indyvoter.org requirements document

I work on a networking website (Campus Activism) for student activsts where I've been thinking about making it more like Friendster, by doing things like adding profiles and even dating. I wonder if there is a trade off between gloss and usability? For my website I tried to implement it as what a relational database would look like if you put it online, and to give users access to a lot of the features that come from that. Another way of phrasing it - is there a trade-off between creating a website for activists and one for non-activist progressives? That is the difference between people who are organizing groups, holding events, and the much larger numbers of people who would do something like vote for Nader or a progressive Democrat. The latter group might be more interested in person-to-person networking because that is how they do their "activism" (eg talking to an acquaintance about an issue vs organizing a campaign). I just started an email list for "online activist networking projects" - you can subscribe to it at http://campusactivism.org/mailman/listinfo/activist-tech_campusactivism.org

In the spirit of bugsquashing, you have a broke link: http://vax.area.com/marc/indyvoter/indymail.txt (from "Read some coax email Shira wrote after reading this") is a 404.

yo. your shit is important. here's some thoughts. we were trying to do a lot of this at grassroots.com. but their formula was all fucked up. even with a bazillion dollar marketing budget, marketing couldn't buy a clue of what they were after. everyone had a different pie-in-the-sky idea of what the thing should do. in the end, they gave up and went for the corporate market. they've got a kick ass system now for corporate lobbying, but they can't find a customer that can figure out how to use it all. people are sheep, you know that. (and i'll be stoked the day i find a marketer that can back up his plans with the same data that i back up my code with...) http://www.indyvoter.org is about getting skull and bones out of office (including keeping kerry out of office... http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-10.htm). you want to rock the vote, that's who you have to target. let's say it's one in ten people in the country that are going to convince four of their friends to get a simple majority of the vote. if 1/3 of 240 million people vote, you basically need to be able to support 800,000 people on the site, with different intermeshed viewpoints of what is going on, visiting it as often as we visit our favorite social network site. Can you even get the message out to attain that goal though? i'm on your side, but i think this is going to be a tall order. okay, so say you win and the message is out. 800K people are charged. They come to the website and submit an average of 10 different items (networking etc.) to the system per week. definitely less transactions than I do in some days on orkut or tribe, but i don't go there all the time. you are up past a million transactions posting in a 12 hour window of when people are awake. That's about 1500-2000 database transactions per hour. That's not too bad, maybe 30 transactions per second. Can your architecture handle that? can perl handle that? (are you doing sessions? how much time are you going to program around not having sessions???) this doesn't even include people browsing the site, it's just people pushing data into the store from a web tier. I'm thinking that you cache the data for the web tier outside the database. but if you don't cache and have a 5:1 ratio of people reading to writing and you are getting stuff directly from the database, you are suddenly at 180 transactions per second. '<'game_over buzzer="on"/'>' http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2004-01/msg00113.php has some interesting trivia. of the best ways to become a media non-event is to not be able to handle the traffic. The populace is pissed and they want to take action, but it's just going to feel like another failed attempt at getting things under control if this is completely overloaded and they can't get in. imagine if this thing worked? i think you already are! Okay, now look at http://www.prevayler.org/wiki.jsp. See what I am talking about? You get one fat node with a jammin java jvm, or you get four front-end machines talking over a gig-E switch to a prevayler engine running behind it and you probably have all you need. But you don't know until you can load test it to know. even with load test, do you have sufficient unit testing to know that the thing is not going to be a space shuttle with a hole in the wing? Okay, enough technical issues, onto the requirements. hopefully, you can see that getting this right is going to be a piece of art in itself. just getting a system together that you can have assurances will pass unit testing and load testing (never mind the rest of the test noise) with decent code coverage, you are going to be back to your classic third/third/third... one third building requirements, one third writing code, one third testing. if you want this done in three months, you basically have a month to code all these features. is that really going to happen? please don't let me stand in the way of magic, for i shall fall in line behind. but if this is not reality, i suggest you get it aligned in short order so you aren't concentrating on features that are not going to deliver. i know *all* the features contribute, but i can't see how you have time to implement them all with imprecise communication happening, even if (erm, *especially* if) you have a thousand developers. So you whittle down the feature set by the end of the week. It's enough to make stuff happen. It gets completed and it's fast, it works, and it can handle the load. Great! NOW add more features. Don't take a chance on this being a binary rollout (it happens or it doesn't), instead get something small out and grow it.

