In business and varied other activities, one of the primary things that nearly every single person needs to do is collaborate with others in some fashion. Considering a large number of collaborative spaces, including both online and offline, there are a variety of shortcomings in each. Offline collaborative space, such as offices, meeting rooms, parents' basements, are not always accessible to everyone, and often involve effort, time, and money to prepare, and assure that all participants can be present. Online collaborative spaces, which can be accessible to everyone, often have the problem that they mimic the wild west, with contributors edging out or overpowering their peers, to everyone creating an unclear jumble of chat logs that takes considerable time to work through and, in some cases, decipher into readable language. Additionally, that spaces tend to be extremely limited as far as expressing complicated ideas in the form of diagrams, pictures, etc., requiring any coordinators to meld usable, physical space with online space, using physical whiteboards or presentation material separate from the primary meeting space.
My goal with this project is to merge the best aspects of both offline and online interactive spaces, in creating an extensible, usable, online meeting space in which project coordinators can "do it all," from managing participants, to defining rules in which those participants can interact with each other, and the coordinator(s). From creating an empty meeting space to quickly communicate, to a single-dimensional schedule, to multi-dimensional designing, for work or play, to balancing input from participants.
The primary maintenance for this project would be paying for web hosting, and continued support would come from a combination of places. First and foremost, features beyond the basic set for the map-space would have two different models: a monthly subscription, or a feature-by-feature one-time purchase. The revenues from those purchases would be put directly into server costs, rather than pulled out, to attempt to prolong the existence of the site. Additionally, the project would be open-sourced after some base service amount was met, allowing communal bug fixes and feature additions, as well as secondary site-hostings, with the provision that any use of the software could not be used for any sort of profit generation (excluding, of course, the original site) without explicit written permission.
The primary maintenance for this project would be paying for web hosting, and continued support would come from a combination of places. First and foremost, features beyond the basic set for the map-space would have two different models: a monthly subscription, or a feature-by-feature one-time purchase. The revenues from those purchases would be put directly into server costs, rather than pulled out, to attempt to prolong the existence of the site. Additionally, the project would be open-sourced after some base service amount was met, allowing communal bug fixes and feature additions, as well as secondary site-hostings, with the provision that any use of the software could not be used for any sort of profit generation (excluding, of course, the original site) without explicit written permission.
As creating a functional, completely working set of services would be a much longer term project, this proposal primarily concerns creating the framework for a map-space webservice, along with at least two sample rulesets. I would suggest that these sample rulesets model drastically different areas, with one in the realm of business or meetings, and the other in the realm of gaming.
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