What can we do to help out?

[Ben Bristow]

Hi,

I am ready to help out. My skills:

Ruby/rails, JavaScript (JQuery, AngularJS), HTML, PHP, Java, Linux Sysadmin, DBA (Oracle, MySql, Postgres), Cloud provisioning and administration (Amazon AWS)

@TeamLessig: How can one put their skills at your service?

Ben

[aaronlifshin]

Hi Ben,

One of the key projects right now is for us to get off of wordpress and come up with a good front-end development flow so that people can contribute.

Let's start a discussion about how best to do that.

Thank you so much for your support,

A

[Jonathan Rudenberg]

> On Aug 23, 2015, at 12:43 AM, aaronlifshin <aaronl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One of the key projects right now is for us to get off of wordpress and come up with a good front-end development flow so that people can contribute.
>
> Let's start a discussion about how best to do that.

I’d recommend using a static site generator. Static sites really fast and scalable, and they are a huge win for collaborating on GitHub. Since all of the styles and content are in files in a git repo instead of buried in a CMS, commenting on pull requests, fixing typos, adding more content etc. can be done by the community easily.

The most popular static site system is Jekyll[0], but there are some other good ones including hugo[1] which is written in Go so it doesn’t require installing Ruby or any other dependencies.

The site can also be deployed to S3+Cloudfront or another CDN really easily (and optionally automatically based on a production branch on GH) without much work.

Any dynamic features can be built in a separate API server and hooked up using Javascript.

Jonathan

[0] http://jekyllrb.com
[1] http://gohugo.io

[Barry Rafkind]

Why do we want to get off of WP? If it's a matter of making the source code open-source, that can still be done by putting the code in Github and then deploying them to our chosen PHP-enabled Web host.

I'm not familiar with static site generators, but I'm skeptical about going this way, chiefly since they seem less user-friendly for non-techies than a CMS like WordPress and we'll probably want to have less tech-savvy creative types able to manage the site content and look&feel.

For dynamic front-end content, I'd recommend AngularJS which I use daily for work.

[Jonathan Rudenberg]

> On Aug 23, 2015, at 4:08 PM, Barry Rafkind <barry....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why do we want to get off of WP? If it's a matter of making the source code open-source, that can still be done by putting the code in Github and then deploying them to our chosen PHP-enabled Web host.
>
> I'm not familiar with static site generators, but I'm skeptical about going this way, chiefly since they seem less user-friendly for non-techies than a CMS like WordPress and we'll probably want to have less tech-savvy creative types able to manage the site content and look&feel.

A static site allows the *content* to be in the git rep. The same cannot be said of most dynamic content management systems that store content in a database. This makes change management and contribution much more complicated as the content contributors either need direct access to the CMS admin interface or the content needs to be laundered through an admin's email inbox or similar.

By the way, the code for the Wordpress site is already on GitHub: https://github.com/Lessig2016/campaign

Jonathan

[Barry Rafkind]

Hi Jonathan, version control for content might be easier to access, but I'm not sure that's so important. Also, I'd guess it would be harder for less tech-savvy folks to contribute via GitHub.

Jonathan

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[Ian Panchèvre]

Hi Ben, 

This is a great question: "How can one put their (engineering) skills at your service?"

I'm a product manager. In my view, there's a difference between building the right product, and building a product right. I think we should first start with the question of what needs to be done, figure out how we're going to solve it, coordinate with the design team, and then start working on quick sprints to ship something that's functional and useful. Before we can talk about architectural solutions, we first need to know what we're going to build and, more importantly, why it needs to be built. 

I'd like to ask Team Lessig: Is there a document that contains a backlog of all the technology you'd like to develop? It'd be great to see a wish list, and a sense for how to prioritize those items. If you don't have a backlog, then what are the problems (either internal that the campaign is facing, or external that would interface with voters and volunteers) that technology can address?

Thanks for pushing this forward. I'm looking forward to an upcoming discussion. 

-Ian

Twitter: @ianpanchevre

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-maya-panch%C3%A8vre/31/3b/7b7

On Friday, August 21, 2015 at 9:44:06 PM UTC-5, Ben Bristow wrote:

[Dave Furfero]

Offering up my help (and two cents) as well.

