How To Get Started

WE'RE STILL IN ßETA
A lot of curious people are overwhelmed the first time they look at empowerthyself.com. It's a beta under construction, and we have a lot of work to do before it is properly organized and welcoming to new people. Still, if you're patient there is a lot of value here already.

Here's how you can get started:

Create an account. You can read a lot without logging in but to really participate you need to register.
Talk to us. Contact Alex, introduce yourself and ask 20 questions. lxpk@empowerthyself.com. Use the web contact form. Post a comment this story.
Explore. Empowerment is under construction so there's a lot of confusing and incomplete content but you can see where we're going with things.
Profile. Look over some of the ideas in the Ideapedia. Find ones you personally have opinions or thoughts about. Click "Add Personal Idea" and add this idea to your own ideas. Name it whatever you wish and include your own take on this subject. By doing this you contribute to the idea naturally while letting us know a bit more about what motivates you!
Groups. Look over the list of groups and subscribe to any that you think you may already be apart of! If you subscribe to a group all ideas and campaigns posted to that group will come to you via your subscription notification settings or rss feeds. Groups are not so much a commitment as an interest in reletave subject matter. Get ideas by watching what your peers are doing!
Contribute. Do you have ideas and skills you'd like to contribute? The Empowerment is an open and participatory project. Get in contact with us and let us know you're interested. We need web developers to build the Drupal system and writers to create content. Don't be shy about adding information!

Explore Ideas

Explore the Ideapedia to find ideas you like. You already know what you are interested in and passionate about. Let the rest of us know as well!

Adding Personal Ideas

When you see an idea you like, click the Add to my personal ideas button next to its title to add it to your profile. If you have an idea that isn't listed in the Ideapedia feel free to post it!

You can write your own words here about what the idea means to you.

You can also add personal ideas of your own without linking them to a larger group idea. Just leave the "Idea Group" field blank.

Posting Guidelines

There are a few guidelines you should be aware of when posting content on Empowerment.

Types Of Posts

There are many kinds of things you can post on Empowerment. Each type of post has a particular purpose and the following list explains what the content types are for and gives examples of how they might be used.

Action	Explanation	Examples
Post a blog entry	Write your personal thoughts and opinions as blogs or comments.	"Today I thought of a cool idea for a shirt..."
Inventory Items List	Check out items
Add/give/want items	List your stuff, create a wishlist, offer things others might need.	"shirts to be printed, request your size"
Doable Actions Task List	See what actions are listed
Post a Mission	List a mission to do or one you've already done for yourself or others including general tasks, feature requests, bug reports and support requests.	"Get T-shirts printed."
Invite all your friends	Think of everyone you know like a giant checklist. What could each one of them get out of Empowerment?	"Hey, you're into memetics too so check out this site I'm on, they have sweet t-shirts..."
Craft a message	Combine ideas into clever and targeted messages.	"A new slogan"
Craft material	Translate messages into slickly produced materials for dissemination.	"A new shirt design with the slogan on it"
Document a medium	Mediums are methods of communicating. Document a new channel of communications to help others use it effectively. Written in nonpersonal style.	Shirting, Advertising, Videoing, Tabling
Document an audience	Audiences are groups of people with something in common. They are the targets of communicated message material. Written in mostly nonpersonal style. Always rememeber that your audience may read this.	"People on the street"
Document an idea	Ideas are for explaining in succinct encyclopedia style what an idea is so that someone can quickly understand it and choose to adopt it. If you want to talk about an idea at length, post a blog and address it to the Idea's group. Written in nonpersonal style.	Wear Message Shirts Every Day
Document a skill	Teach people how to learn to do something useful. Written in nonpersonal style.	"Shirt Making"
Document a technology	Document a tool such as a piece of equipment or software and explain what it does, how well it does it and which skills it relates to.	"DIY Screen Printing Press"
Log a communication	Document every actual delivery of material to audiences. For example: Record phone calls, hand-outs, advertising placements and track results.	"I wore the new shirt at school today and a lot of people asked me about it..."
Make a promise	Promise to do something and optionally request that other people do it too like a petition.	"I'll wear 7 message shirts every day for a month if at least 20 others do too."
Post a forum topic	Discuss anything.	"Does anyone know the answer to this?"
Post an event	Let people know about an upcoming event.	"We'll be giving out free shirts at the campus library."
Post a news link	Share an important news story.	"The newspaper has written a story about our shirts."
Start a campaign	Create a coordinated multi-medium campaign	"Help Communicate Our Message"
Start a group	Create your own group to free associate with anyone to do anything you choose.	"Local Communicators"
Write a quiz	Create a test to help people self-evaluate their skill levels or ideological opinions.	"Shirt making test", "What do your shirts say about you?"
Write a page	Write a page and place it in the hierarchical menu outline or start a new menu.

Addressing Posts To Groups

You can address posts to groups of which you are a member.

Remember, group posts get emailed to most of the groups' members.

Only post to groups for which the content really seems appropriate.

Don't address posts to the "The Empowerment" group. I can't block it yet, but just don't do it.

Using The Outline Book Menu Hierarchy

You may notice that most of empowerthyself.com is organized into a hierarchical tree menu.

Most nodes within this tree are "book" type nodes and have "Add child page" links in their footer that allow you to instantly create another book page under them in the hierarchy. This is convenient but what if you want to put other types of nodes into an outline tree like skills and groups?

You can assign any type of node to the tree after you have created it. First submit it and view it. Click the Outline tab and select a parent node to place your node under. The node list is vast so you may have to scroll around a bit to get a sense of where to put your node. If you want your node in the hierarchy but are unsure where to place it, ask in the forum.

Creating New Outline Menus

You can also create a new outline seperate from the main outline by placing a node at the top level without a parent. This is a good way to place documents underneath an organic group or idea so that you have your own independent menu structure.

I'll add more guidelines later, I have to honor my timing commitments.