This week in Growstuff (February 8th, 2015)

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 04:01:26 GMT

Posted by: alexbayleaf

Originally published at Growstuff Blog. You can comment here or there.

Here’s a roundup of what’s been happening in the world of Growstuff over the last week or so.

Our new advisory board

In case you missed it, the other day we announced Growstuff’s new advisory board, made up of experts in innovation, social enterprise, open data, and more.

Read more about Growstuff’s new advisors on our team page.

Do you, like, like likes?

We’ve been talking for ages about letting people “like” photos and posts on Growstuff, and how we could use that to surface more useful information, better pictures for crops, and so on.

This week we’ve been discussing “liking” posts and pics and especially whether adding tags like “Helpful”, “Funny”, or “Informative” to a like can help us show better information to our members and visitors.

Got an opinion? Weigh in on Growstuff Talk.

Development news

First up, congrats to Maco, who became a committer this week. This means she can merge other people’s code into the main Growstuff project. Stop by the discussion forum and congratulate her :)

We’re working towards Release 8 which means we’ll be updating the Growstuff website with a bunch of new features, bugfixes, and backend improvements toward the end of the week.

We need help testing new features! If you’ve got some time to spare this week, join our testing team and try out some of our new features, including:

Tracking more information about your seed collection, including whether your seeds are heirloom or hybrid, organic, and how many days the seed packet says it’ll be until harvest.
The ability to search crops by their scientific and alternate names (including in the autosuggest when you’re planting, harvesting, etc)
Photos of your garden as a whole (not just individual plantings and harvests)
A massively improved “request new crops” process
A new content management system (CMS) making it easier for us to update the various pages linked in the site’s footer

Growstuff gatherings

Last Wednesday several of us were at Open Knowledge Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, where Alex gave a talk about Growstuff and open food data. Here are a few tweets to give you a taste of the event:

tonight's @OKFNau meetup's 1st time I've come across @growstufforg, which is exactly my kind of thing. Reinforces why I participate in @OKFN

— Cobi Smith (@cobismith) February 4, 2015

Remember: #opendata doesn't always mean open government data (PSI) or scientific research data – citizen collected data counts too!

— Open Knowledge Aus (@OKFNau) February 4, 2015

Fascinating use of open data as it applies to #openfood on http://t.co/6bCGu5K1ds These are the UI wireframe dreams http://t.co/rsZj8eJgnZ

— datakid23 (@datakid23) February 4, 2015

This week (and every 2nd Tuesday of the month) we’ll be at Melbourne’s Ruby Hack Night. Drop by and say hi!

From around the web

Real Food Media Contest: watch 10 short films about food, and vote by Feb 27th
Top reasons to grow your own food (Little Mountain Haven)
Developing a thirst for urban agriculture (Sourceable) “The Australian dream of a quarter-acre block is now becoming a distant memory.”
Sustainable agriculture on one of the world’s remotest islands: Hidden Garden Sustainable Farm, Christmas Island (PIP Magazine)
5 Native Tribal Organizations Reviving the Sustainable Agriculture Tradition (Sustainable Cities Collective)

We’re looking for a volunteer to regularly curate “This week in Growstuff”. Check out the job description and drop us a line if you’re interested!

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This week in Growstuff (February 2nd, 2015)

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 00:47:24 GMT

Posted by: alexbayleaf

Originally published at Growstuff Blog. You can comment here or there.

OK, technically it was last week in Growstuff, but I took the weekend off so you’re having it on Monday instead. So here’s a roundup of what’s interesting in the world of Growstuff over the last week, ish.

Growstuff gatherings

Growstuff developers Shiho, Taylor and Maki with gardeners Sheilagh and Ben, during our tour of Ballarat Community Garden last weekend.

Hackstuff Ballarat went really well! We visited three gardens including a private veggie garden established two years ago, a community garden, and a second private garden that’s been established more than twenty years. We asked questions and took notes about how each garden is organised, how they track information, and more. Then we adjourned to work on some code, including better crop search and a redesigned homepage. You can see a bunch of photos on the discussion page for the event. We’d like to organise similar garden tours in other cities!

This coming week we’ll be at Open Knowledge Workshop in Melbourne, Australia, talking about Growstuff and open food data. Come join us!

Development news

We’re working towards Release 8 which means an update to the Growstuff website with new features in a couple of weeks’ time. See the link above to find out what’s coming down the pipe.

Some of the latest features we’re testing include adding photos for gardens, and improved crop search (looks for alternate names and scientific names, as well as the main name). You can see these on our staging site, or join in our testing discussions, particularly this thread for the features mentioned.

We also seem to be converging on using React.js for frontend/UI improvements. We’re going to experiment a little with it and see how it fits into our code and workflow. Got opinions? Discuss them here.

Over on Github we have a heap of recent pull requests and everyone’s been really active. We’ve recently been encouraging people to post pull requests for works in progress (WIPs) and it’s working really well for us to discuss how to do things. Special props to Marlena for her amazing work on histograms for planting advice — this is an inspiration for the rest of us for quality of code!

Part of the crop page wireframes. see more.

Finally, Skud posted some wireframes (i.e. rough sketches) for what the crop detail page might look like in the future, with lots of information on growing different crops, gleaned from our members’ data. Take a look at the discussion and let us know what you think.

From around the web

An inspiring video about the changes effected by Vancouver’s food policy (Vancitybuzz)
Save the bees, or people will go hungry! (Takepart)
How to create a woodland where everything is edible (Financial Times)
Radical farmers use fresh food to fight racial injustice (Citizen:Modern)
Have we reached Peak Food? Shortages loom as global production rates slow. (The Independent)
Bhutan could be the world’s first wholly organic nation within a decade (The Guardian)

We’re looking for a volunteer to regularly curate “This week in Growstuff”. Check out the job description and drop us a line if you’re interested!

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The Growstuff Project

This week in Growstuff (February 8th, 2015)

Our new advisory board

Do you, like, like likes?

Development news

Growstuff gatherings

From around the web

This week in Growstuff (February 2nd, 2015)

Growstuff gatherings

Development news

From around the web