greetings, some additional policy considerations, and strategic thoughts

[Sebastian Benthall]

Hi,

I'm very interested in working with this group more.  My background is in open source geospatial software (four years wearing various hats at OpenGeo), but I have also participated on a couple political campaigns.  Currently, I'm a PhD student at UC Berkeley School of Information, where my research interests include policy around open source software and digital campaigns.

When i saw your petition (via a tweet) i was very excited and wrote this blog post after discussing the matter with some colleagues:

http://digifesto.com/2012/07/24/why-federally-funded-software-should-be-open-source/

That was before I realized freethecode.org existed (which I learn via sunlightlabs mailing list several days later).  I wanted to post it here to highlight a couple points:

 - The 'maximize investment' rhetoric is great and politically neutral, but there are a lot of surrounding issues as well that could be used to hook people's interest.

 - There's lawyer and professor at UC Berkeley, Brian Carver, who is interested in these issue and might be interested in helping frame policy (he volunteered what I've quoted in a mailing list discussion).

 - There are a lot of parallels between Free the Code and the Open Access research movement in the U.S.  I expect that their successful petition was part of what inspired this?

Here's the thing: I talked to somebody who was involved in advancing the OA petition.  He said that was built on a lot of preceding network building and groundwork.  Right now you are at 500 out of 25,000 on a petition with 3 weeks to go.  I understand that that's an opening shot, but it looks like you are getting into this for the long haul--a serious grassroots campaign that could take several years.

That's great, and I'd like to be involved.  Here are some thoughts on how to move forward:

 - I've been interning at a SuperPAC this summer.  Their most valuable asset is their list of support emails.  Do you have access to the emails of those that signed your petition?

 - The Whitehouse petition system is very cumbersome with its email confirmation.  If you want a high conversion rate, just like in web marketing you need simplified landing pages where people can just type in their email address and hit 'send' without thinking.  

 - There are several software solutions for managing this sort of campaign.  SalsaLabs and ActionKit are paid SaaS.  I think CiviCRM is the major open source one.

I know that's a lot.  Thanks for reading this far,

Seb

[Deborah Bryant]

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for your email! Very pleased you're gotten in touch.

I was the petition poster and would be happy to discuss.  I'm at the FISL 13 conference in Brazil this week so not doing too much email, but I'd love to get back in touch  next week after my return.  Others on this list very involved can too - John Scott and I co-authored the concept.

And you are correct, the petition is a single vector to raise the discussion, we are in it for the long haul.

Cheers,

Deb Bryant

phone | 971 533 8050

skype | bryantdeb

twitter | @debbryant

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[Sebastian Benthall]

Hi Deb,

Thanks for this response!  I'd love to learn more.  Looking forward to hearing from you whenever you have the time.

John, I believe we met about a year or two ago when I was still at OpenGeo.  I'm based out of Berkeley now but in DC until Monday, on the off chance you felt like meeting up.  

Cheers,
Seb