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FamNet: The New Zealand Family History Network
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FamNet
Richard's editorial attacks "FamNet", claiming that several of
us are setting
up a rival organization, and have such major conflicts of interest
that we cannot possibly be fit councillors. The facts of course are very
different
Firstly, there is only one person with a potential conflict, me. Nobody
else has any involvement with FamNet, although they were involved in discussions
about it last year.
Richard is right about one thing - FamNet does represent competition. Famnet is competition: -
* For the old way of doing things.
* For part of the NZSG's budget: one way of paying for it would be to publish only 4 magazines a year, not six.
* To the notion that ONLY the NZSG can provide useful information to NZ Family Historians. FamNet will support any
group with data or expertise to contribute, whether members of the soceity or not.
But FamNet is not competition for the society, unless it declares it to be so and continues to attack it. Rather,
it is an opportunity for cooperation that, if taken, will make the society stronger and move it into the 21st Century.
Read on!
What is FamNet?
FamNet doesn't actually exist at the moment, it is a software concept that a few
of us discussed last year and I've continued to develop on my own. It provides
electronic support facilities for any group interested in family history, including
*
membership management,
* electronic communication: newsletters, blogs, electronic
voting etc
* data management: a group or individual can have their own databases,
of any design, making these available to members or generally - their choice
*
etc.
The FamNet concept, and the software that I've developed under this concept,
formed the basis of the presentation that I made to Joe Gillard and Lynne Blake early
in November.
The key idea is to support any group or individual who has an interest in family
history and something to contribute. A "group" could be a local
history society, or a family history society, an NZSG branch, or the whole NZSG. Each group retains total autonomy, so that for example they retain ownership of
their own data, they do not have to hand it over and lose control. They may offer
their data for free to anybody, they may keep it exclusive to their members, they
may offer it to their members are one cost, and non members at another. All
of that is their choice.
Click here to see a Powerpoint presentation on the FamNet concept.
Is it competion?
Is it competition, or cooperation? It could be either. I have repeatedly tried
to engage the Society in my web development, most recently in November when I made
a presentation to Lynne Blake and Joe Gillard.
You can see my presentation to them here.
Were we to cooperate then it offers a very cost-effective way of getting
the society's data on line, and improving member communication.
However, if the society is determined to treat me as hostile competition, then so
be it, I'll compete.
It should be your decision, as members, whether you want to
have these new facilities within the society or in competition to it.
The FamNet concept is certainly competition to the view that ONLY the NZSG can do
family history, because the concept envisages ANY group or individual being able
to contribute to our knowledge and databases.
It is also definitely competition - to the old way of doing things.
What are the facilities that FamNet would offer to the Society?
The two main features are Database Management, and Member Communication
Database Management
* * * to be developed: a web version of the demonstration that I gave to Joe and
Lynne.
In the meantime,
you can see the FamNet combined database search here
(you'll need to register to FamNet).
Note that it DOES NOT actually make a group's data available to anybody, it
just tells you whether you're likely to find anything of value there.
Unless the data owner has made
it public, you still need to become a member of NZGDB, NZSG, .... - whoever owns the data -
to be permitted access to it, .
Member Communication
Going beyond an email mailing list, this offers discussion groups, restricted
groups (e.g. Council only), voting, etc.
If adopted, this would revolutionise the way that the Society works, providing open
communication with Council and within various subgroups, and allowing ideas such
as "Shall we buy the Madden book collection?" to be openly debated.
Somebody could post a discussion paper, all those interested could discuss the issues,
then a vote could be taken. Votes might be just indicative, or binding.
I have provided a prototype of this blogs facility:
Click here to go to the blogs page
Click here to see the design spec.This will show you what I'm aiming at
Click here to see how Blogs Work (Help).
This describes how to open, read, and post to blogs, and how to set blogs up.
Currently I still have to develop the ability to post and reply by email - at the
moment you have to use a web page - and to manage informal and formal voting.
Other Facilities
See
Famnet web site
This is only a prototype, not everything works properly, but it will show you the
general idea.
What would it cost?
I need to be paid to provide this service. I have spent thousands of dollars
setting up NZGDB and FamNet, and ongoing costs alone are a few thousand dollars
a year. And what about the hours of unpaid programming time
- over 5000 at the moment, and climbing - that has been spent so far in developing
these systems? If FamNet becomes operational then I expect that supporting it will
be essentially a full time job for a year or two. The Society cannot
afford to pay what this is worth - a venture considering something similar was
given an estimate of $500-700,000 - and in any event I don't seek this level of
payment as this has become a semi-retirement interest. However continuing at my own
expense is not an option.