I think Barry and Ian are off to a great start, asking questions before thinking about the solutions. Managing scale can be complex and static site generators are a great solution for some issues of scale, but is scale the first order of business? (i.e what is the actual motivation behind leaving WordPress?) I used to run front-end for EW.com which ran largely on WP and, I imagine, handled scale orders of magnitude greater. If scale is the issue, I would suggest looking at other options before committing to a re-platform, especially if it would interrupt an existent editorial workflow. You can always throw machines at the problem. ;)

As for transparency, a static site hosted on GitHub will provide visible content and records of discussions and changes. However, as mentioned, it would require slightly more savvy from its editors. Many static site generators (I've used Harp and Assemble for client projects), manage content via Markdown and metadata via JSON files. While Markdown can be taught easily and MD text editors can provide assistance, managing JSON structures introduces a bit of brittleness in the hands of a (potentially) non-savvy staff.

Now, if WordPress is not satisfying your current editorial needs, look for plugins and start to search for alternative CMSs. Note that static sites lack many of the conveniences of a modern CMS. One of which that springs to mind is timed publication. Unless you don't mind someone manning the big red release button at odd hours, this feature can be useful for getting content out in time for the daily news cycle.

Anyway, I think a discussion of strategic goals resulting in a set of prioritized features/requirements that can be divvied up and developed should come first. 

So, what do you want to build?

Cheers,

furf

https://twitter.com/furf

https://github.com/furf

https://www.linkedin.com/in/furftastic

[P Virgo]

Any progress on this?  What are people on the campaign actually trying to get done right now?

You've got a "politics for and by the people (not just money)" campaign going.  You're probably going to see a lot of us Free/OSS types coming from a "software fore the people (not just money)" perspective, hoping to help out.  Suppose this team gets a really good understanding of what the Lessig campaign (and small party campaigns in general) need from a technical platform in order to be successful, and then we get really good at addressing those needs in a way that makes it easy for us Free/OSS geeks to both contribute and grow.  I bet that would create a lot of energy and set up a "can't lose in the long run" situation if there were a need for similar efforts in the future.

I'd be interested in helping out as well.  Like a couple of folks here I've got a background as a Linux Sysadmin that turned into software development.

Aside - I'll second Jonathan's observation that git is really useful and powerful - from the conversation it's not clear to me whether it's what the front end content folks want, but for doing the work and managing documentation among the tech team you'd be hard-pressed to find something better.

[Ethan Barhydt]

I'd also like to help out. What if we set up a call this weekend to coordinate next steps? Might speed things up? 

[Daniel Mirolli]

Has anyone given thought to the ability of Lessig's message to hit home on both sides of the proverbial aisle? 

I get the sense, especially with Trump doing as well as he is, that there are many center republicans who could see the merit in voting for a candidate who wanted to make sure that issues that matter to the people would always be central (in this election and all others). The "Meet Lessig" video today as well as Hank Green's "Addicted to Outrage" video from today seem like the right flavor to strike on this. Because if the way we finance elections really is a roots problem then the roots are on both sides and need root cutters on both sides. 

Thoughts?

Also, I can code and write and run financial and economic analysis (skills) - would love to help.

Daniel

@ddmirolli

[Dave Furfero]

Hi all,

I'm furf, the new Tech Volunteer Coordinator for Lessig 2016.

I wanted to let you know that this thread is not forgotten and to update you on the path to becoming an active volunteer.

1. Fill out the Tech Assessment Survey. This will provide us with your contact information, availability and areas of expertise.
   
2. Join the conversation. Once you complete the survey, we'll send you an invite to the teamlessigtech Slack channel where we will discuss ideas, solutions and distribute tasks.
3. Fork our projects on Github. Get them up and running locally so that you are prepared to help when the time comes.
4. Don't wait for us! If you have an idea for an app, site or social network integration, find some like-minded volunteers and get started. We do ask that you include certain documentation with your project, including our legal, license and code of conduct. I will be posting a project scaffold shortly. Also, feel free to contribute ideas and improvements to our existing projects.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out to me directly at fu...@lessigforpresident.com.

Let's fix democracy! (One git commit at a time.)