[NGO] Activism Tools

[Duane Raymond]

Warning: long email - only read if interested in activism tools
for Plone

> I'd *love* to hear more about what you've got in the pipeline,
> and what if anything we can do to accelerate release/adoption.

Well - you asked for it :-)

Thanks to a little push by Jon, Martin and Sisi - here is some
more information about the activism tools FairSay has developed
(but not formally released yet) or is working on.

1) Activator Product
- Allows the configuration of letter actions and petitions +
other action
  types if you are creative (most actions are generally
variations on
  these two types)

- Developed for GCAP ( www.whiteband.org ) and in production use
for 12 months
  (no actions are currently live there)

- Features include:
  - Configurable action form fields and layout
  - Ensures thank-you pages and thank-you emails (both good from
cross-promotion)
  - Data download in CSV format
  - Basic statistics including ability to display live action
count on any page
    (local or remote)
  - Super duper tracking so you know where people taking actions
have come from
  - Can 'syndicate' action page/form (don't confuse with RSS) so
others can host
    it on their sites but it is all stored in the same place.

- Conceptually it works on the basis that 'Campaigns' contain one
or more
  'Actions' that consist of one or more 'Action Editions'.  It is
the 'Action
   Editions' which you actually configure.

We haven't yet put together all the necessary elements for an
open source release (documentation, issue tracker, open svn,
etc.) and won't have until the end of August (due to client work
taking precedence) - however Friends of the Earth International
(Sisi) and Netherlands (Paul) have tentatively agreed to help
test and document it towards that end - and now Jon, Martin seem
willing to chip in as well :-)

So - anyone who wants to play with it can get it from:
http://www.fairsay.com/static/eCampaigning018.zip
(this is a temporary location so don't link to it or it will
break in 1-2 months) We've still to determine the best license to
release it under - but it will be something like LGPL or GPL (or
equivalent).

I've had preliminary conversations with Friends of the Earth
International & FoE Netherlands (Milieudefensie) about them
investing some time in both testing/documentation and in actual
development - plus the suggestion that if a number of
organisations want to contribute budget then a developer could
work on further improving this product.

If anyone else wants to help improve this product, we'd be
excited to work with you.


OTHER PROJECTS
(aka vapourware until we have a working product but extensive
work has gone into these):

1) Mobiliser:
A tool for NGO to enable their supporters to organise and connect
locally to each other by identifying those closest' to each other
(similar to Meetup or Greenpeace's Melt project
http://melt.staging.greenpeace.org/ ) (70% to first release)

2) GeoRosetta:
The global dataset (for Mobiliser) of countries, regions and
cities with longitude and latitude in multiple languages.  This
data already exists out there - but with horrible duplications,
errors, gaps, etc. so this is an attempt to 'structure' and clean
it.  Plus it add an Ajax client using a RESTful approach to
navigate the hierarchy of data in xml files on a file system (for
maximum scalability).  Could be VERY useful for other
applications that need to be geo-location aware. (similar to
http://www.geonames.org/ which we didn't know of when we started)
(70% to first release).  Greenpeace is already using a
pre-release of the GeoRosetta data for their Melt project.

3) Campaigning Benchmarking System:
A system for collecting data on a range of campaigns / campaign
actions and comparing these results vs. other campaigns /
campaign actions.  This is currently in an early phase and
initially it will simply collect and archive campaigning emails
and actions so they can be 'mined' for good ideas, what was done
when, who is doing what, etc. ( 1% of system vision, 90% of first
'archival' element)

So to paraphrase Jon - I have now "decloaked".

No technical progress on any of these will happen from FairSay's
side during July due to Petri (FairSay's Technical Director)
enjoying the summer (as we all should for those in the northern
hemisphere).

However during July I'll have some time to work on:
1) Discussing ways to collaborate on one or more of these
projects
2) Documenting and collecting issues on the 'pre-release' of the
eCampaigning project
3) Maybe (if 1 & 2 give me time) continue to work on GeoRosetta.

So - Jon, Martin, Sisi, Paul, others - if you want to talk about
any of these more - let me know (Note: I am offline from June
30 - July 10)

Cheers,

Duane

PS - I normally hesitate to promote these things until they are
released so I can deliver what I promise when I promise it (I
hate vaporware) - and that is determoned by either a client
driving it or enough free time to advance it.

===========================================================
Duane Raymond
FairSay
+44 (0)207 993 4200
http://www.fairsay.com