Attn: RonPaulCountry - NH GOTV Buddy System

[parocks]

RonPaulCountry can make as great as site with incredible features as they want. The site is superb and all these suggestion are great ideas which would improve it.

But it will all be in vain if RonPaulCountry is underused. It can only work if Ron Paul supporters register en masse. We need everybody and the main RonPaul grassroots sites to get behind the promotion of RonPaulCountry.

RonPaulCountry is something different which adds so much. The potential is incredible. It just needs every Ron Paul user to register, locate fellow supporters near them and get coordinated. Then events will be really successful and our ability to GOTV, especially with young people, will be HUGELY BOOSTED! Our inability to get the youth to turnout was THE major factor in why we didn't win Iowa. RonPaulCountry addresses this, we need to all push it as hard as we can.

what is your opinion of http://ronpaulsocialnetwork.com ? just to point out that ronpaulcountry isn't the only one out there. Everything that you can say about country is also true for social network or rp2012.org.

 

[maxoutco]

Are you guys envisioning this as a boots-on-the-ground effort with flyers and what-have-you?

Yes, this is how I envision it. This needs to be a brushfire started with a devoted group of Ron Paul individuals at a campus. The objective, by word of mouth or flyers, is to gather people and sign them up for the buddy system through the RonPaulCountry website. This group will continue the effort, rinse and repeat, until exhausted.

The buddy system makes the rules to the game. Accountability and responsibility to the person you are assigned to to make sure you and your buddy get out the vote. It should allow linking to individuals by their location, reassignment, or just to sign up and find a person.

The RonPaulForums admin would make sure that the UI provides a way for people to login, check status at their college, check buddied vs. individuals, etc etc.

As I lay this out, it sure sounds like a lot of work. haha

 

[D.A.S.]

ronpaulcountry has done a good job rolling out features. they need to rollout the friend feature.

http://ronpaulsocialnetwork.com also has those features, and I think http://rp2012.org does too.

So, there are sites. DAS and Orenbus spend more time here than whoever does ronpaulsocialnetwork. DAS and Orenbus have done a good job hyping their site.

Thanks, Jim.

We worked pretty hard on RonPaulCountry, getting it working as smoothly as possible, developing new features, and doing event promo and outreach to the grassroots leaders. orenbus and I have made it our full-time volunteer jobs up to this point.

We'd like to think we've done some good. We did help connect people on the ground already in several states. We had Iowans communicating with us (I helped run the chip-in to open the Johnson County Iowa grassroots HQ quickly, and that worked well), we've been told we helped bring new people into Florida meet-ups, and we've been working closely with Northern NH grassroots to help get the word out about their dire need for resources, as well as promoting countless events in IA, NH, FL, and other states.

Of course, had our membership numbers have been larger, we'd have a LOT more impact by now. With this idea, we may well have something that could really make the people see how we can help with GOTV.

I know orenbus is working on adding social networking features -- I'll let him chime in on that when he's able.

 

[Crotale]

Yes, this is how I envision it. This needs to be a brushfire started with a devoted group of Ron Paul individuals at a campus. The objective, by word of mouth or flyers, is to gather people and sign them up for the buddy system through the RonPaulCountry website. This group will continue the effort, rinse and repeat, until exhausted.

The buddy system makes the rules to the game. Accountability and responsibility to the person you are assigned to to make sure you and your buddy get out the vote. It should allow linking to individuals by their location, reassignment, or just to sign up and find a person.

The RonPaulForums admin would make sure that the UI provides a way for people to login, check status at their college, check buddied vs. individuals, etc etc.

As I lay this out, it sure sounds like a lot of work. haha

Sound great!

 

[D.A.S.]

It's not THEIR site. They gain no personal benefit from it (and they invested a lot of hard work, time and money in creating it as well). The site is a war room for the grassroots.

RonPaulCountry isn't really a site to spend a lot of time on. You are confusing it with RPF and DailyPaul, which are more of a community. RonPaulCountry is more like a tool to allow Ron Paul supporters to coordinate on a local level. It is a calendar for events. It serves as an organisational resource principally, not a social network. I feel you are missing the point.

That's very true! We're not a social club. As site admins, WE do the most of the work on the site, not our users (and of course our kind collaborators do a whole lot of work, too). We maintain a growing grassroots calendar of events, and even so, we go through and email-notify our users about each such event in their vicinity. So it's us the Site Admins who do the heavy lifting connecting the people - all the people need to do is register, and they are set to receive stuff about what's happening in their neighborhood. That isn't something the RonPaulSocialNetwork will give you or what the forums will give you.

We're simply all about boots-on-the-ground connection. We have the chat on the site to help people out when they have activism questions or how to sign up, but we don't advertise it as a social club - if people use it as such, fine, but we use it basically as user support for our own purposes.