When pressed for the amount of payment that I would require, I said "Something similar
to the payment made for desk top publishing". Later I found out that $22,488 was
paid in the 08-09 year, so I could probably cover my expenses from this as well.
This doesn't seem unreasonable for what has been almost a full time job over the
last few years, and will require similar commitment for the next two years or
more to take FamNet from concept to a polished system. Like all other candidates, I do not expect to be paid for my role
as a Councillor.
Is this a conflict of interest?
Possibly. Certainly Richard Stedman thinks so. But
other councillors do not. When nominations were being called several members were asking me to stand. Joe added his voice to this, saying: -
-
I've seen this and other words you have written, all of which have been in a temperate,
reasonable tone. ... [Snip] This is a bit of a longwinded way of saying I think
you have always stood aside from all the above and have a positive, forward thinking
attitude, and that I hope you do put your name forward. While there may well be
conflicts of interest from time to time, with openness and transparency these can
be readily managed. Your knowledge and abilities are those needed by NZSG, so don't
be put off by all the flack flying about!
Frankly I'd have preferred not to stand for Council as there are indeed some conflicts
of interest, as I expect to be paid at least something for the programming work
that I do. If I continue as a candidate - which I may reconsider even if I
am not expelled - then I would be offering a vision for the Society in which its
excellent physical resources are combined with a vibrant on-line family history
resource and community to which ANY individual and group, whether a society member
or not, can contribute for the good of all.
Whether this is what the Society wants is a debate that the members should be allowed
to have, not something that the Editor should attempt to prevent.
In a post to memlist the Editor justifies being paid for producing the NZ Genealogist.
Actually I'm not aware that anybody has suggested that he should be producing the magazine for nothing, but the point is that my situation is exactly
the same as his. Like him, I have spent a considerable amount of money setting up the facilities offered to the society, like him I put in an enormous amount of time
at a fraction of market rates. So why should I be regarded as merely
out to make a commercial gain from the society and seeking to destroy it?.
What utter rubbish! The questions should simply be "Is this a service that the society wants?" and "Is this the best way of getting it?"
Famnet FAQ
Here I have answered questions that some people have asked, and some questions that
people might be likely to ask.
What is the relationship between FamNet and NZGDB?
Both are software projects that I have developed. FamNet is aimed more at groups,
although individuals can also join it. NZGDB is strictly individual. You can be
a member of either or both. Data in one system does NOT become available
to the other, except for the very limited interface of the combined database search.
Who owns the data in FamNet
As with NZGDB, the rule is very strict: the data belongs to the submitter.
Databases do not become the property of FamNet, nor of NZGDB, unless this is explicitly
the wish of the owner.
Is FamNet an alternative to the Society's own web site
Not at all. FamNet facilities can be incorporated in anybody's web site. For example,
if you go to www.nzgdb.co.nz you'll see the "FamNet Combined Database Search" embedded
within the NZGDB site While in this case these two sites are related, this and other
FamNet facilities can be embedded in any web page, whether hosted by GDBServer or
not. However the database(s) have to be on GDBServer.
If elected, are you planning to have FamNet services and ideas incorporated into
the NZSG website? If not elected, will you co-operate with NZSG to provide complementary
rather than competing services?
Whether I am elected or not, FamNet services can be incorporated into the NZSG web site. FamNet is complementary to the Society,
unless they choose to [continue to] treat it as hostile competition.
Do you want to eliminate CD's?
Not my decision - it's up to the data owner whether to offer their database(s)
on CD only, on-line only, or in some combination. If elected to Council I
would vote to leave CD sales as an option, so members could continue to purchase CD's as at present. However it would not be the ONLY way in which the society sold access to its data.
How would you charge for access to the Society's data?
Firstly, that's not up to me. I will implement whatever rules the data owner - the society in this case - wants. However, I have made a suggestion, and I will advocate this if elected.
My suggestion is a "Premium Subscription". Thus members would pay a premium of $? per year, to get access to all of the society's on line data. What this premium is, and what iyou
get for it
would need to be discussed, but it could include all the current CD's (except perhaps for those published in the last year?) and the certificate collection, perhaps some other collections.
It might also include subscriber-level NZGDB access - this would be a matter of negotiation with the society.
If the NZSG CD data was made available on your NZGDB site would you require a person accessing the data to register on that site?
(this person continued: I may prefer to access and pay for NZSG data but not register and provide contact genealogical data to NZGDB. Your thoughts?)
The short answer is" No".
