Back to the Future (Developments Page)

The original PIELink site - www.pielink.ning.com - was developed as an experiment by RJA consultancy of Nottingham ( see "About") . But the original PIEs community then was small, and the aspiration to develop on-line forums was evidently premature. In addition, the software and design had some limitations, which restricted the range of material that coud usefully be covered here.

In particular, with a growing volume of published papers, video etc, adding any more to the "Library" there was becoming counter-productive since, without any capacity to filter or search the Library pages, adding any more material simply made finding any material at all harder - a needle in a growing haystack.   Meanwhile, membership was growing; but there was no scope for on-line forums, linked to the available content of papers and podcasts.

Hence the need for a through re-design, and the shift to the new platform.  The new Library is ready to publish; and we can now add much more material, without risk of obscuring what we have.   We are also finally ready to share the experiment in creating a Members' Directory; though this a more complex task than you might think, requiring as it does a whole vocabulary of services, roles and interests ( see "Vocabulary" for more on the complexities here.)

Although a sample of existing PIELink members was asked to pilot and check the draft profiles we had made for them; and in this way we hoped find out how successful - or not - has been the attempt to create a coherent typology of members and their interests. But the real proof lies in opening this up to all members - and gathering feedback.

 Constant changes of design or of wording, unannounced, would probably not be helpful. We propose to review any suggested changes periodically - most likely every three months. But members can comment in the meantime, either in public, or in email. We will add to the Library as new material becomes available. But significant new items added to the Library will be announced via Twitter.