 

[parocks]

Thanks, Jim.

We worked pretty hard on RonPaulCountry, getting it working as smoothly as possible, developing new features, and doing event promo and outreach to the grassroots leaders. orenbus and I have made it our full-time volunteer jobs up to this point.

We'd like to think we've done some good. We did help connect people on the ground already in several states. We had Iowans communicating with us (I helped run the chip-in to open the Johnson County Iowa grassroots HQ quickly, and that worked well), we've been told we helped bring new people into Florida meet-ups, and we've been working closely with Northern NH grassroots to help get the word out about their dire need for resources, as well as promoting countless events in IA, NH, FL, and other states.

Of course, had our membership numbers have been larger, we'd have a LOT more impact by now. With this idea, we may well have something that could really make the people see how we can help with GOTV.

I know orenbus is working on adding social networking features -- I'll let him chime in on that when he's able.

You have "coming soon - groups" or something like that. Groups would work even better than a buddy system.

What I would do, if NH was a huge priority, and people actually thought it would be worthwhile to spend a ton of time on this, in the next week, is to roll out the "groups" feature. And breakdown NH into counties, and then groups within counties. So that people in NH could actually see all the options that are available.

If you want to make a difference here, based on how far along you are, you should target the early Feb caucuses. set up that system, so that people can use it.

Nevada, Maine, Minnesota, Colorado. And then, if people really cared (And I would argue that they don't, they ENJOY facebook) they would go to facebook, and whereever the people are and tell them to plug themselves in to the system thats up and running.

 

[eleganz]

Goddamn I wish I lived in NH, I'd be begging all of my friends to vote...driving them..whatever...

What are the rules for registration? is it open to reps and indies? can they do same day registration?

 

[maxoutco]

D.A.S., please see the following.

Yes, this is how I envision it. This needs to be a brushfire started with a devoted group of Ron Paul individuals at a campus. The objective, by word of mouth or flyers, is to gather people and sign them up for the buddy system through the RonPaulCountry website. This group will continue the effort, rinse and repeat, until exhausted.

The buddy system makes the rules to the game. Accountability and responsibility to the person you are assigned to to make sure you and your buddy get out the vote. It should allow linking to individuals by their location, reassignment, or just to sign up and find a person.

The RonPaulForums admin would make sure that the UI provides a way for people to login, check status at their college, check buddied vs. individuals, etc etc.

As I lay this out, it sure sounds like a lot of work. haha

 

[Crotale]

Nevada, Maine, Minnesota, Colorado. And then, if people really cared (And I would argue that they don't, they ENJOY facebook) they would go to facebook, and whereever the people are and tell them to plug themselves in to the system thats up and running

Oh people definately care. RPC isn't trying to compete with facebook. It's not an either-or situation. When RPC was on the front page of the DailyPaul there was a huge spike in registrants. A similar thing would be achieved by a tweet, post, banner by the main grassroots sites.

Actually, on that point, would it be against FEC rules for RevPac post a tweet about RonPaulCountry? Because that would be handy.

 

[D.A.S.]

Yes, this is how I envision it. This needs to be a brushfire started with a devoted group of Ron Paul individuals at a campus. The objective, by word of mouth or flyers, is to gather people and sign them up for the buddy system through the RonPaulCountry website. This group will continue the effort, rinse and repeat, until exhausted.

The buddy system makes the rules to the game. Accountability and responsibility to the person you are assigned to to make sure you and your buddy get out the vote. It should allow linking to individuals by their location, reassignment, or just to sign up and find a person.

The RonPaulForums admin would make sure that the UI provides a way for people to login, check status at their college, check buddied vs. individuals, etc etc.

As I lay this out, it sure sounds like a lot of work. haha

Yea, I'll have to have a long chat on this with orenbus - the web developer/coder for RPC Since I'm not a web guy myself, I can't really say how difficult this would be or how long this would take, but he would certainly know.

One thing I can tell you if that, since we have people's zipcode and are able to sort by State, we can absolutely help GOTV even without the buddy system per se... So whatever it is, even in its current form we can make a difference, although I agree that the buddy system is a powerful approach and a great system to implement - but we need promo now regardless, so we can get people connected and plugged in.

