I'd just like to confirm the high value SDC gives to DGroups. A substantial number of our electronic discussion platforms are "hosted" by DGroups and the satisfaction among the members and collaborators is high.

Manuel Flury
Head Knowledge Management
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

CH-3003 Berne / Switzerland

manuel.flury@deza.admin.ch

Dgroups currently hosts approximately 2000 groups with 80 000 users. My organization, Global Healthcare Information Network, is responsible for two of these (HIFA2015 and CHILD2015), and is under contract to moderate a further two groups (HIF-net and HR4D-net) on behalf of INASP. Together, these groups constitute some 4000 people, most of whom are based in developing countries, often with slow and unreliable dial-up internet access.

I have been responsible for moderating some of the above groups since 2002. Our projects and programmes have thrived thanks to Dgroups, and I believe this is largely thanks to Dgroups being 'simple, non-commercial (no ads), respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the global developing South'. These factors are critical for credibility, and have enabled the groups to be maximally inclusive of all stakeholders with basic internet access. We are finding that an increasing number of primary and district health workers are joining thanks to increasing email availability.

The success of our groups is also thanks to the fact that we share, with many other groups, the benefits of technical support persons (eg Sarah Kerr, Zhang Qu) who are always able to help - and we also benefit from a dynamic community of administrators and moderators of other Dgroups for peer-to-peer exchange.

For all of these reasons, Dgroups has become a critical tool for international development. Many thousands of people have come to respect and depend on Dgroups as the ideal communication tool for large-group, multi-stakeholder communities of interest that involve a majority with poor internet access.

That said, I strongly welcome and endorse the proposed new Dgroups 2.0, that will maintain existing functionality but with major new features. The latter, including collaborative technologies such as wiki, will be particularly useful for our newer groups, HIFA2015 and CHILD2015, which are aiming to translate the experience and expertise of members into a specific and evolving knowledge base.

I vote for the continued support and evolution of Dgroups and urge others to do the same.

Neil Pakenham-Walsh MB,BS
Coordinator, HIFA2015 Campaign
Coordinator, Global Healthcare Information Network
16 Woodfield Drive
Charlbury, Oxfordshire OX7 3SE, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1608 811338
Email: neil.pakenham-walsh@ghi-net.org
Web: http://www.ghi-net.org
Web (HIFA2015): http://www.hifa2015.org
HIFA2015 email group: http://www.dgroups.org/groups/hifa2015
CHILD2015 email group: http://www.dgroups.org/groups/child2015

Join HIFA2015 and CHILD2015 - send your name, organisation and brief description of your professional interests to hifa2015-admin@dgroups.org and child2015-admin@dgroups.org

"Healthcare Information For All by 2015: By 2015, every person worldwide will have access to an informed healthcare provider"

Dgroups 2.0 concept is a great concept, particularly since I have been moderating some of the groups in the dgroups workspace. The most important aspect of the dgroups which I would like to see retained is the simplicity of the front end while we move to a second phase of development and incorporate new tools and plan to bring more live features.

A number of people living in developing countries still don't have high speed access or continuous connectivity, even if they access through kiosks or cafes. So, all new features added to this excellent tool must be flexible enough to cater to the needs of farthest community... embracing the philosophy of bridging the digital divide.

We at CSDMS would be delighted to collaborate and provide user feedback and inputs actively in this project.

Keep up the great work dgroups partnership!

Just a quick heads up to endorse how important it is to see a FLOSS group communication tool that is "simple, non-commercial (no ads), respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users."

This is why we've used GPL GroupServer for over two years now for our Local Issues Forums - it gives us what you are asking for and now provides a low-bandwith way to share files (e-mail attachments are automatically stripped and placed in files area if the web with a link inserted in the e-mail to the group).

What GroupServer doesn't do (yet?) is provide a topical tree structure for listing lots of groups and it is based in Zope.

I respect your interest in using Drupal/Sympa, so one opportunity for collaboration might be on sharing specifications and feature ideas so over the long run a GroupServer on Zope 3 connects with the Plone world and folks with Drupal can catch up with truly e-mail friendly and equitable participation options.