Drupal
Nonprofit Tech
This is a descrioption of a long-term project we are undertaking at Cruiskeen Consulting and CMS Farm. We are in general interested in community building in Wisconsin and building tools to promote community building. For nearly a year the idea has been kicking around of building a community communications platform that would allow different groups in Wisconsin to set up their own discussion platform and web page. The intention is to make this as flexible as possible, and to make it possible to build a community with very little or no technical knowledge. I'm going to discuss this plan in general, provide a few specifics about implementation and possible funding, and give a few examples of the sorts of communities I believe would be possible.
Wiscommunity - an on-line meeting place
Currently this project is called Wiscommunity. I maintain the domain wiscommunity.com for this project - don't bother looking at the web page at the moment, it's really not very interesting. This project will promote the idea of building on-line communities which will have several features:
1. Build your own community - people will be able to log in to the site and build a limited number of communities themselves. The intention is to always allow a fair amount of activity on the site for free - it is possible that some funds will be raised at some point by selling subscriptions that will allow people to build more communities, or more complex communities. Participation in the communities will remain free for all.
2. Communities will include a number of different features, and will probably grow in complexity after the initial implementation. The initial free tier will include at least the following:
Creating a community
Building different discussion groups within that community - these will be built in such a way that discussions will begin on the web page, but people will be able to subscribe to their community and receive email when new discussions start. They will also be able to reply to the discussion via email. I think it is important that people be able to primarily interact via email if that is their choice.. Some functions will of course work better when actually on the web site, but basic discussions will be able to be carried out without going to the site.
Calendaring -- full suport for calendars for use both within a group and between groups. Part of the idea here is to build a state-wide calendar system where people can insert their own events, and search for events on different criteria.
Multimedia -- simple tools to let people attach multimedia content - pictures, video, audio clips, and more
Documetns - simple tools for attaching and collaborating on documents.
Mapping - there will be mapping facilities built in to the system. Maps will be used for finding events, and to allow (eventually) groups to build their own maps on-line. This would allow things like building a map-based directory of, say, food co-ops, etc.
Social media - plans are to inculde some tight integration with various social media platforms
3. There is some intention to build in some more speicalized features that may require payment. This will be discussed a little further later on, but plans would include some of the following (though not in initial rollout).
Selling tickets on-line for events
Membership management tools for organizations
Classified and display advertising
Integration of news from different parts of the state.
More advanced multimedia, including on-line discussions, etc.
Integration with Storify RebelMouse, and other online media curation tools
Collaboration with local PEG television and other local media around the state.
Probably multiple things that have not occured yet.
Types of Groups
Currently I see this as incorporating two different types of groups:
Geography-based: These groups would revolve around a specific area of the state - city, county, or portion of the state. My hope here is to build some level of hierarchy where for example a city would be part of the county and state region in which it is contained.
Topic-based: These groups would revolve around discussing a particular topic that may involve the entire state. This is discussed further below in some examples.
Funding and self-sufficiency
Although it is my intention to personally fund an initial trial of this project, long-term it will require some forms of actual funding. Several ideas are in the hopper for this:
After the initial implementation is done, there will likely be an on-line crowdfunding project of some sort, perhaps on Indiegogo or some other crowd-funding platform.
General on-line begging for funds. Sorry, it has to happen.
Advertising revenue - the notion here is to include some relatively discreet advertising in the site to help defray the basic costs. This will probably involve a combination of things like general Google Ads, more locally focused ads from LocalYokel, etc. and perhaps eventually more targeted ads in parts of the site that will be specifically sold as site content. This may also include things like a Wisconsin Amazon store, etc.
Sales of roles on the site. Although my notion here is that some portion of work on the site will remain forever free, there is a possibility of selling some functionality. I see this as an "enhanced" subscription to the site which would be paid on-line on a yearly basis and would include more functions on the site, such as selling tickets, managing memberships, aggregating in content from other places, building customized themes for groups, etc. This is in general an ill-formed pipe dream at the moment and will not really be considered further until such time that the basic functionality is up and running.
Examples:
A few examples of the sorts of groups that I think would develop over time.
Geographic
This is fairly self-explanatory. I think the initial build-out of this will include only a few sample groups which would be relatively easy to manage locally. Therefore the initial set of groups is almost certainly going to revollve around the local area and (sadly) my own personal interests. I'd like us to do a small set of groups initially to "kick the tires" and work out issues and problems while working them out is still a manageable issue. Therefore, the initial set of geographic groups will be centered around the Chippewa Valley, with groups for Menomonie, Eau Claire, and Chippewa Falls. There may eventually be some smaller groups for towns around the 3 main cities.
Topical
I think this is the more interesting possibility, and will devote a little time discussing a few of the possible topics that interest me personally, and some of the things I think could be done with them.
Co-Ops -
I am on the board of a local food co-op, Menomonie Market Food Co-op. Wisconsin has a huge number of co-ops, and I think it would be great to build a community presence based around co-ops. Different Co-Ops could have their own pages in this area, and could use both open and closed discussions to talk about co-op issues. There may, for example, be a closed group for food co-ops to discuss food co-op issues, as well as a more general open public discussion to promote cooperative principles, etc. I think this would be great for co-ops to promote each other and to work together on projects. I for example could see an annual cooperative picnic coming out of this, with area co-ops promoting themselves and cooperative principles, as well as having great food. I'm open to ideas and suggestions on any of these topics - please comment below if you have any.
Local Food
I think this could be a great place to discuss local food, food providers (with maps) - and an opportunity to promote and discuss some of the great local food in Wisconsin. Also restaurant reviews and --- well, the possibilities are limitless. We all eat.
Old Time Radio
This is one of my odder hobbies, but I collect old radio programs. I have some ideas here - I'd like to start building an on-line library of public-domain radio programs, with information about each of the programs and background, etc. This will probably take a while to get off the ground as it's reasonably ambitious. This would however be a good place to show off some of the multimedia capabilities, etc.
Local Music - this may be sort of an interesting melding of the geography and topic issues - imagine a calendar of local music where bands could put up their own pages and put in their own music videos and sound clips. And perhaps sell their CD's or MP3's on-line. Yes - I know all of this has been done, but I'm thinking of a little more local flavor.
So --- that's it in a nutshell. Things I have been thinking over for the past year or so. This may or may not happen (since people who are paying me always win out in the long run over the projects I'd like to do myself). I'm very open to comments and suggestions. Before I drop this, a few technical details for the 3 of you who would want to know:
Technical Stuff
SO - my notion here is to build this out in Drupal. More specifically to build it out with a core of Open Atrium version 2. You can see some of the out of the box features of this here.
Open Atrium is now solid enough that I think it's a reasonable platform for this sort of build. This will of course also include a lot of other Drupal features that will be melded in over time, including more in the way of notifications, social media add-ins, news features, and more. The site will likely be bult being very dependent on panels and some of the other functionality that I'm currently working on for the Twin CIties Daily Planet.
In the long run I would like to see most of the code for this made available as a Drupal distribution, making it easy for people to build their own similar platforms in the future.