 

[parocks]

It is THEIR site. It is one of many ronpaul sites that do this type of thing. I have one which is going to be changed over from /bachmann2012/. I worked with DAS on this project before Orenbus rolled around. It's DAS's site, and Orenbus is helping him. I don't know what the big deal is there to argue whose site it is. I will say that hyping the site is an important part of getting the site popular. I asked you a question, and you didn't answer that. Look at the features of the other sites - most notably http://ronpaulsocialnetwork.com and http://rp2012.org (the "volunteer" section is a bit hidden in rp2012.org), and you will become more aware of what else is out there. Because there are at least 2 out other ones out there, one of which was up in running in May, you might get an idea why all activity and attention is not focused on "country". I'm not criticizing country, but since I was working with DAS on this a little bit before Orenbus got on board, I think I do have a bit of insight there.
He's using Drupal, which (although others may disagree for any number of very good reasons) is roughly comparable with Joomla, which I prefer. It should be relatively easy to pick an off the shelf solution with Drupal that will fit the needs. I'm not at all concerned that it would be difficult to do that.

Any time you have a website that can do the job (and Country can either do the job, or could be made to do the job easily enough) and you have a project to do, and people to hype the project and the website, there's a pretty good chance that you'll have at least some success. This is Ron Paul we're talking about, so it's not like people who are using the internet don't care. That's not the hard part.

I'm not confused about what Country is. If it's "a tool to allow Ron Paul supporters to coordinate on a local level", more of those features really should be rolled out. I've been watching it. Every time I look at it, it seems that more and more features are rolled out. Good features. But, actually, at this point, it's lacking in features that allow RP supporters to coordinate. Because all you can do, today (and tomorrow might be different) is send an system email to other users you identify as being local to you. When they roll out the friends / groups capability, coordination will be easier. both socialnetwork and rp2012.org have all those features already. Not being critical. Initially, all DAS wanted to do was get people on board, and then hit them with a message when it was time for them to do something. The localizing features were a big part of it. He wanted to be able to hit different geographical areas with different, timely and important messages.

It's not THEIR site. They gain no personal benefit from it (and they invested a lot of hard work, time and money in creating it as well). The site is a war room for the grassroots.

RonPaulCountry isn't really a site to spend a lot of time on. You are confusing it with RPF and DailyPaul, which are more of a community. RonPaulCountry is more like a tool to allow Ron Paul supporters to coordinate on a local level. It is a calendar for events. It serves as an organisational resource principally, not a social network. I feel you are missing the point.

 

[D.A.S.]

I'm not confused about what Country is. If it's "a tool to allow Ron Paul supporters to coordinate on a local level", more of those features really should be rolled out. I've been watching it. Every time I look at it, it seems that more and more features are rolled out. Good features. But, actually, at this point, it's lacking in features that allow RP supporters to coordinate. Because all you can do, today (and tomorrow might be different) is send an system email to other users you identify as being local to you. When they roll out the friends / groups capability, coordination will be easier. both socialnetwork and rp2012.org have all those features already. Not being critical. Initially, all DAS wanted to do was get people on board, and then hit them with a message when it was time for them to do something. The localizing features were a big part of it. He wanted to be able to hit different geographical areas with different, timely and important messages.

You're right, we're not in our final state yet - we're still heavily under development.

However, if you were from Iowa or NH and registered with us, you would have been getting a lot of event notices from us. We don't send system-wide emails unless it's a crucial initiative, like the Iowa and NH volunteer initiative and Phone from Home email that we sent out system-wide in late December. All the other emails go out to people in a 30-50 mile radius of each event on our event calendar. And we send notices out event by event at this time, until there's a more streamlined way to handle the event calendar.

But yea, I do agree that we do need more social networking features and that we need to roll those out quickly. And I don't have a whole lot of control over that since I'm not a developer. So the hope is we'll have more exciting features in the near future.

As far as now is concerned, we help bring our site members into existing Ron Paul events in their local area, and that is my heaviest commitment at this time. GOTV fits very well with that commitment, but it will be much improved when we add the sort of social networking features you guys are talking about, so we can have people track their buddies and encourage them to go vote locally.

 

[kill the banks]

"Bottom line, my suggestion, break it down to smaller goals to obtain in one week. If 2k can convince 2k more people to obtain 25 people it becomes more of a piece of cake to obtain the goal."

in my gut i really like this idea !

 

[ONUV]

how about driving people to the voting stations?

 

[maxoutco]

Yea, I'll have to have a long chat on this with orenbus - the web developer/coder for RPC Since I'm not a web guy myself, I can't really say how difficult this would be or how long this would take, but he would certainly know.

One thing I can tell you if that, since we have people's zipcode and are able to sort by State, we can absolutely help GOTV even without the buddy system per se... So whatever it is, even in its current form we can make a difference, although I agree that the buddy system is a powerful approach and a great system to implement - but we need promo now regardless, so we can get people connected and plugged in.

Even if this doesn't get implemented before New Hampshire, there are a lot of states afterwards. We could make history here where young people turned to the majority of the vote.