The swing state idea is a good one, but you can get even more granular - "solid" states aren't, necessarily, and there are county-by-county things to be done almost everywhere. I think that would help give hope to some of our geographically isolated comrades. :) Check out the map and information these folks have put together: http://www.massinc.org/Commonwealth/new_map_exclusive/beyond_red_blue.html

I think that it would rock to have some sort of downloadable training/usage guide for the computer retarded (me). I understand that folks are thinking of flash movies for training, but you need something not on the computer for people who are still trying to bridge the gap in their computer skills/ comfortable level with the internet. You guys all rock so hard and I really appreciate all the work and energy that is going into this. Also Marc is really nice and has good hair.

“Brothers don’t shoot” Police tactics and the upcoming Republican convention. From Jerry Goralnick The Living Theatre The climax of Sergei Eisenstein’s movie The Battleship Potemkin, which tells the story of a revolt during the Russian revolution, is the scene where the workers and the military face each other and the workers say, “Brothers don’t shoot”, and the soldiers put down their weapons. If we are to carry out protests in the street we must devise a campaign that leads to this moment. The police are our fathers, sons, brothers and sisters, and so before the Republican convention in New York, we must establish this relationship with them so we can achieve this, ’brothers don’t shoot’ moment. To turn out a million people in the streets will scare the power structure. The police refusing the command to assault protesters will shake the power structure below its’ foundations. They want to create a police state. We must convince the police not to go along. And we must carry out a preemptive strike on the real power. In my opinion this is not about the police or electing a president, this is about business. The government is master of the police/army. Business is the master of the government. Writing campaign to business leaders: When the Living Theatre was imprisoned in Brazil in the 70‘s it was the protests in front of the Brazilian National Airline office in New York that got them out. Explore all your business contacts; companies, clients, fraternal organizations, the college you go to. Remember, most schools have endowments and retirement funds that invest in businesses. Have these businesses write to the mayor and chief of police of NYC and say that if the police use violence they will not invest in NYC companies. Send copies of the letter to the Chamber of Commerce, NYC and Company (a tourism advocate) and any other business organization in NYC that you can come up with. We can all swap contact information. Who in your family and circle of friends is in a fraternal organization; Knights of Columbus, Rotarian, VFW. Convince that organization to contact the chapter in NYC with the same agenda; to have that chapter contact the mayor and police chief. Request a meeting with a business leader in NYC. Sell them on the idea that police violence will be bad for their business. Write to everyone yourself. If you have letterhead stationary, use that. Say you will talk to all your friends and business associates about not doing business with companies in NYC. If we can convince the business leaders that behind the thousands of protesters there are millions of consumers and investors, we can generate a feeling in the NYC business community that will have a stronger effect on the government and police than anything else. Writing campaign to the police: We have to get the PBA and the police union to tell the police brass, “don’t send us in there to crack the heads of protesters“ Who is the head of the police union in your town? Convince them to contact the police union in NYC. Have your parents send a letter to the mayor and chief of police of NYC and other police organizations, for instance, to Edward Mullins President NYC Sergeants Benevolent Association, saying that their son or daughter will be protesting and they don’t want to see the police hurting people. That they will boycott businesses in NYC and urge all their friends and business acquaintances to do the same. Have them say they are planning a donation to the PBA but are waiting to see how the police comport themselves before they give. Have them send a copy to the NYC Chamber of Commerce. Do all this ahead of time but also prepare second postcards and an e-mail list that can be sent the day the convention starts so they are inundated with mail twice. Meet the police: Make contact with an individual NYC policeman or two. Find out who they are. Establish a relationship. Imagine you are facing the police line at the protest and you say to officer so and so in front of you, “Which precinct are you in. My buddy Joe is in the 75th. Do you know him?” You must become a real person to that officer. Read the sports page. The republican convention will be in the middle of the baseball season. ‘Hey officer so and so, Yankees or Mets?’ As soon as you are in NYC start chatting up policemen so when you are facing them during the protest you know so much information about individual police and their collective situation that you can establish a meaningful human relationship. Imagine that you might end up facing someone you befriended earlier in the week. Learn the names and numbers of NYC and NY State laws that allow protests and govern how police can interact with the public so you can recite them to the police when you face them during the protest. Infiltration of fraternal police organizations: The Police Athletic League. Join the PAL in your city and get a patch that you can sew on the clothing you‘ll be wearing at the protest. Meet policemen. Practice talking to them. Remember, police are union people. The relationship of the police to the city government is master/slave and employer/employee. NYC police are currently working without a contract. If you are a union member, connect with them on that level. Get information on the financial situation of the police in NYC. During the protest tell the police facing you on the line that you are there for them. That no one should work without a contract. Be knowledgeable about their situation and relate it to your own. If you’re planning on coming to NYC next summer for the convention, start now. Meet the police in your town. Get to know them. Practice talking to them. Find out where their hearts are, what organizations they belong to. Come to NYC for a week. Meet some police. Establish a relationship with them. Dialogue with the police you know. Get inside their heads. Work on your arguments. Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn and try your arguments some more. You have to practice talking to the police before you get to the protest. The police are the sons and daughters of the working class. They are themselves working class people. Only by connecting with them on a human level and showing them that we and they are in the same situation can we convince them that we are on the same side. Imagine everyone at the protest wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘where’s our contract?’, and chanting ‘give the police a decent wage.’ NYC mainstream media: Send letters and e-mails to the advertising department of the NY Times and cc the managing director requesting fair coverage of the protests Make a letterhead like ‘The Committee to Lower the Circulation of the NY Times’, and say if you don’t see fair coverage your organization with get people not to buy the newspaper. That your goal is to lower their circulation by one million. Also send copies to the ten top advertisers in the paper. Send e-mail and postcards to the ten top advertisers on Fox news saying you will organize boycotts of their products if you don’t see impartial reporting on Fox news. Send a rundown of your activities to the advertising department at Fox news. Target as many media organizations as you like. Send these a month before and then arrange to have them sent again during the protests. If you are coming to the protest give a friend access to your e-mail account and prepare the e-mails ahead of time. Send postcards again a day before the protests so they’ll get there right at the height of the convention. The black bloc: The powerful peace movement which grew slowly in the 60’s was destroyed by the battle between those in the movement who felt that peace could be achieved through violence and those who felt that peace could only be achieved through peaceful means. I’ve been a pacifist anarchist for 20 years and in my opinion the black bloc screw it up for everyone. In my opinion, anyone who uses violence is an oppressor. The police need an excuse to be violent and the black bloc hands it to them. When police infiltrate peaceful groups to incite them to violence they fail. When they infiltrate the black bloc, it’s a simple job, and then we all suffer. A year of incredible preparation can be destroyed by one violent act that gives the police the excuse they need. To convince the black bloc not to participate in protests will be more difficult than convincing the police to put down their night sticks, but we must try. To convince them not to use violence will be even more difficult. If we can do a successful preemptive strike on police violence so that when the moment comes that the police are ordered to suppress the protest and we say to them, ‘Brothers don’t beat us,’ and they don’t raise their clubs and step aside instead, it will be a new morning in our world. Jerry Goralnick The Living Theatre www.thelivingtheatreworkshops.com

Oh damn. In my speechifying, I forgot the reason I came here. Tech4Dean, a group largely in the Bay Area but with members across the country, is hosting a Campaign IT Clearinghouse, for Dean Leaders (people in the field) and Dean technologists with products and projects to announce. You're welcome to peek in, once it's up and running: http://www.deanport.com/f2/ . It's a forum site.