The long answer is "No, but there's a little bit of fine print". Here's the long answer: -
With the way that I've written the program, each group has its own
membership. Currently, as FamNet is only a concept and some partly-written
demonstration software, the only groups in FamNet are NZGDB and the Kiwi Yak
Herders Association (KYHA), which is my mythical test organization. If the
NZSG data were to be hosted, then there would be a third group. There might
be other groups too.
Anybody can belong to any of these groups. They might belong to only one
group, or to several. If they belong to several, then they will have a
common logon: thus I am user "robertb" in both NZGDB and KYHA, and I have
only a single password, and a single set of basic information such as Name
and Address. In the FamNet concept you register with one group first, you
can then do very quick registrations with other groups if you want to,
avoiding the need to re-enter Name and Address and remember yet another
password. However you are not automatically registered with these other
groups.
Group administrators cannot see membership lists of the other groups, and
they do not know whether their members belong to any other Famnet group,
they see only the basic common information, and the user information that is
specific to their group alone.
Each group has its own membership rules, may require a subscription or not,
may offer services exclusively to their members or at different rates to
members and non members, and so on.
Thus if the NZSG data were available only to NZSG members then people
would have to join NZSG in order to get access. You would not
get access to NZSG data because you had already subscribed to NZGDB. You
would not get access to NZGDB data because you had subscribed to the NZSG
data.
There might be agreements between the groups, so that members of Group A
were given member-rate access to Group B. This is a matter for negotiation
between Group A and Group B. I would simply implement the rules that the
groups decide. It is possible that the agreement between NZSG and NZGDB
included access to NZGDB for NZSG subscribers - I would be open to
negotiating that. It is extremely unlikely however that NZGDB subscribers
would get access to NZSG data as I can't imagine that NZSG would allow this.
Basically then, the answer to your question is
"No". You have to register, but this is registration to NZSG and will be
separate to your registration in NZGDB if you have one.
To be absolutely accurate however, there is a sense in which the answer is
"yes". As overall system administrator I have total access to everything; I
couldn't do my job otherwise. So in this very limited sense yes, you have
provided registration data to NZGDB.
Shouldn't NZSG data be free to members?
Of course this is the data owner's (NZSG's) decision, not mine. But if I were elected
to Council, I would not support it.
The difficulty with making it "Free to financial members" is that the Society would
need a substantial hike in membership fees to replace the lost CD income.
My proposal was for a "Premium subscription", $? per year on top of the
standard subscription, for which premium subscribers got a year's access to
all the society's CD databases, and possibly some others, on line. This
retains the option of people subscribing without paying this premium, either
because they don't need anything new - they've already bought all the CD's
that they want, or because they'd rather purchase the data on CD.
Are you proposing "Pay Per View"?
Again, this is the data-owner's decision. Personally I don't like PPV, you have
to charge quite a lot per record to even cover the costs of the service, and
then people get ticked off because they're spending a lot of money getting
records that are irrelevant or tell them nothing that they didn't already know.
I'd personally rather pay a subscription charge, as at Ancestry or World Vital Records, than PPV as at Scotland's
People. Besides, from my point of view, it's complex
programming, and from the data owner's point of view, complex administration.
What is FamNet's charge for hosting data?
Current policy is: -
If the data is available for free to everybody, then there is no charge.
If the data is restricted, or if there is a charge for access, then we'll discuss fees or revenue sharing.
Would the society be locked into paying your charges, for ever? Does
this give you control of the society?
No, but this is a serious fear, and this question deserves a full answer.
Firstly, I imagine that any contract between NZGDB and NZSG would be renewed
annually, and in theory either party could walk away at any anniversary.
Longer contracts seem unlikely as it is simply too difficult for either party to
see further into the future, and for the society there is the difficulty of one
council binding the next to a decision that it might not agree with.
Of course one hopes and expects that this will be such a great business
relationship that it continues for many years, but what if it didn't?
On termination the NZSG databases would be returned, and NZSG would cease to
utilize FamNet services. Other FamNet users would continue largely
unaffected. "Largely" unaffected because some users may have created links
between (for example) a family tree in NZGDB and a record in an NZSG database.
These links would disappear.
I said "In theory either party could walk away" because in practice it is not
quite that easy. It is easy in theory to change your bank, but
difficult in practice because of the history that you have built up.
Similarly, it is easier in theory than in practice for the Society to change its
Editor. If a NZSG-NZGDB
relationship is successful then it will become very important to both parties, a bit like a marriage building more value as time passes. At least the
annual renewal of our vows will keep us both focussed on making the relationship
work.
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