Email idea. Next step.

[LinuxJedi]

Well, building the tool is trivial in comparison to figuring out that we end up where we want to be. A few points:

- Email is really outdated... aggregated RSS feeds based on things you like is much better
- Project management has to be an important part, to allow a small group of people to come up with something to do, and see it through themselves (think SourceForge)
- Email for things like newsletters is a good idea, but email for "getting things done" can be aggravating... because of the number of emails you might get per day
- If done properly, there is no need for there to be a "master controller" vs. a bunch of loosely coordinated parts (again, think open-source project that depend upon other open-source projects).
- ChipIn needs to be there, and some reputation system for ensuring people aren't just lining their pockets with grassroots money

I'm not intimidated by the technology aspect, or getting people to adopt it... but we do need to learn from the positives and negatives of moneybombs, RPF and DP, so that we learn from mistakes.

 

[wizardwatson]

I made some changes to post #30. After researching GMail and how it handles contact groups it seems google groups is a much better choice for what I'm trying to do. Using Gmail like I was thinking would be too clunky and would require more effort than is necessary. It never occurred to me to use google groups because I thought you had to be a member to post to it which turns out not to be the case. So it would work nicely for the project.

 

[wizardwatson]

I have some feedback to provide on the organizational structure, but first: it is critical that there is some sane way of keeping a healthy environment in place. I myself have left RPF for periods of time after being brutally insulted by "supporters" who are here to destroy others working. It is absolutely vital that some way of calling out this bad behavior is in place, people use pseudo-anonymity on the Internet as an excuse to behave in a completely unacceptable manner. It is important that people be able to talk and discuss matters, but it is something else entirely when an angry mob is developing with pitchforks calling for blood... and they take out their frustrations on other supporters nearby.

I know that the original intention was to discuss some form of committee / mailing list thing... and there are some refinements that can accompany that. However, it is important to figure out how to address some of these issues. Do you moderate messages up until some threshold, where people have "proven" themselves? Do you encourage locals to moderate each other when they step out of line? Is there some form of process for addressing these types of actions?

For a concrete example... what do you do if some member (perhaps even on one of these proposed committees) starts to throw a tantrum and alienating others with conspiracy theories or general bashing?

Also, I think there is a good opportunity here to really adopt rules of order in a digital form. Perhaps if we mirror this organizational structure with that of how the GOP should be run, people will be more familiar with it when they go to conventions?

I thought about these things and definitely some rules would need to be adopted and followed eventually, not unlike the rules that guide this forum. However, I don't even have the plan of what I'm doing fleshed out and the details keep evolving. One good thing is that the idea is not a forum, it's just a committee of people using a google group and sharing web-based documents. So that cuts down on the troll factor right away. At first though I'm simply going to get people who I think are genuinely interested and also people here in KS that I trust as well as RPF'ers that I've known for some time.

I honestly have given this area little thought as I'm more worried about either no one doing anything, or the committee inbox being overrun by one serial poster. The group can fix the latter using admin tools that's part of the google group for that kind of stuff though. There's also an issue of how the comittee members moderate stuff that supporters want promoted on the map document. Initially I'd like to see everything relevant to grassroots organizing and connecting with grassroots in your area included.

I think that these issues of how content put on the map is moderated, how we tailor the emails we send out, how we deal with problem committee members and troll posters though are minor issues at this stage. If they became an issue in the scenario I'm describing then I think that would actually be a sign of success that things were moving along well enough for those problems to present themselves.

 

[LinuxJedi]

I would suggest that Google Groups is a bad idea. First, if Google abandon groups this would leave the movement at a severe disadvantage. Second, I would be concerned about creating "islands" of support with no interconnection.

I think that it is important to have some sort of geographical-hierarchy of groups, but something like Redmine projects with an associated mailing list is probably the best way to go.

Take a look at the demo of redmine: http://demo.redmine.org/

 

[wizardwatson]

So basically the idea is Ron Paul Event & Project News - but pushed out by email rather than being actively sought. I still think that the first step is to make the news available on a website and invite people to opt in. If the news is interesting, then people will opt in. Think about Townhall. You can go to the Townhall website and see all the news. Or you can get it emailed to you if you opt in. But you don't opt in until you have checked out the website a couple days or weeks running, and decide that this is information that you want in your inbox.

I like this idea, it has a different focus from the "social forums" (RPF & DP). It might give events and projects more visibility and more support. They tend to get lost in the chatter on the forums. Perhaps the main challenge may be getting the word out to the people who are creating and running the Events and Projects, to tell you about their events/projects so they can be included in the news. Who are these people? How will they know to contact you? This is where you need to come up with a plan for reaching out to existing state people and get them to agree to give you info.

The "map" document is the central place where all the info will be aggregated. People will be directed there to see what basically amounts to a catalog of grassroots activity. And if they choose they can opt-in to receive emails that summarize activities and action items specific to their area. That's really all that it is.

Yeah, both committee members supporters and project leaders would contribute to the "map". Supporters might ask to post a poker party in their town for activists. A committee member might be datamining local GOP event info. A moneybomb project leader might want a link to his promotion site put on the map. It's a collaborative project and the map is the end product along with the newsletter emails.