Fascinating concepts, the ever expanding cloud. My concern, however, is the plant of an SFPD undercover agent or worse, someone from the FBI, who joins up and now has access to data regarding every activist in town. A trivial point today, but if the rightwing wins the next election, will our websites be color-coded? My other concern, besides the fact that your opposition is keen to exploit every loophole, is based on long experience both online and in campaigns (most of which were successful). It's the odd feeling that politics is being reduced to machine-driven consensuality. I know that's rather philosophical, but politics is earthiness in the service of the philosophy. Early social networks, like public-access TV and the WELL, also were supposed to generate a greater democracy...and didn't. There's nothing wrong with trying to build new tools to make grassroots, communal organizing more effective and efficient, but the absence of historical perspective -- what doomed the earlier systems, and how can that be avoided today? -- is disturbing. Each neo-campaign is copying the others' philosophy, so that we have a kind of conformity after all. Well, good luck to you. Remember to iterate as you go. Test. Go beyond us true believers. Find out. Many people will be counting on you.

This adds to a point David Jacobs make, but is otherwise may be unaddressed. More than offering the tool in a multiple of languages a fabulously populist feature would be to allow any user to translate the site into any encoded language that is not currently offered. Extract all site-static text into arrays or db, etc. and allow anyone to translate from any of the existing languages into their own. Perhaps allowing anyone else to review and improve the translation, wiki-style would help ensure the meaning is conveyed and the authorship power is not abused.

Hi, I'm David Jacobs. I work for MediaRights.org (mediarights.org/ymdi.org) and in the past I've worked on some other web sites (future500.com, nomoreprisons.net, randomwalks.com). I love this proposal, and I've been engaged in some similar conversations with other people, so I have a few comments. Sorry to be late to the party, but I only recently found out about this page. I'm happy that there is a consensus (it seems) on using FOAF and Atom so the project can interop with others, because there are going to be many others. At mediarights.org, we've got over a hundred thousand rows of data that we're converting into XML feeds & FOAF relationships, and with this we could let users take their friends/relationships/projects/news/films with them instead of having to re make their profile everywhere they go. Also, everything should be completely open source, and a (no permissions) CVS user should be available as well. "Everyone is making systems like this, so it has to be deployed by Feburary 2004 at the latest." Everyone is trying to build a friendster/tribe/linkedin/deanspace clone. All of these services have faults, and most of the clones will probably suck because they're rushed, that's why they're clones. Since we have perl, the programming is relatively straightforward. It's not easy, but it's also not necessarily innovate or ground breaking. Friendster has a hip brand, but still only a fraction of the users on the Internet and only a fraction of those users stick around. Make the brand sticky and make the software work. I'm talking about this kind of platform with three other organizations/foundations about this and I think more or less everyone is. In general, I think we should focus less on the time to launch and the competitive advantages of the "platform" and more time on making sure the end product is usable, accessible and effective. E-mail is not seen as a competitive advantage today, but ten years ago it was a new technology. I think XML news and contact will reach the same level of application awareness and saturation that email have. *accessibility To me, the real challenges are UI design and accessibility. Whatever platform runs indyvoter needs to be accessible across multiple languages and devices. There should be indyvoter for cell phones, playstations, x-box live, etc. This will take a lot of time to do it right. Much longer than a month, but that's OK because we do have a little bit of time. I think reaching more people in 3 months is better than reaching less people in 1 month. Also, we could take this time to reach out to existing community sites, like blackplanet, asian avenue, solidify partnerships & agreements with hip-hop web sites, community news web sites, *User experience is key "build your own blocs" - how is this different from the existing tribes? Someone should look at all different services who are already doing this. I actually think tribe.net is really good at it. No reason to reinvent the wheel, and make users relearn an interface. This goes hand in hand with accessibility as well, since the layout and markup also define how easy it is to translate a web page onto other languages and platforms.

