I am going to spend some time presenting a plan that I have wanted to present for a while. Please read this carefully before you make a comment...
My background is in open-source software. Yes, it is related to the nomination... let me explain how. You see, back in the early 80s a bunch of people starting pushing this idea of open-source software being just as good, if not better, than the commercial stuff. This was the seed of a revolution, that had a lot of the problems we have here. People didn't think it would work, people didn't believe, didn't accept it. They just kept on going on. Eventually, open-source software really took off... it is used by most major companies (Facebook, Apple, Google, IBM, etc.). But it was a long hard battle, which in many ways mirrors the battle against the GOP. But how is this a plan of action?
You see, open-source projects consist of a handful of volunteers that come together to do something they find interesting. Sound familiar? But one of the greatest challenges, has been to channel this excitement into getting something done. People come to open-source projects with very different backgrounds. Some people can program, some people are multi-lingual, some people are good at graphics. They get together, get organized, and something great comes about. It is the way that they organize things, that is what I want to discuss. And this, in my mind, can be the Ron Paul Manhattan Project.... something great that really turns things around now, and in future.
I'm going to layout the plan... sorry, but I don't know how to shorten this.
When a lot of people come to help with something, you start to get issues with scalability. Lots of people are talking, and it is hard to separate noise (people just chatting) from signal (something important). I have seen this a lot on forum threads... on page 4 someone says “I can help with X...” and on page 78 someone says “look someone has to do X...”... not realizing that on page 54, someone did X... Sometimes the attitude can be “read the whole thread before commenting!”, and if you do... you waste a ton of time. But this has happened in open-source projects too, and here is how we have dealt with it.
Open-source projects have a place for people to discuss things... mailing lists or forums (though few projects use them). This is a good place for people to introduce themselves, and say “Hi, I'm here! Need any help?” You can't get around that. It's also a good place for people to just be chatty, discuss the news, and be people. But no real work is done here. The work is shifted to an issue tracker, and what I propose is something like that.
The issue tracker is something that really is a pool of work that has to get done. Anybody with an account can add to that pool of work, and people with greater privileges can move things around or take on the work. That is, anyone can say “let's do this...”, but not everyone can say “okay”. Here is an example, just so you can take a look yourself: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu
Now I'm going to explain exactly what I have in mind. I am convinced that there are a lot of people who have things they can contribute, but they are not finding a purpose. Likewise, I'm convinced there are people who want to get things done, but can't find the people to help. And anything worth doing generally requires a number of people helping out (moneybombs, GOTV, and so on). If we have a job board, or “issue tracker” of our own, we can organize it according to skills, interest, state, counties, and so on. The power of the issue tracker, is for people to organize themselves according to what they are interested in... and to be able to forward an issue on to someone else to help out. It's important to know that each interest / thing has its own job board. I'll give an example, that illustrates this.
Consider that I want to get people out to vote in Iowa. The grassroots is focused there. We're going to create an issue for that, and associate it with Iowa. In particular, we're going to look at which particular counties to get some buses to. But we don't know where to focus our energy. There are a bunch of people on the job board who love data analysis and statistics. So the Iowa people create a job for them, that just says “where should we sent the 5 buses we have?” At the same time, we want everyone who goes to the poll to have a T-Shirt, and something local to Iowa. So the Iowa people also post a job at a graphics design board. This one task has been broken up into many pieces already, and everyone is doing something they are interested in because they only subscribe to the job boards they care about. I hope all of this makes sense (sometimes I have a hard time explaining things I think are clear, so I'm trying to be careful).
I have raised this idea before with others. They have suggested that it is possible for bad people to come in and ruin everything. Well, I don't think it's going to hurt us at this point. I'm trying to think of a way to really organize us fast... and I think people are good at figuring out who is a jerk and who is not. Others have accused me of attempting to be some sort of master boss or something, so I didn't bother posting this idea here until now... there is no centralization at all if you look at how this is done.
Another important thing is accountability. If someone says “I'm going to do X” and they do not... we know. And we probably know in time to cover for them.
Now, the software that does this is already there. It's free. Open-source. Aside from hosting, we don't have to do anything. It will take a day to setup (at most), and I think we can really get things organized. People want to chat in different places (Daily Paul. RPF. Etc.) But, I hope everyone can come together into one place “to work”.
I did look at Ron Paul Country, and I hoped it could become this...
Does anyone have hosting space to put this up? Would the RPF people be willing to host this, and have a subdomain like jobs.ronpaulforums.com or something?
If anything is not clear, please ask specific questions. Again, I hope all of this makes sense... but lately when I try to explain things people don't understand WTF I am saying ;-)
The software is redmine btw... I use it in my company, I have had other companies migrate to it... lots of people love it who try it out. Look it here http://demo.redmine.org/. With hosting space, this can be up in a day... and it is very easy to use. We don't have to program anything, just start using. The forums here are separated into states and topics, yes, but it's not the same as a job board which lists "X must be done...". It requires a lot of digging to find work.
