All Day Community Directory-building Sprint and Meetup Tue Sep 6 11am-11pm

hey, this is a great project and am wondering out loud if this is happening in the Bay Area at all ?

I know Code for America is Oakland (or something close)...

anyone out there doing anything Bay side ?

Hi everyone.

I'm so excited to come to Boston and do this full sprint day with you all. It will be really nice to focus on Drupal, with other Drupallers, I haven't really been able to most of the the year.

Here's a blogpost that I wrote about the day - which also has an agenda & more background information.
http://codeforamerica.org/2011/08/29/help-launch-citygroups-in-boston/

Drupal-wise...

Since some of you might be interested -- here are some of the more interesting Drupal problems that CityGroups presents.

CityGroups uses Feeds, Features, Views DataSource. Flags. There is mapping, which is a combination of openlayers & a leaflet map + JSON/GeoJSON.

Here's the list of ambitious future feature that I think would be good for this tool:

• installer packages - this product uses an installer profile, and if anyone wants to try to make a drush make script that could be a fun project
• there's a totally new-to-drupal feature (i think) that involves verifying an email address that is entered in a field.
• making modules - there are these sub-modules for citygroups that involve form altering which are kind of fun. good projects for people who want to learn module development
• super-geeky - round-trip data syncing based on UUID - the nodes all have a 'watch' flag, users can download CSV or export JSON for all the data, there is a nid, UUID & external id for contributed data - all this is set up - but it needs real testing and
• way way way geeky - probably too much for the day, but there is a theoretical way that we could export all of the data via JSON, use a similar project's JSON to Google Refine (Max Ogden's project is Open211 and he's building this. it's cool.) and then back into drupal - which is CRAZY but I think it's theoretically possible. :)
• the map: working on making a printable map (bigger than the web screen) - and also to by able to draw polygons on mobile device/touchscreen
• tropo integration - search directory via text message
• part of the idea, also, is to eventually have the entire site push to a couchdb
• if a bunch of cities use the same codebase - how should we manage feature updates & requests?

non-drupal projects

• data scraping - depending on the source of content - if you are interested in data scraping we can show you ScraperWiki - which works w/ PHP and is really fun.
• making flyers & outreach materials
• data strategy - which groups do we want to invite to help fill up the directory with groups people should know about?

And note -- later in the day we'll talk open source business models...

Here's one idea that I have:
Crazy radical civic startup / web service - CityGroups is unique in that it is a backend for a civic-focused web service - a open source platform for city-based community groups that are currently under-served by the fact that they are small, often volunteer run community projects and generally buried in the sea of information about groups in cities.

How can we work smartly in different cities to support this as civic infrastructure? is it possible to invite our communities to support the project, kickstarter style? If so, let's try it. Why not, right? This kind of directory doesn't exist, but should - and it should serve people who are community organizers already & make their lives way easier. I feel like we can do this. And I'm really happy to make this a project where people can have a good experience learning about Drupal by working on a project where their time and energy goes toward making their own city that much better.

Calagator is a really cool example of a community-focused open source project - they did all their work on the project together - and it was a really big community effort. I think this project has potential to be run the same way -- and since our project is a web service itself - it can strengthen any of these related efforts (efforts to make community calendars, city wikis, organization & service directories and more) - bigger projects like Groups Near You & WiserEarth have massive scope. We're hoping here that focusing on cities, and making it more 'yelp-y' will turn this into something that we can really use - like the yellow pages.

To run CityGroups in any city will take coordination, and we probably want to use a model that we use in Drupal where there are community managers, funded sprints, but also to fund real support for the cities -- since it is an actual service. I'm willing to coordinate this and to try to get us some support to make this service a reality, and especially to try new models of 'paying for the plumbing' - I have some ideas from various civic startups that I've learned about in my time at Code for America - but let's understand what is involved here so that other people who are inspired to make new open source technologies for cities have more options to run a sustainable business.

Bring your opinions!

We'll have a fun day of coding & working together - and making a plan to make CityGroups successful in Boston.

Townsquare is a Drupal-based collaboration platform for community organizations who wish to track events, volunteer participation, provide documentation, and facilitate conversations.

Technically, it is a lightweight Drupal 7 distribution built on the Development Seed stack (features, context). Townsquare is built for FreeGeek Chicago, but may have other applications.

https://github.com/freegeekchicago/townsquare

Please ignore me -- the Drupal Meeting is at 6:30

We'll get dinner at 6:00 pm unless there is food at the Meetup - is there usually food at the Meetup?

Hey mlcn, if you do this again, can there be a virtual option for participation? This is an awesome and worthwhile endeavor that you've taken on! -jbachana

Here is an update on what happened at the Sprint, as well as some of the other stuff that has happened since September 6.

We had great people there

I just want to thank everyone for coming. We had about 15 people, which I heard is a very good turnout for a Drupal sprint in Boston. We had technical folks & non-technical community organizers there, and I want to thank everyone for being part of one of the very first community sprints to launch a Drupal product for a city.

Facilitated Group Projects

What was really great about the sprint we had was that we did this activity, facilitated by Ben Sheldon, (with post-it notes) where people figured out what they wanted to work on - by talking. This is very different from what happens at regular code sprints, where you show up and rifle through the issue queue.  

I've tried similarly in a remote situation by having short Skype calls with potential volunteers, which worked well.

PHOTOS

Projects people started

We had a list of potential features to give an idea of what is possible - and I was completely impressed by the range & diversity of technical & non-technical projects that everyone was interested in doing. These were all very fun tasks - like practicing cloning a git repository, RDF integration, researching node.js to see how it fits with Drupal, documenting a data standard, figuring out what kind of datasets were already available in Boston, shape based geographic search, launching the project, user profiles, defining the geographic region, performance testing, thinking about the code sprint development sandbox experience, figuring out community site administration & more.