 

[wizardwatson]

Well, building the tool is trivial in comparison to figuring out that we end up where we want to be. A few points:

- Email is really outdated... aggregated RSS feeds based on things you like is much better
- Project management has to be an important part, to allow a small group of people to come up with something to do, and see it through themselves (think SourceForge)
- Email for things like newsletters is a good idea, but email for "getting things done" can be aggravating... because of the number of emails you might get per day
- If done properly, there is no need for there to be a "master controller" vs. a bunch of loosely coordinated parts (again, think open-source project that depend upon other open-source projects).
- ChipIn needs to be there, and some reputation system for ensuring people aren't just lining their pockets with grassroots money

I'm not intimidated by the technology aspect, or getting people to adopt it... but we do need to learn from the positives and negatives of moneybombs, RPF and DP, so that we learn from mistakes.

The scope of this project I'm trying to outline is very small. And I'm specifically NOT making project management part of that. I'm actually part of another group of RPF'ers that tried something like that in 2010 and no one ended up doing anything. I've posted a lot of text in this thread but basically I'm talking about a collaboratively managed collection of wikipages and a newsletter with multi-person committees set up to handle emails and supporter feedback in a timely and efficient manner. I feel like if I go outside this box I'm heading into "scope creep" territory.

Increasing the scope to include some kind of project management I think would be an idea killer. This isn't to say there is no use for it, just that I'd be more comfortable from my standpoint merely using the map to point to and promote those projects that are managed in the way you envision.

I would suggest that Google Groups is a bad idea. First, if Google abandon groups this would leave the movement at a severe disadvantage. Second, I would be concerned about creating "islands" of support with no interconnection.

I think that it is important to have some sort of geographical-hierarchy of groups, but something like Redmine projects with an associated mailing list is probably the best way to go.

Take a look at the demo of redmine: http://demo.redmine.org/

As I said above project management is really outside the scope of what I'm proposing. My idea would promote rather than participate in project management ideas and initiatives.

I don't think using google groups is a "bad" idea though. Yes it could go away, but even if it did I'm sure we'd have warning, and what I'm proposing wouldn't be that hard to mimic with some code anyway (I'm a web programmer myself). I'm not saying use google groups permanently, if someone finds something that does the job I'm describing just as well or better without the failings of google group I'll be all for it.

But I'm attracted to the simplicity. I don't want to get into hosting our own website even, much less writing proprietary software or using project management suites that we have to install ourselves. Why go that far when all the project requires shared public and private docs, a mailing list group (google groups) and basic email functionality?

I'm not trying to shoot you down, I really appreciate the input you've put on here (thanx!!!). I'm just trying to get you (and others who may be watching) that I'm not trying to create something that is a panacea for the grassroots movement. I see an unfilled need. A hole in our whole process. We have forums and social networks, people with large supporter lists, web-based project management tools like you describe, and many other things. What we don't have is an easy way to get ahold of organizers in your area and we don't have a "catalog" a "map", if you will, of grassroots information.

Even to me it sounds stupid easy. I can easily see someone yelling "well shut up and build it then". I want to, but I want the effort to be collaborative and current which means we need to spread around the work to keep it updated. If I devoted 8 hours a day I might be able to compile most of what's happening in KS but I'd never be able to keep a national list of events and info current.

Let's build that, then when we've succeeded in getting eyeballs all going in the same direction we can use that to point to the "higher order goods" that you are thinking about.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the internet is big but it is finite. This project wouldn't grow forever, eventually the effort required would level off. There's only so many grassroots projects and events going on across the country and I think it's not out of reach to get nearly all of it in our catalog.

 

[parocks]

great, another website </s>

I like the ability of you 2 to type, be reasonable, make sense.

But you're talking about another website, it isn't something other than that.

On the plus side, who ever wants to build a website has a long time to do it, because you aren't talking about 2012.

Building a website like this is easy enough, getting people who are already using facebook or meetup or whatever they're using, to use your website would be extremely time consuming, and dull, and not filled with glory or money or power. So, typically, that's where these projects dwindle.

This "map" document is a web page, right, it's on the internet? So, we ARE talking about another website.

You really just should accept that what you really should be doing if you want to spend time doing this (that's iffy) is building a website. And then you need to determine exactly what the new website should contain, and then you figure out which of the various joomla, drupal, etc softwares will work for you.

You might want to take a look at the functionalities that are sitting right here
http://webmusicvideo.com/bachmann2012/ This is mine, it's there because last summer someone said "I own bachmann2012.com, what should we do with that", and I said "I'll do something, why not?" And we figured out what to do, and did something. Very few people cared and used the site. But, you know, why take it down? I use it because its the fastest way to upload graphics (as an attachment on the forum section). It's easy enough to throw together various modules and components, a community social network component, an email list component, groups, secret groups, etc etc etc. If you wanted to look at it, you'd see the features.

The key point is - it was very very easy to do.

 

[wizardwatson]

great, another website </s>

I like the ability of you 2 to type, be reasonable, make sense.

But you're talking about another website, it isn't something other than that.

On the plus side, who ever wants to build a website has a long time to do it, because you aren't talking about 2012.