My background is in open-source software. Yes, it is related to the nomination... let me explain how. You see, back in the early 80s a bunch of people starting pushing this idea of open-source software being just as good, if not better, than the commercial stuff. This was the seed of a revolution, that had a lot of the problems we have here. People didn't think it would work, people didn't believe, didn't accept it. They just kept on going on. Eventually, open-source software really took off... it is used by most major companies (Facebook, Apple, Google, IBM, etc.). But it was a long hard battle, which in many ways mirrors the battle against the GOP. But how is this a plan of action?
You see, open-source projects consist of a handful of volunteers that come together to do something they find interesting. Sound familiar? But one of the greatest challenges, has been to channel this excitement into getting something done. People come to open-source projects with very different backgrounds. Some people can program, some people are multi-lingual, some people are good at graphics. They get together, get organized, and something great comes about. It is the way that they organize things, that is what I want to discuss. And this, in my mind, can be the Ron Paul Manhattan Project.... something great that really turns things around now, and in future.
I'm going to layout the plan... sorry, but I don't know how to shorten this.
When a lot of people come to help with something, you start to get issues with scalability. Lots of people are talking, and it is hard to separate noise (people just chatting) from signal (something important). I have seen this a lot on forum threads... on page 4 someone says “I can help with X...” and on page 78 someone says “look someone has to do X...”... not realizing that on page 54, someone did X... Sometimes the attitude can be “read the whole thread before commenting!”, and if you do... you waste a ton of time. But this has happened in open-source projects too, and here is how we have dealt with it.
Open-source projects have a place for people to discuss things... mailing lists or forums (though few projects use them). This is a good place for people to introduce themselves, and say “Hi, I'm here! Need any help?” You can't get around that. It's also a good place for people to just be chatty, discuss the news, and be people. But no real work is done here. The work is shifted to an issue tracker, and what I propose is something like that.
The issue tracker is something that really is a pool of work that has to get done. Anybody with an account can add to that pool of work, and people with greater privileges can move things around or take on the work. That is, anyone can say “let's do this...”, but not everyone can say “okay”. Here is an example, just so you can take a look yourself: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu
Now I'm going to explain exactly what I have in mind. I am convinced that there are a lot of people who have things they can contribute, but they are not finding a purpose. Likewise, I'm convinced there are people who want to get things done, but can't find the people to help. And anything worth doing generally requires a number of people helping out (moneybombs, GOTV, and so on). If we have a job board, or “issue tracker” of our own, we can organize it according to skills, interest, state, counties, and so on. The power of the issue tracker, is for people to organize themselves according to what they are interested in... and to be able to forward an issue on to someone else to help out. It's important to know that each interest / thing has its own job board. I'll give an example, that illustrates this.
Consider that I want to get people out to vote in Iowa. The grassroots is focused there. We're going to create an issue for that, and associate it with Iowa. In particular, we're going to look at which particular counties to get some buses to. But we don't know where to focus our energy. There are a bunch of people on the job board who love data analysis and statistics. So the Iowa people create a job for them, that just says “where should we sent the 5 buses we have?” At the same time, we want everyone who goes to the poll to have a T-Shirt, and something local to Iowa. So the Iowa people also post a job at a graphics design board. This one task has been broken up into many pieces already, and everyone is doing something they are interested in because they only subscribe to the job boards they care about. I hope all of this makes sense (sometimes I have a hard time explaining things I think are clear, so I'm trying to be careful).
I have raised this idea before with others. They have suggested that it is possible for bad people to come in and ruin everything. Well, I don't think it's going to hurt us at this point. I'm trying to think of a way to really organize us fast... and I think people are good at figuring out who is a jerk and who is not. Others have accused me of attempting to be some sort of master boss or something, so I didn't bother posting this idea here until now... there is no centralization at all if you look at how this is done.
Another important thing is accountability. If someone says “I'm going to do X” and they do not... we know. And we probably know in time to cover for them.
Now, the software that does this is already there. It's free. Open-source. Aside from hosting, we don't have to do anything. It will take a day to setup (at most), and I think we can really get things organized. People want to chat in different places (Daily Paul. RPF. Etc.) But, I hope everyone can come together into one place “to work”.
I did look at Ron Paul Country, and I hoped it could become this...
Does anyone have hosting space to put this up? Would the RPF people be willing to host this, and have a subdomain like jobs.ronpaulforums.com or something?
If anything is not clear, please ask specific questions. Again, I hope all of this makes sense... but lately when I try to explain things people don't understand WTF I am saying ;-)
The software is redmine btw... I use it in my company, I have had other companies migrate to it... lots of people love it who try it out. Look it here http://demo.redmine.org/. With hosting space, this can be up in a day... and it is very easy to use. We don't have to program anything, just start using. The forums here are separated into states and topics, yes, but it's not the same as a job board which lists "X must be done...". It requires a lot of digging to find work.