I could not support an effort such as this more, and I would happy to do so technically, socially, financially as needed. I have one suggestion and one reminder. '<'br'>' '<'li'>'The suggestion would be to develop a user rating system equivalent to Cory Doctrow's woofie system in '<'i'>'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom'<'/i'>'. Woofie is based not just upon the resect of the people who think like you, but also the people who don't think like you. Therefore one is motivated to be mindful of others always, while they are working on their own goals.'<'br'>' '<'li'>'The reminder is that everyone can never forget that this solution can be used by any movement, so White Supremists and Jr. League of NeoConservatives or much worse will be benefited equally. But openess on all fronts is okay with me ;'>'

I have been speaking with many about an application like this. I have seen many good comments posted here and will try not to repeat. So here goes: 1) Look up people my issue and geography and skills (any of them): important 2) I like the vouch rating systems concept by which people would be able to be identified as flakes if they are, sort of a user rating system. Also something that controlls how many degrees of separation various levels of your data can be shown. I am linked to jim, jim to bob, bob to jane, jane shouldn't be able to see all my info, unless she is connected to me through a certain number of 3 degree connections. 3) Resources that are important to provide: Voter files voter files voterfiles, census data(race/ethnic and income in particular) for political geographes, maps, turn key fundraising conduit, a political pay pal of sorts would be great, electoral results for various elections to assist with targeting, email list applications (like yahoogroups, or more like http://www.npogroups.org, or riseup) I think that is it, and get it up fast. It is already clear that late entrants to the social networking scene (like tribes) do not have nearly as much success as the likes of friendster even though their system is soooooo much better. Also how do you prevent a right wing groups from using the tools that you have intended for the use of left leaning progressive organizations? and if it is all public how do you prevent espionage by the opponents of the groups and orgs using indyvoter? this goes back to the trust/vouch/user rating system, but it would be very easy for a conservative group or candidate to put a salt into an organization through this type of system.

# An incubator for the next thousand moveon.org/'s. # IndyVoter is an online social network focused on political activism, social issues and mutual support. Social networks like Friendster and Tribe.net are an easy way to learn more about your friends interests and make new friends. An issues-based focus increases longevity of a movement's momentum- avoiding the post-electoral pullout of campaign-based organizational networks like DeanSpace. The non-hierarchical nature of IndyVoter allows all individuals involved to set their own agendas and personally assess and make use of pooled community resources without the need for a central committee. # Indyvoter.org aims to reawaken democracy by offering any individual a way to organize around issues and campaigns that matter most to them while distributing the power and resources normally wielded by political parties and PACs across a self-organizing online and offline community. # Users will be able to gain real electoral power by forming dynamic voter blocs around issues and candidates that speak to them. # Users will discover what issues their friends care about, figure out how to help each others' causes, and learn about tactics for social change that work. # Indyvoter.org will provide the populace with easy to use tools- stuff like map visualization of government and other data, tools to organize and distribute resources, online decision making tools, and access to regional voter

Way cool! I want to learn how to help make a lot of these tools-- and even more than that I want to see them in action! That is to say, I support everything in the requirements doc. My additional thoughts: * Link to this document from IndyVoter.org! * The real trick is how to make the home page such that after we say "IndyVoter.org" to people and they go to the site, they can find what we were talking about or something they are likely to be interested in immediately. The front page has to do 'everything', or we need to break it into a bunch of short subdirectories whose URL people can type in, and that are also linked to from the web site. Can a program conceivably be written that allows users' choices for categories be synthesized into 5 to 10. Special care would have to be taken in such a system to maintain permanent URLs. * One feature should help schedule meetings, at least to minimize time conflicts for members in more than one IndyVoter group. (People will have to be able to indicate 'I intend to attend the next real-world meeting, if possible' before the time is set for this to work well.) Members who intend to attend should also be able to black out times they can't attend, and the program would factor this in when suggesting meeting times. I think this is quite an important feature, because in many groups I've been in way too much time is spent figuring out the best time to meet. * A key part of a project I've always wanted to do (an organization of everyone interested in anything, People Who Give a Damn) is to allow people in particular activist groups to push announcements on everyone in the group: after a minimum number of people say 'this is really important for everyone to know about' (a particular issue or, more likely, an event like a protest) it is sent to everyone who is part of the umbrella group (indyvoter.org). (It could even be test-marketed: sent to a randomly sampled sub-set of all users -- but not a NEW randomization each time, we don't want anyone being the guineau pig two or three times in a row -- who would then rate if they think it is worth passing along, on a yes-no basis or a 0 to 3 or whatever scale). * Flip this blog over, please maybe? I know newest-first is standard on the Internet, but coming at the bottom of the document it messed with my mind!

