After chewing on the idea a bit more, I see a couple of reasons that my "Build-and-run-a-Drupal-Gardensish-site for London NGOs" is not a good project for us to take on.
As someone pointed out at the meeting, Drupal Gardens already exists, as does Wordpress.com which is the default choice for low-budget non-profit websites. (I use it myself for www.postcarbonlondon.ca). So a Drupal solution would have to have compelling benefits along the lines of shared calendar/events, cross-group content sharing, or other goodies... There would need to be a compelling reason for NGOs to use our "LondonSpark" site over other free options, and building and running a site that would be compelling enough would be out of scale for our group. We need to start smaller.
So, I'm hoping you all have ideas for good one-off projects that we might want to adopt. Anything come to mind?
Comments
IdeaShelter.org. “Because stray ideas are annoying.”
Here is an idea for a low commitment volunteer project LonDUG might be interested in building:
"We all have more ideas than we can act on. Some of them are good ideas, but we know we are way too busy and will never get around to them. These stray ideas are like abandoned pets... homeless, cold and hungry, they hang around in our brains, whimpering for attention, gazing at us with their big brown idea eyes, always wanting love we just can't give them. End the guilt! Bring your stray ideas to IdeaShelter.org and put them up for adoption so they can get the love they deserve."
IdeaShelter is a "half-humourous, half-serious" animal-shelter themed website where anyone can post their stray ideas (Description, photos, media, idea/pet avatar, etc...) under a Creative Commons license and share them with the world. Anyone can comment on, like, vote up, tag, tweet or even adopt and implement an idea in the IdeaShelter. The site will have a meta-functionality where ideas are tag-clouded, trending, and so on, which actually might have some serious use for meme trend research. ("Who knew that networked iUnderware was a hot meme just waiting to break out?")
It would be a fun site to theme and build in D7, would use lotsa modules for high user engagement functionality, with an opportunity for a bit of custom coding for the meta-stuff, if the coders decide to do a module for serious trend analysis.
I think it might catch users imagination, with people competing to donate both funny and serious ideas to the IdeaShelter.
Any interest in getting together and building this as a group?
I like the idea! First though
I like the idea!
First though check out: http://ideaforge.ca/
See if this is too similar.
Serendipity
Hi Andrew;
Amazing -- I had no idea that you had built IdeaForge -- So either subconscious exposure, or it is an emergent meme.
I think the key differences are:
IdeaShelter is fun: it does not take itself seriously.
IdeaShelter is for abandoned stray ideas, rather than ones that are actionable projects.
IdeaShelter intentionally has no way to monetize ideas. (They have to be under a CC Share Alike license to post.)
So IdeaShelter could be an informal complement to IdeaForge... refer serious ideas seeking support to IdeaForge and focus IdeaShelter on the wild and crazy stuff.
I think I understand the
I think I understand the difference. Just didn't want to repeat efforts.
And just to clarify, TechAlliance and rtraction deserve the credit for IdeaForge.
It would be interesting to get an insider look as to how it was built as the code base would be quite similar would it not?
That would make a good tutorial...
Maybe the rTraction crew could give LonDUG a tour of the code? Some of the nuts and bolts would be the same, though IdeaShelter would have a strong social sharing aspect, as well as more eye candy and cheesy animation... you really know your stray idea is gone for good when you see and hear the IdeaShelter cage door slam shut on it ... :)