Hey everybody. You've heard me talk about the Overnight Website Challenge before as a opportunity to build a free website for a local nonprofit over the course of 24 hours. But now I'm planning to make it a year long thing.
What if we can use our involvement with a local non-profit as a way to demonstrate what Drupal can do? What if we could use this as a teaching tool and help others learn how to build Drupal websites with our work? We could build out reusable code that can help non-profits spin up websites that suit their needs and thus enabling non-profits to get their message out to more people.
Proposal
Platform Team
Let's assemble a group of people to help build out a common platform for non-profits. With the data we've gathered and our own experiences we can attempt to satisfy the common feature requests for non-profits and provide a good out-of-the-box experience.
Application Team
Let's also assemble a group of people who will attend the Overnight Website Challenge event in Minnesota next March. Let's organize our talents so that we can customize the platform for the non-profit we get paired with. And let's find ways to stay engaged with them after the event is over.
My Dream
The result of all this effort would be to make a lasting difference. We can help non profits around the world by giving them a tool to engage their audiences. When necessary we can improve Drupal's architecture to make it easier for them. We have this event (OWC) to gauge how well our efforts are progressing and we have the level of organization and interest to make it happen. We just need people to get engaged into the process of making the software better.
Please join us here:
Github - https://github.com/cosmicdreams/OWC6
More details coming soon.
Comments
EcoSite Competition
Chris,
This is a great idea. I love the thought of developing not just a site but also reusable code that can help non-profits build their own sites to suit their specific needs. It would be great if the non-profit you initially chose had an environmental focus. You could then enter the original site into the EcoSite Competition (www.ecositecompetition.org) and even more important, you would be assisting others in building sites for similar EcoOrganizations.
There are many local environmental groups that need sites. These are groups looking to bring people together, build local communities, educate, build awareness all in the effort to protect the environment for all of us as well as future generations. A powerful, dynamic (Drupal) site that is easy to build is exactly what is needed.
Cheers,
-Jeff