Create Feature Request doc w/blog on index page... request for resource build a network pay printer driver for printing out online voter guides, literature stored in indyvoter.org, etc- with funding module tie-in add feature request document add a separate line item /your f/eature here with fields for your feature her what kinds of groups would use this? resource needed: who would give this resource data needs: online needs concerns: offline needs: online data needs: resource needs: needs: who would use this:

Have you heard of "databate"? This proposed educational software is all about using statistics to research political campaigns & issues. They are talking about doing a beta version in CA w/the League and other organizations, but they may be willing to let you link and get feedback for them. Put quickly, they take tons and tons of statistics and give you tools to slice it, with a few canned searches, stat lessons, and discussions of subjectivity. I'd bet they will do an excellent job with it - not sure about their position on open source, tho. If this sounds at all interesting, I'd love to talk to them about your site. If yes, I'd also like a live conversation with one of you about your plans ongoing. One of my big concerns with networking environments like these is that cultures benefit from dissent, yet on-line groups tend to clump into homogeneous groups. I'd like to see a network which actively tries to appeal to diverse groups & get them to interact. Often this means setting up guidelines so that every "side" feels respected - sometimes in lists, this means having a moderator or well defined methods of communicating along with outreach and active promotion to outsiders NOT like the existing population. I'd stress making practical limitations dealing with form, not content (within reason). I'm curious if you will provide such a framework (if yes, what do you have in mind?) or whether you'll try to have that grow naturally. Personally, I wouldn't have any interest if this were just a group of people from the same background, similar education, similar professional level, etc. because that has been done before and people tend to gravitate towards that naturally. Getting different people to talk & come up with ideas seems much more interesting... and that includes the flakes or extremists or people who type all in caps or whomever you decide isn't worth including or is too difficult to include... because the real world has plenty of people we'd all like to exclude at times or who we can't bother to pursue. Making a little utopia which excludes someone (actively or passively) does not build a dynamic political site and is not a great model for trying to create a powerful dialog. The UN site is an intersting place to hunt around, by the way. Thanks, and good luck. -J

IndyVoter is an open network that will make use of all relevant open and common standards for collaboration and data sharing (ie RSS/Atom for calendar, blog, contacts and Excel importation for map viz).

-how do you consolidate disparate communities into one affiliated bloc? -how do you know if people/communities are flakes? some sort of advogato-based "vouchsafe" for people/communities. -demand a bottomline person for every task that is vouched-for -relative vouching for people/communities you trust- affiliation, solidarity, endorsement

I'd like to put out a call for resources: It would be helpful for everyone to think up some usage scenarios (especially how you hope to use indyvoter.org in your own life) and post it here, to be incorporated into the requirements document and into our thinking of what we're trying to build.

Someone smart once said, "You can either talk about politics and religion OR you can have friends." So I'm not sure if the marrage between friendster and moveon will be smooth and I wish you luck in the attempt. As far as constructive feedback -- at this point I would enlist a writer to attempt to remove the computer jargen from the copy above -- ie, replace stuff like "Non-hierarchical resource networks", "crossposting community listings" and "personal blog" with, say, something in english. :-) Seriously, "utilize your pooled resources" to "map visualization tools" that non-engineers can understand -- ya know? Good luck bringing power to the people!

