GeekTeach: Thoughts on setting up a site

Zhanar, Alec, Nate,

Some notes from today.

We reviewed Zhanar's very thoughtful questions regarding an Energy Fellowship [ EF ] site.
One outstanding idea is to have a Farmer's Market be a subset of the EF site and may validate the work.

Two students who were in the room participate in local Farmers Markets to sell their goods. One has an online profile.
We discussed some computer language issues and did a very rough map of ideas.

Some ideas [not in order of importance] are:

Using Maps - Google. Maps specifically for some of the functions; directions, locations of farms and Farmer's Market [ FM ]sites; EF individuals that sign in; locations of energy product items, etc.

A PhP forum is worth setting up regardless, and Alec has the know-how to do this. Hopefully he will teach us this. He advocates PHP and HTML for website language.

Rating system and comment system on Farmers' sites

Sales of items may be a real draw. Google Checkout accounts is a clean interface that would work for $ sales.

We need to get more information from the EF to understand the use and vision of a site. Richard will go Wednesday to the lunch meeting and others are welcome if they have the time to go, too, to hear ideas and get a sense of it.

Having one site that is more interactive may help unite goals of the different groups at school that are trying to promote awareness of Climate Change, energy efficiency, and other matters that relate to the social aspects of saving energy.

Here is some background on information about Farmers Markets presence on the web.

A further search for domain names showed the following:

The domain farmersmarketne.org is available. thinking ne is for New England

The domain farmersmarketnh.org is available. nh for New Hampshire

The domain marketnh.org is available

The domain farmersnh.org is available

The domain farmersne.org is available.

farmersharvest.org is available

Sites and information that is relevant:

http://lanetavern.org/sfm.htm Local Sanbornton Farmers Market

http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/States/State06.pdf/New%20Hampshire.pdf US Dept. of Agriculture list of NH Farmers Markets

State of NH Farmers Market Representative
Gail McWilliam
New Hampshire Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 2042
Concord, NH 03302
(603) 271-3788