Of course, this was a sprint from 11-6pm, with about half that time talking & getting up to speed on the project. This is often that case with sprints, where you think you can get further in one day than you really can. But it is important to understand that the nature of the in-person collaborations are valuable & long-term. It's not just the code.

I would be curious to hear other people's impressions of how having a facilitated experience changed the nature of participation in the code sprint. From my perspective - it was deeply interesting because, true to my own Drupal is Legos and I want all the Legos tendencies, I had previously thought of lots of potential features... so it was fun to do this with everyone, and see which Legos they wanted to play with. The ideas that everyone had filled in the full spectrum of what needed to get done in order to launch CityGroups for Boston - and we did make a lot of progress that week in terms of covering technical, non-technical and 'local stakeholder' outreach.

Documentation

Boston CityGroups Documentation

The sprint pointed out major holes in documentation, configuration & UX

Technically, bringing the Drupal product to a sprint improved it by leaps and bounds - much more than waiting a year and then releasing the product, only to learn that your moderators have needs and you need to build more stuff. The product is still beta & as such as weird behaviors (and I opened up the development process very early for exactly this reason. Please see webchick's famous post arguing against perfection & embracing the chaos ;) - and then also see Calagator's social development blog. The CityGroups blog is here.

In Drupal at least, uncovering the bugs & developing solid user experiences are very important - so I would really recommend this process for anyone who has a Drupal product that is meant to be used by communities & citizens. I feel like an old-fashioned open source advocate saying this, but I really believe it. :)

It was also really interesting to see what happens when you bring a Drupal product to a Code Sprint - I noticed that all of the sudden, 15 developers need Google API keys, and of course if there's no instance to work on, then most people will work in Google Docs or in the Github wiki. Because of the sprint, I added a better dashboard - which has links to the site configurations that are necessary. For anyone who has installed Open Public, you can see that they did a really great job with the dashboard & site setup, so now it's much easier to tailor the Drupal instance for a city or special project.

NEXT

Remote Sprints = good idea

Maybe what we can do is to plan a series of remote sprints, in conjunction with some in-person sprints in cities that are committed to making this project happen. I can imagine that if we were to incorporate a remote sprint, that it would be handy to see if we can use Google Hangout or Skype so that participants can see the people who are there. Otherwise, we can do emails/IRC chats with potential participants ahead of time, and then do a checkin call on the day of the sprint, and then just stay chatting on IRC while people tackle projects.

With respect to that, I am planning to have a sprint in the Bay Area in early October. Then it would be great to do another one that is purely remote and see how that goes as well. We could do the remote one in early October as well.

Youth Summit

After the sprint, we met with a community leader who is organizing a youth summit in Boston, in October. He had the very great idea, for Boston, of the first groups that we focus on could be groups for youth - for example to have something that could help youth who are doing projects in their communities. 

Recommend 10 / Recommend 50

Here is an idea for cities where people want CityGroups, but we can't immediately find any particular projects or key stakeholders: 

We could do a campaign to ask people to recommend 10 community groups that make your neighborhood better. And we can ask community leaders who might have a database to recommend 50. From discussions with different non-profit groups & people in politics, it is clear that some people are concerned with sharing their data. One group of users - regular citizens - is are not as concerned and has basic needs for information that are not being met. Meanwhile, all of the community organizers get calls all the time asking for their lists. We might just need to seed the database to show the utility & need, and then hope that these community leaders come around & share more. 

In this instance, we are working directly with city governments, and the hope is that the local government can support these projects to provide basic infrastructure for citizens. It seems like it would be helpful to have a 3rd party that is less biased & has a direct legal call to serve all citizens. That's a big part of why I'm trying to organize this project as democratically produced open source software.

We need Boston point people

At this point we have a lot of things in place that we would need to launch CityGroups as a small project in Boston, with the hopes to grow over time. The strategy with this project is to have a few groups in different cities that have communities around the project. In Boston, we have a great developer community & the support from the City. And we have some champions. That's pretty good for just a few weeks. If you know anyone who you think would be a good point person, who could be dedicated to help kick this off for at least the next 6 months, please let me know.

It would be great to have some Boston partners & advisors to be involved with any grants that we write so as to support local community management and the creation of marketing materials, supporting local sprints & any custom development features that Boston might specifically need.

Also, it would be great to do a Kickstarter campaign once we have a project that serves Boston well. Foundation support is one thing, but Kickstarter makes you explain the market value of what you are doing. Which is probably a good lesson for any die-hard open source advocate! :)

What's next

• We are sprinting to get CityGroups ready for prime time in Seattle - which means that a lot of the code is getting stabilized, the copy in the site is getting
  improved, and we are writing press releases to get community members involved.
• After September 21, I will make a schedule of when I'm working on the code & available for 'community sprinting' (it will go on our blog, but i'll update this thread)
• As I said, we will have some sprints in October, and bring CityGroups to BADCamp. (Bay Area Drupal Camp, 1000+ attendees, Non-Profit Summit, later in October)
• At Code for America, we have a big summit of cities October 13/14...so I'm getting ready to present this project to all of them.
• Lots of hard work on the sustainability plan - which mainly involves getting a few cities participating (community groups, community leaders, stakeholders, point people, developer community, government support.) and finding some foundation support for the next year or two to facilitate the community management of the project - as a project that serves cities, and serves developers, designers, writers & community organizers who want to give back to their city & contribute to solving a problem that costs our local community organizations a lot of time & energy to track down other like-minded people.

Can't wait to see what happens next.

Thanks everyone for participating!!

Warmly,

Chach