This feedback is great y'all- lots of really good ideas, concerns, and values. Thanks so much and please keep it up! This development effort shares the values of open source, secure privacy-protected users, and reaching out and working with existing organizations, both online and offline. If you are hungry for more details, please feel free to check out this in-progress document: Indyvoter.org Functional Spec. Thanks again!

I see a few obstacles to overcome here: 1. Organizations typically want to be in charge of their own mailing lists, activist centers, etc. How can you make the services you create atomic enough for organizations to pick-n-choose what they need? It's a bit of a folly to have a website for, say, a political party that simply tells people to sign up for indyvoter.org to participate. We may want to use your calendaring features, but not your discussion boards. 2. Data mining: One poster recommended making user info available via RSS feed. I'm wary of anything that allows my data to be mined by every special interest group to the left of Reagan. These days, if I donate $5 to the Ruckus Society, I end up on 40 different mailing lists. People who sign up for this need to be able to control how their data is exposed. 3. Make sure this thing is atomic enough to complement an organization's existing software infrastructure instead of trying to replace it. This baby is not a substitute for an organization's database. Nor is it really a substitute for mailing list software, as we don't want to force people to sign up for indyvoter.org to get simple email updates. Make sure this thing doesn't try to be everything to everyone. 4. Make sure the technology is open, portable, and in-demand. People will be more eager to participate in developing this thing if the skills they gain or use are transferrable to a job setting. If, or example, you're faced with a choice between writing the software in PERL or JSP, choose the latter. 5. Security: grassroots organizations often need to prevent some users from seeing data while allowing others to do so. We may want to publish an event for, say, the county council, but not for general membership. How will the system address this?

Excellent we need it yesterday and this absolutely needs to be part of Planetwork. Contact Jim Thornburg at Planetwork and there should be role playing demos of parties held, presentation etc. YES!

Promising, important, powerful. Smart, passionate, provocative. Excellent! Looking forward to seeing it develop. Along the lines of what Molly was saying: Be sure the IndyVoter system is open, technologically. It sounds perfectly pitched to appeal to early adopters, webloggers, web tech pioneers. So make sure than your profile on indyvoter is RSS/Atom syndicatable, that you can publish a list of your causes and affiliations publicly if you choose, and pull it into your other online points of presence. Ensure that your list of IndyVoter contacts works with FOAF. Coordinate the calendar capacity with other online calendars (like Upcoming.org). Be the political part of the existing social network, work with the other software tools out there. Allow me to integrate politics and public web presence, to speak up in the ether.

hi eddie and marc, this sounds very cool. one thing that i'd really like to see is the use of this tool not just for creating another online community, but bridging it into f2f community. one of the most important things about the dean campaign is precisely how it's done that. another consideration: keeping things from getting too splintered -- from an information architecture standpoint, you'll want to make it possible to categorize and draw together these disparate issue/tactic/campaign-oriented issues. if things get too tiny, it will 1) be difficult for people to find like minds and 2) for the overall to get more cohesive. the world doesn't need more online communities, it doesn't need more blogs, it doesn't need more splinters -- we have a whole lot to compete for our attention. but we do need places that bring together our interests, help us find the motivated, connected people (love the friendster/tribe.net parts of this), and bring us together. in trying to drum up political support, this motivation and connection is going to be really important -- especially in affecting political change.

Great idea! Let me know what feed back would be the most productive or what kind of help I can provide, from Boston, Ma.

Another What Can You Do? item: Learn history and current state of an issue, campaign, or candidate.

Please post any feedback in this blog!

Revision History

2004.01.21.1800 - eddie codel - moved usage scenarios to own file
2004.01.05.1800 - marc powell - new usage scenario, added abstract
2004.01.05.1500 - marc powell - added new usage scenario
2004.01.03.0000 - seth walker - request for usage scenarios
2004.01.02.0200 - marc powell - updated "what is indyvoter.org", usage scenario
2004.01.01.1200 - marc powell - added feedback blog
2003.12.26.1800 - marc powell - seminal version