 

[maxoutco]

So D.A.S., do you feel RonPaulCountry is the right place for the buddy system to happen or should this idea jump ship to another site where more heads can collaborate on the issue.

 

[ronpaulnation]

//

 

[orenbus]

Hey maxoutco, as Denis mentioned I'm the web developer/back-end coder/sysadmin/etc and co-founder of the site. As there are questions regarding specifically the feasibility of rolling this proposal which assumes me building these features, I'm posting a portion of an email I recently sent Denis regarding this feature and other new features being proposed and my being forced to cut back on volunteering activities:

Hey Denis, wish I could say I can commit to working on this idea, which I agree is very innovative. If I didn't have the financial problems I do and have the time to work on this without putting my life in jeopardy. As you know I would be able to provide this solution as I have the technical skills, but there are forces that are preventing me from turning, what is being proposed, around in a reasonable amount of time considering the campaign schedule. If I was able to take care of my bills while working on the site then of course I would say yea no problem, but unfortunately I don't have that choice so I have to face the reality of the situation.

I think you probably know me well enough now to know that if I had a choice I would enjoy volunteering to work on these types of projects and have fun doing it. However as I mentioned I really should have slowed down a month ago and things on the home front is not looking good right now. I have some serious challenges ahead of me and I don't want to be in a position where I am promising this solution and then not being able to deliver due to outside forces and competing responsibilities.

...

I hope you can understand my situation.

I take some comfort in knowing that although I'm limited in what I can do going forward what we have done thus far in terms of effort and results working on RonPaulCountry and the extended activities this campaign cycle is much more than any of the other campaigns has accomplished. And I'm sure if Ron Paul was here right now, he would understand and agree that it's important to take care of ones' own well being.

If anyone contacts you looking to have a similar site created (for pay) please forward them to me as I'm currently looking for any freelance work. Thanks.

 

[Crotale]

Hey maxoutco, as Denis mentioned I'm the web developer/back-end coder/sysadmin/etc and co-founder of the site. As there are questions regarding specifically the feasibility of rolling this proposal which assumes me building these features, I'm posting a portion of an email I recently sent Denis regarding this feature and other new features being proposed and my being forced to cut back on volunteering activities:

What if we set up a chipin to cover your bills so you could work on it? Is that a feasible idea?

 

[orenbus]

What if we set up a chipin to cover your bills so you could work on it? Is that a feasible idea?

Yes it would be feasible, although I would have some doubts that a chipin would be supported by the community. Most times (and I totally understand why) I think Ron Paul supporters are going to be skeptical of people in the community putting their hat in hand and asking for money on projects that would otherwise might be taken care of (even if finding someone else is impossible) by someone for free in the grassroots. Although in this case for those of us that have sat in the Facebook Web Developer group or on RonPaulTech Freenode internet relay chat channel or really anyone that has looked for a programmer or designer for a Ron Paul related project over the past few months can tell you although Ron Paul supporters are tech savy finding someone with the skill sets to bring a tech project from script to screen (beyond just a blogging site or using off the shelf software and re-skinning it) and that would be willing to volunteer 70+ hours a week to make sure it is a success is difficult if not nearly impossible.

Many people that don't have a full grasp of what is required will throw examples of $15/month web sites and services put together that could "easily" take care of the challenge, but never really understand the efforts required to customize and build applications or the time needed to support such works and turn them around at a fast pace and make sure that they become successful. I don't want to go into a long discussion about this because the truth is you can never really convince some people (that do not work in the industry) about the time, energy and effort that is needed to turn some tech projects around as they will (without having a full grasp on the concepts) try and justify that oh it's so easy it could be done so quickly, but if that was true then it would have been done a long time ago, and then when you ask them to produce what is needed they very conveniently disappear or change the subject or just straight up finally admit that a another person would need to be found to actually build/design (do the dirty work) out the work being detailed as action items. They lead you on perhaps not purposely, but still it ends up being a time wasting process. What is the saying? Too many chiefs not enough indians? I hate to sound cynical but after having interviewed over probably twenty people in the past couple of months to help with the site I can tell you many people act like they can provide solutions but when tasked to do something almost all with the very little exception fold and are never heard of again. I should point out that while I'm typing this that those that are listed on our about page, kudos to you that are credited in helping with this site, you guys didn't just talk to the talk, you walked the walk. There are people out there willing to roll up their sleeves and make huge contributions to netroots projects like this, although at times very rare. In any case like I said I don't want to get into a deep discussion about reality vs. theory because I know many on this forum like to theorize without ever actually putting in the work that is required to get an idea off the ground lol, so I'll just stop right here.

Anyway, yes in theory a chipin would work in this situation although I'm not sure how well it would translate.