Building a website like this is easy enough, getting people who are already using facebook or meetup or whatever they're using, to use your website would be extremely time consuming, and dull, and not filled with glory or money or power. So, typically, that's where these projects dwindle.

This "map" document is a web page, right, it's on the internet? So, we ARE talking about another website.

You really just should accept that what you really should be doing if you want to spend time doing this (that's iffy) is building a website. And then you need to determine exactly what the new website should contain, and then you figure out which of the various joomla, drupal, etc softwares will work for you.

...

The key point is - it was very very easy to do.

You are right. In essence it is a website. The "map" part anyway. But there's also a contact list and a mailing list and a newsletter involved. What I want is a simple shared website for the web document part though. I could easily use a wiki, or some other software, I don't however see the need for something like drupal or joomla. I'm open to suggestions about what software would be ideal for this scenario, but I don't want something complicated that requires knowledge of HTML. I want something simple to access and share, something that a non-tech person can simply copy and paste text into. This is why I propose using a google doc. There may be something to gain from using a traditional website but if it comes to that it should be a no brainer copying the shared doc compilation over to a website format under some url.

I'm a programmer and I use python hosted google's cloud platform. If it came to constructing a website to replace the "ticketing" system I'm proposing (implemented via a google group) it wouldn't be hard to program. Google's app engine provides a free robust infrastructure that could handle up to 5 million hits for free and it's cheaply scalable after that. The site could be programmed to handle the incoming email requests, a simple page could be constructed ajax style to where the committee members could just log in and click on the work items and email back the originator. This is probably the "ideal" anyway, because if you had a robust ticketing system for handling incoming mail you could have hundreds of people handling communication requests from all over the country rather than splitting the committees and work requests up geographically.

These are the key points that need to be implemented:

1. Communication: Anyone needs to be able to post info to the committee that gets moderated by the committee and added to the webpage and responded to IN A TIMELY MANNER. For that we need a simple group based ticketing system and a shared and collaboratively edited public web document.
2. Newsletter: The committees have to manual constuct emails that are relevant to geographical location of supporters and send them out. For this we simply need a shared contact list.
3. Template: We need clear instructions for supporters on how to use the system and clear instructions for committee members on how to moderate and in what way the web document should be constructed as well as guidelines for how the newsletter emails should be formatted.

It is easy, it's stupid easy but just because something is easy and obvious doesn't mean it's being done. Yes, great, another website. But tell me where the website is that allows me to directly contact someone with important or relevant info (and actually get them to respond) and have it added to a website that is promoted via a newsletter that is sent out to the supporters the info is most relevant to.

Point #1 is the main part to me and it is the easiest to implement. Point #3 is the hardest as it actually requires that someone intelligent put together an instructional template of "how to do things". Point #2 relies on #3 being done. For all these core things actual humans have to do it. There's no software that is going to to do all these things for you. Yes you can augment and streamline the process as I said above but you still need person to person communication and actual humans inputting information in an intelligable way. There is no AI that is going to parse your text and determine where and to who it should go. Even if your program has everything categorized and labeled with dates you're still using humans to catalog and categorize the data.

You are right though, projects fail because there is no glory involved. Doing actual work for free, simply for a cause is not something that comes natural to people. And yes it is "iffy" at this point whether people would actually work on this. People would rather type and type and type for self-esteem reasons on the internet rather than work towards a meaningful goal.

What I'm trying to put together is something that is as simple as can be and still produce something useful. And in the embryonic stage I want to do it using the simplest tools possible. All this typing is for me more than anything as it helps me realize what I'm unclear about and what I'm sure about. But ultimately before I can truly market it I have to decide as you said, exactly what the web document (or site) will contain.

 

[Paul Fan]

Have you looked at the Campaign for Liberty's map? It looks great but there isn't much content. Maybe because they aren't allowed to endorse? Or maybe for some other reason. There is definitely scope for a better version. How would your map be different? It would save work if trusted event/project leaders could post the events and projects themselves - maybe with moderation for a while until they were trusted. It would be good if users could select several places and get emails for all of them, which CfL doesn't seem to allow. It might be nice to have an international section too. There seem to be lots of RPFers from other countries.

 

[parocks]

http://webmusicvideo.com/bachmann2012/

WizWat - just look at that website.

Since I did that website - and since that website does much of what you want already - you might want to look at it.

Many, most, all of the things you want to accomplish I've done at one point or another for over 10 years.

It's 2012. Everything you want to accomplish can be accomplished with a website. All functions, interrelated.

Again, look at the website, test to see if it does, now, what you want it to do.

 

[parocks]

Have you looked at the Campaign for Liberty's map? It looks great but there isn't much content. Maybe because they aren't allowed to endorse? Or maybe for some other reason. There is definitely scope for a better version. How would your map be different? It would save work if trusted event/project leaders could post the events and projects themselves - maybe with moderation for a while until they were trusted. It would be good if users could select several places and get emails for all of them, which CfL doesn't seem to allow. It might be nice to have an international section too. There seem to be lots of RPFers from other countries.

I just looked at, joined up to, the c4l site. Not sure what people are talking about with the map.