The first two group re-visioning meetings in San Francisco and Seattle produced a lot of ideas and helped focus the process of looking at what we're doing and where we're going. Both Categories for grouping ideas and individual Project ideas were proposed, organized, and ranked. One participant suggested thinking in terms of "initiatives" instead of Categories and Projects, but in the end we've stuck with the original language.

Thinking about the Projects and Categories can be quite confusing because many are arbitrary and difficult to define and many have very different scales or costs. We encourage those who are looking at different projects and ideas to consider the costs in time and energy for someone to research, implement, launch, debug, and support them. Erowid's mission is very much tied to long term accessibility and the startup costs are often only a small part of the total lifecycle cost of an idea. The ongoing support "costs" of many ideas decide whether we can afford to do them.

The major categories that were identified in the first (San Francisco) re-visioning meeting were : Community Building, Data, Personnel, Fundraising, Marketing + Schwag + Sales, Targeting Professional & Educational Groups, Technical Development, and Publishing Models.

The second meeting identified a slightly different set of categories, with "Data" replaced by "Scaling Up" as a different framing. It also broke "Marketing + Schwag + Sales" into two categories, "Marketing" and "Schwag".

We've found it difficult to discuss the many different things Erowid does and the breadth of possible activities and directions. Although the groups of projects listed below are arbitrary, they help organize the ideas so that they can be more easily assimilated:

Category	Total	neg	pos	Description
target professional / educational	7	-1	8	This category was created because a lot of the brainstorming by people participating in Erowid re-visioning has involved the creation of resources targeted at specific user types. Erowid has traditionally kept its focus on those who actually use psychoactives spiritually, recreationally, or otherwise, and some have suggested that it is important for Erowid to try to target other groups as well.
personnel	7	0	7	This category has to do with how to manage staff and volunteers, whether to try to hire people, etc.
scaling up	4	0	4	This is for issues related to expanding the size of the Erowid project in many different ways, from the size of the site, adding new types of content (media files, etc.), more members, etc.
publishing models	4	0	4	These include different ways that content can be published, from different types of syndication to books to Erowid on CD.
fundraising	3	-1	4	Ways to fund the project, increase membership, etc. Fundraising is the primary thing that drives how much time and resources we have to do the things we do.
tech development	1	-5	6	This can overlap with many other categories, but is for Projects ideas that are very oriented towards certain types of software development or utilization.
schwag	-1	-2	1	Related to fundraising, but is about stuff that Erowid could give away with donations or sell to support the site (t-shirts, mugs...)
marketing	-4	-4	0	Publicity-generating, advertising, etc.
community building	-5	-7	2	Perhaps the most controversial Category because it was one where the ideas about what it entails were so widely disparate. Includes everything from forums to regional project committees to anything that involves Erowid readers and supporters in a day-to-day or month-to-month way.

The following chart is the ranking of project ideas from the second (Seattle) meeting. The "Total" column indicates totalling both the positive and negative rankings given by participants. Participants were asked to rank (in order) their top 5 projects by which ones they'd like to see us put energy into and also the ones they'd least like to see us work on. For each person, the top two projects were given +2 points, 3-5 were given +1, the bottom two were given -2 and the other 3 in the bottom ranked set were given -1.

There were quite a few projects that one or two people included in their top rank, but only the top two entries received 4 positive votes (of 12 voters) and only 7 projects received 3 positive votes. There was more consensus on the negative rankings, with 4 of the bottom projects receiving negative votes and three of the projects receiving 6 or more negative votes. Interestingly, two of those bottom projects also received one positive vote.

