[NGO] Activism Tools

Tue Jun 27 19:38:42 UTC 2006

Duane-

Wow, this is all very exciting stuff.  Thanks for sharing.  It is
extremely energizing to know that others are working hard on important
problems like this.

ONE/Northwest is definitely interested in figuring out how to plug in
after we enjoy the first half of our summer. ;-)  We'd be especially
interested in helping to test-drive the online petition/activism tool,
and will undoubtedly download the tarball ASAP.

It's a fine line between promoting vaporware and getting people involved
early enough to make a difference/avoid duplication.  I'd say you're
well on the right side of things.

best,
jon

PS I hope you're starting to think about which of these things you might
have ready to present at the Plone Conference in October. ;-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ngo-bounces at lists.plone.org 
> [mailto:ngo-bounces at lists.plone.org] On Behalf Of Duane Raymond
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 11:46 AM
> To: A list for NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) using Plone.
> Subject: [NGO] Activism Tools
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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