Trailofview is a platform for organizing useful or interesting information where anyone can contribute or modify content, following the Wikipedia model of voluntary peer review. It allows individuals to create trails on various topics to share knowledge. Examples include trails on religious pilgrimage sites, SEO learning, and Ruby on Rails notes. Unlike Wikipedia which provides introductory information, Trailofview aims to provide more in-depth and diverse perspectives on topics. The founders are working to expand Trailofview's knowledge management tools and integrate content from other sources to build the platform. Their long-term goal is to make Trailofview-like functionality available to other websites to facilitate user contributions and knowledge sharing.

1. An Introduction to Trailofview Manas Garg (manasgarg@trailofview.com)

2. What is Trailofview? It’s a place for people to organize useful or interesting information The motivation could be community service, helping friends or notes for self Trailofview follows the Wikipedia model where anyone can modify the information Sanity is maintained by voluntary peer review

3. Real World Example #1 A trail created and maintained by Madhwacharya followers Started by one person to spread awareness about important pilgrimage centers Immediately taken over by community members who brought together very useful pieces of information http://trailofview.com/trail/madhwa_pilgrimages

4. Real World Example #2 Built by a team that was learning about SEO for their project The team used it for keeping track of their learning and building upon each other’s ideas All the homework on SEO is captured at a single place – reusable by others http://trailofview.com/trail/search_engine_optimization_(seo )

5. Real World Example #3 Started by a person for organizing his notes on RoR Today, it’s used by all new joinees in his team to get familiar with RoR And as his team members learn more about this technology, they update this trail to help other team members And it’s open to the whole world! http://trailofview.com/trail/ruby_on_rails

6. Is it different from Wikipedia? An encyclopedia collects introduction level information about various topics from authoritative references. A library makes useful or interesting material available at a central place. The material is in-depth and contains diverse points of view. “ Wikipedia is like an Encyclopedia while Trailofview is like a Library ”

7. Trailofview Principles Re-use stuff available for free on the web Photos, videos, content on other websites, blogs… But don’t violate copyright Be Accommodative Accommodate and reconcile diverse points of view around the same topic Don’t fight whether bad traffic is more dangerous than swine flu. Reconcile the perspectives Context is as important as Information itself

8. Where are we as of now? Three people committed to the project Working in the night and over the weekends Some believers extending a helping hand Something more than a prototype and less than a product was put up in early April’09 Validated a lot of assumptions Also invalidated some of them All set for the next iteration of Trailofview

9. Our Immediate Next Step Build next set of knowledge management tools for communities Handling various media types as forms of information (photos, videos, blogs, documents…) Integration with various sources of information (youtube, flickr, twitter, slideshare…) Community Moderation and Stringent Abuse Control Personalization and tracking topics of interest

10. Our not-so-long-term Plan Build a platform that makes Trailofview content with Trailofview like functionality available to any website Websites powered by user’s contributions have a high barrier Content attracts content (a new entrant has to seed the content) UGC is hard to get, hard to assimilate and hard to keep clean (everyone has to solve the same set of problems) Trailofview will drive user’s contributions on other sites

11. Can I see it and touch it? “Yes sure.” http://trailofview.com is our website http://trailofview.com/demo is where you can catch a demo http://trailofview.com/trail/a_trail_about_trails is where you’ll find the thought process that led to creation of Trailofview

12. Suggestions? Manas Garg (manasgarg@trailofview.com)