	Total	neg	pos	description
add/organize meta data & meta tags	8	0	8	including del.icio.us and other collaborative tagging styles
erowid on cd	5	0	5	release archives of erowid on CD (done!)
active portal	4	0	4	more dynamic What's New interface, broken up by section, possibly user configurable. lots of things happening on the Erowid site that is not shown in What's New; also provide better links to other sites' changes
institutional subscriptions	4	0	4	provide subscriptions to Erowid newsletter and some specialized materials to hospitals, clinics, doctors, libraries, etc. Partially a fundraising effort, partially an outreach effort.
office assistant	4	0	4	hire part time help for less technically challenging things (done! but we're out of money :)
document Erowid process	4	0	4	make a catalog of all the things Earth, Fire, and Spoon do to keep the site going as well as what major volunteers do, by how much time is spent
code camp	3	0	3	volunteer groups of developers work on targeted projects together in a sort of Extreme Programming / sprint style
volunteer dev network	3	0	3	A system for better managing all the volunteers and projects we need help on
doc management overhaul	3	0	3	The site has been building organically for 10 years, desperately needs a complete re-architecting
off-the-shelf cms	3	0	3	Explore the use of some of the new existing Content Management systems
pro.erowid.org	3	0	3	A new interface to the site that is oriented towards medical and research professionals.
small scholarships	2	0	2	provide scholarships for students who work in related fields or do theses on related topics
e-journal	2	0	2	online journal format dedicated to particular topics
grants	2	0	2	spend time seeking large foundation grants
public health outreach	2	0	2	target health professionals in outreach to provide services and information
law enforcement outreach	2	0	2	target law enforcement professionals to provide services and information
user ratings	2	0	2	allow users to rate materials on Erowid
interaction lookup table	2	-1	3	standardized pages of interactions with pharmaceuticals and diseases
blog	2	-2	4	Erowid flavored blog(s)
steering committees	2	0	2	small groups of individuals targeted at handling particular problems (technical steering committee, fundraising steering committee, etc.)
syndication	2	0	2	provide Erowid content to other organizations and sites?
image processing system	1	0	1	we receive far more images than we can put up, need a better system for checking identifications and publishing
resources for reporters	1	0	1	target resources at reporters and their needs including photographs
us dev resources	1	-1	2	hire a developer inside the U.S.
targeted fundraising	1	0	1	fundraising drives for very narrow projects or purchases: "give us $2,500 so we can buy a new server"
legitimizing Erowid	1	0	1	spend effort on building up Erowid as a 'legitimate' source of info for mainstream folks
subscribe to anything	1	-1	2	tied to meta tags, ability to subscribe by email or RSS to any topic and see new content as it is added, by topic
update site design	1	0	1	update the look and feel of the site (partially done!)
internships	1	0	1	offer training and internships to students
flyer	1	0	1	produce a flyer (trifold or 4x6 type) that could be distributed to vendors and events
drug snopes	0	-1	1	spend more effort finding and debunking common myths
image shopping cart	-1	-1	0	create ability for individuals to select images in a shopping-cart style for copyright approval or purchase
continuing education	-1	-1	0	partner with doctors and lawyers to provide professional continuing education classes
university involvement	-1	-1	0	content review by medical people or sponsorship by social work offices (?)
trade fair booth	-2	-2	0	buy and configure an easy to set up booth for conferences and fairs (Whole Earth Festival, Library Association, Science of Consciousness, American Public Health Association, etc.)
plan for earth & fire demise	-2	-2	0	Spend time on figuring out what happens to Erowid if the founders die or disappear mysteriously ;]
art auction	-2	-2	0	fundraising event with auction
podcast	-2	-2	0	offer digital media through podcast type system
student paper db	-3	-3	0	a paper of high school and college papers on related topics, with ratings and commentary
publish successful use models	-4	-4	0	interviews and overviews of what types of use appear least likely to cause problems and most likely to benefit individuals and families
community groups	-4	-4	0	create and publish documents describing how to form community groups interested in the topic that do not run afoul of laws
oppose criminaliziation of new drug	-4	-4	0	act when the DEA tries to schedule a new drug and work on a campaign against its control
fundraising events (concerts/raves)	-7	-8	1	participate in the creation of parties or events that would be targeted fundraisers for Erowid
book	-7	-9	2	write, edit, and publish a book of content from Erowid
offshore dev	-7	-7	0	find and hire a developer who lives in a foreign land (cheaper, more management issues)

We have a wiki setup for documenting the re-visioning meetings and some related topics. If you'd like to look at this same information in more detail, you can check out the wiki. Because we've had aggressive robots make the wikis unusable, we've had to hide the wiki.