Is anyone using Drupal to connect their neighbors? (Twin Cities)

from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Would love to know more about this capability!

Also interested in helping out with an e-Democracy project!

I am willing to help out.
Would love do to something where we could get live, up to date, police reports for your area. Or have some list of events going on in your area (for instance events at your local library). Voting, picnics, events at parks.

Sounds like a great framework for making things like this a reality (virtually).

Pleased to see all the interest. I'm already involved in E-Democracy.org AND have been spending a lot of my personal time learning about Drupal in recent months, so I'm definitely interested.

It is great to see all of the positive interest.

What kind of location is super pizza and beer friendly? I am think a couple months out.

Let me share some more detail/links:

1. Projects/tools to leverage (perhaps)

• DrupalVOIP: http://drupal.org/project/voipdrupal/
• Vojo - DrupalVOIP Hosted Solution: http://vojo.co
  - MIT info: http://civic.mit.edu/blog/schock/let-the-vojo-workshops-begin
• CommunityTools.info - http://communitytools.info
  - Out of Estonia
• OG Maillist - http://drupal.org/project/og_mailinglist
  - We've donated: http://drupal.org/node/1035930

What's missing?

1. Pilot Context

My non-profit has a grant to connect neighbors online in St. Paul - http://beneighbors.org - We connect them across 15+ communities.

We are bringing people into our existing very very public Neighbors Forum model using a python-based GPL tool: http://GroupServer.org All most all of our money is in field outreach not tech, but we have some tech resources.

Within our grant, we have the option to pilot private electronic block clubs on a few lower income, highly diverse blocks in St. Paul. We also want to see e-blocks get connected in more places building on civic volunteer interest - like your block. We have serious issues with some of the .com sites that are emerging in the neighbor connecting space as well as how Facebook Groups do not give block leaders/connectors the tools they need to reach non/infrequent Facebook users. Reaching older residents is really key and those rarely online.

We envision a test on a block with high concentration of Hmong speakers for example: http://www.facebook.com/groups/HmongVillageCommunity/permalink/376104709...

We host an online group for "block connectors" who could be the non-tech leaders who might use an e-block tool: http://e-democracy.org/blocks

We are open to testing e-block groups using various technologies to see what works for people. However, we love open source and want to see what the Drupal community can help make happen.

1. Telephone/SMS/Web/FB/E-mail connections

Our philosophy is that you need to reach local people where they are via a unified technology experience. If you force people to chose one technology at a local level you cut your effort off from huge chunks of people.

With e-block clubs we need an "urgent" channel option that allows say 50 nearest neighbors to connect and when they need to reach people via an instant text, voice call with recorded message, e-mail, etc. We also need typical online community options like the weekly digest or web-only when you want option for non-urgent stuff.

Here is a use scenario:

In short, a scenario like this may be possible - a block leader receives important message from police and thinks it should be
forwarded to people on his/her block. He/she quickly forwards it via e-mail to the 30% of households on his block who have e-mail and speak English.

Then he/she picks up the phone calls a special number and conveys the information by recording a voice message in English but also Hmong, Spanish, Somali, etc. if they speak that language. Then automatically in the coming minutes the system calls one by one the 30% of households on the block who speak X language who are not online but for who contact information was collected and permission to robo-call on important matters was gathered.

Finally, for online savvy folks who want it, they could chose to be sent a text message with a link to the audio file to play from the
web or have it sent to them via e-mail.

Also in theory you could have a system where the Police might make available pre-recorded messages in various languages that a block leader could decide to forward.

Finally, as our approach is two-way, responses can be gathered and in theory people on the block could use a mix of e-mail, web, texting, and voice via telephone to communicate with each other as a group.

1. I want to use this on my block too, you might want to use on yours as well

I am very interested in how the block leader/connector who shows initiative (like a willingness to go door to door to sign people up in-person on paper or leave them a special link to self-register) can be supported with tools that help them record directory details about their neighbors, keep more private sharing selective among neighbors willing to share contact details with each other (virtual directory, easy print to PDF version), and automate some community life exchange sharing information (like willingness to share tools, collective purchase snow removal, etc.)

One of the key things a block leader does is gather contact info. After a murder on the street two doors down (among two people from outside the area who agree to meet here for some odd reason to settle a debt), I started work on a contact information sign-up form. I went a little hog wild with the check box options and need to revise them big time, but this gives you a sense of what one might add in addition to a multi-tech neighbor to neighbor communications system. See:
https://docs.google.com/a/e-democracy.org/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=d...

OK, anyone who read all this deserves a cold one and a slice. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone and say hello to your neighbors!!! (I wonder what they might think about this idea.)

Steve

I'm definitely interested, with the usual caveats about schedules, availability, other emergencies, etc. :-)

I'm also interested in this. I think there's quite a bit of potential overlap with timebanking and other community accounting schemes, particularly after looking at the interests list in that form. I know at least the Dane County TimeBank here experimented some with block coordinators or an equivalent, although I'm not sure of the current status.

Also, a project I'm working focused on what I've started to call open-notebook communities (or documentation and communication of community projects) has overlap, although less with the emergency communication part of the suggestion (buildftw.org, currently in alpha 0.4 or something but usable). FWIW, the longer-term of that project includes community asset mapping and qualitative accounting mixed with timebanking and more normative acounting.

Also, I agree that this idea is probably more of a communication strategy consideration than a platform one (incorporating tel/sms/fb/twitter/etc), and in addition to what's already been suggested I wonder what a digital kiosk setup could offer (listing block events, announcements, etc). Here in Madison there's been some experimentation with real-time bus kiosks (one in a cafe, one in a makerspace, maybe more elsewhere), and it'd be interesting to extend the idea towards other neighborhood concerns. Some info on the existing kiosk over at hackingmadison.org. I can see a framework where kiosks would tilt towards strong localized content, but with the ability to have some content communicated more broadly if a project was pulling people together across a broader range.

Anyways, again, interested. A lot depends on time, though (I'm a grad student in an unrelated field).

I'm the aforementioned guy of mutual_credit fame.
My org, Community Forge is interested in this, when its done!

Wow, the more I talk about this around town and around the country the more excited people are about the idea.

The emerging plan is to gather a small group (in-person/Google Hangout) to first outline the specification. If we have a day and a half long hack, we need to really get focused on the core requirements and embrace a modular outline so people can also distribute the work and id the existing modules that can be integrated/adapted, etc.

So, who can step up to lead the spec drafting?

Who can help with this first stage?

Timeline - starting later next week, I'll work with the spec leaders/co-leaders on gathering existing outlines (for example an outline shared with MIT vojo people). Then we will schedule the spec meeting. Based on this crucial first step we will select a couple fri even/sat weekend options for the big hack(s).

Cheers,
Steve

We've stuck it into the Hack for MN idea box for June 1 and 2:

http://hackformn.org/idea/code-neighbors-simple-neighbor-directory-app

Based on feedback from the Drupal user group meeting, we've identified a simple starting point:

http://bitly.com/codeforneighbors

Join us!! http://hackformn.org