community that can be granted or declined at will by the level above.

Now you might be thinking that this access is denoted in big chunks, such as being able to use this feature or that feature, well its not, so let me just put the kettle on here and we can start to consider some of the finer things these levels of membership access can really do (you can get the details on social networking administration here)

For example, access levels can be so small yet complex that if describing them in a way of what you can get from the tea lady and what you can’t get from her (I mean me), it would sound like this.

They can let someone have coffee and or tea, or just coffee on Tuesdays and Fridays and doughnuts only every second Friday.

Or they can let one of the little sods upstairs have cream on a Monday morning, cream on Tuesday afternoon and a thick ear on Friday at 3:00 PM ha ha ha.

He’s the tea bag in the tea spoon one!

So you see it is extremely clever and makes the system so exciting and suited to every one looking for a clever social networking system.

In my next letter I’ll write about community currency and how members can get points or credits for performing activities in the community and you will start to see how that, and what I am writing about here go together.

Think about a community as a great big layer cake, it takes a lot of ingredients to make it just absolutely delicious, but after the main 2 ingredients have been whipped together (butter and sugar), you know, when you can start to taste it off your finger, well its just the same when it comes to communities, only the butter and sugar the currency and the hierarchy.

But you still whip them together of sorts ha ha ha.

Some things that you can use the access levels for:

  • When someone registers they generally have the lowest access level.
  • Read email, send email, go to public chat rooms etc. 

And as for the accountability bit like the tea bag left in the spoon, well they have also built in a thingy that lets you track every member wherever they are or where they have been in the system, isn’t it amazing, if only there was something like this in real life ha ha ha we’d know who the good and bad politicians really are.

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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