Proposal to establish and support a real-time messaging platform

[christopher]

hello --

I would like to propose that we establish a Slack [1] for our campaign and make it easy to join with the appropriate permissions allocated by means of the volunteer data we have already collected [2].

From what I've read of Swarmwise it's very likely that real time online communication will be essential and that creative + productive work will be facilitated by such an environment. Slack will let us keep a searchable history of those ideas while also allowing for separation of concerns (different rooms) + easy media exchange. This should be useful for all three of the 'global' volunteer groups (social/tech/creative) and will let us form new projects and rooms as they become useful. 

Each tool we use comes with a price so I'm just putting in my vote for this as something to consider and if others like it we should move forward. I am not sure if there is a free and open-source alternative but this is probably the appropriate place to mention them if you know of a feature-comparable service.

christopher budnick

cbud...@mit.edu

[1] slack.com -- 'a messaging app for teams'

[2] Right now we have a collection of steps that a prospective volunteer has to follow for us to know fully about them -- I imagine in the future this will become more streamlined and as part of that (or as a precursor) we should allocate them a slack account and access to a few basic rooms + a personal mentor room. 

[Jonathan Rudenberg]

> On Aug 22, 2015, at 6:06 PM, christopher <christo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Each tool we use comes with a price so I'm just putting in my vote for this as something to consider and if others like it we should move forward. I am not sure if there is a free and open-source alternative but this is probably the appropriate place to mention them if you know of a feature-comparable service.

Mattermost is the most directly comparable open source option: http://www.mattermost.org

IRC and XMPP can both be made into something that resembles Slack if you combine the right systems and custom glue, but out of the box they are not particularly friendly.

Jonathan

[Aaron Lifshin]

Hey all,

1. This is a great idea!

2. We do have a campaign slack.

It's the free version, so it does not keep much history, but 

There is some risk to the campaign to invite just anyone from the internet into there, because campaign strategy is discussed in there and there is the potential, especially as we succeed, of political enemies using this against the campaign (unfortunately, this has happened before).

I see three options (not mutually exclusive):

A - We could reach out to slack-for-good and see if we qualify for them.  This would allow us to invite tech folks into a tech-only channel

B - We could set up an IRC channel for tech

C - We could come up with a policy/vetting process for who we invite into the current slack

If anyone can get going on versions A and/or B, please go ahead.

If any one wants to take advantage of version C, please email me directly with your availability, and I would be happy to set up a time to have a conversation prior to inviting you to slack.

Thanks for your support and energy and for all you do,

Aaron Lifshin

COO & Treasurer

https://lessigforpresident.com

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[Barry Rafkind]

Hi Aaron and Christopher,

+1 for Christopher's idea to have real-time messaging channels for the campaign committees

Re: Slack... according to https://slack.com/pricing, the free version includes "Search and browse 10k most recent messages".... would we really need more history than that? Also, according to the "Slack for Good" section there, it's only for non-profits and educational orgs, so we wouldn't qualify.

Re: Option C (exclusivity)... how does this jive with the transparency principle of the campaign? Why would policy discussion be exempt from that? And furthermore, as a supporter/volunteer, I'd really appreciate having a forum for discussing the campaign's policies/strategies.

Regards,

Barry

[Travis Loncar]

Hi all,

Re: Slack - I'm a happy Slack user, but I do recall this article that brought to light a "hidden" user limit (for the free tier, at least). I'm not exactly familiar with how this type of effort scales, and it's certainly possible that the user limit issue is not remotely a concern—just thought it worth mentioning.

Gitter (mentioned in the article) is an option for tech discussion, but I like the idea of whatever platform we use facilitating cross-pollination between volunteer groups. Slack seems like a good fit for this sort of collaboration.

Travis

[Aaron Lifshin]

Of course, all supporters and volunteers should be free to discuss campaign policy and strategy.   We welcome that.

So, let's create the tech volunteer/supporter real time forum.

IRC? Slack? Something else?

A

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[Barry Rafkind]

+1 for Slack since it sounds like it's already working well for the core campaign team and we probably won't have to worry about the 5k user limit

[Barry Rafkind]

appropos: Where GitHub, Slack, and Trello fall short for collaboration (Infoworld, 8/17/2015)

[Jared Waxman]

Slack sounds good... who can setup accounts for us?

[Andy Keil]

As a daily slack user, I'd love to have a larger forum to discuss the campaign in real time.

Great idea.

[Aaron Lifshin]

Sent you an invite, Andy.

Anyone else need one?

A

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[GameDevSam]

Had an idea, what about building a really simple location based chat client for political organization? Looking for feedback:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/teamlessigcreative/vt6MACg-7Vc

- Sam

[Christopher David]

Cool. I could help. May want to look at forking RocketChat, a fast-growing open-source chat platform modeled after Slack - perhaps faster than starting from scratch. https://rocket.chat/

[GameDevSam]

That's an excellent suggestion, Rocket Chat seems very complete and easy host. It should be relatively straight forward to ask for zip code during signup and pre-populate the favorites list based on pre-built location based channels.

I'll need help with Android / iOS version, and other features, but I have to spend some time setting it up before I know what I'll need help with.

I have a few questions at this point though:

1. Should this chat be specific for Lessig volunteers? Or do we develop some kind of group / organization functionality so others can join a local chat for a different cause?
2. Should monetization be a concern at this point? We're going to need to host this service, I can shoulder the cost for some time, but that's not scalable.
3. We need to pick a name for this, any ideas?

[Manuel Hurtado]

Discourse is also an excellent tool

[Aaron Lifshin]

Hey guys,

The campaign does not need another chat tool.  The free version of slack works quite well.

We do, however, have a CRITICAL need coming up for a location-based tool.  That will be the decentralized canvasing tool.

We will load a list of voter addresses to visit, and need our canvassers to see the nearby addresses on a map, pick ones to visit, go to them, and submit notes/outcomes to be recorded in a central database against the list.

A

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[GameDevSam]

I've used BatchGeo in other campaigns to build a door to door walk list: https://batchgeo.com/

Alternatively, I found maptive, which seems to have more powerful features, including optimizing routes / directions to addresses: https://www.maptive.com/

This would be a hugely powerful tool for door-to-door campaigns.

What's the slack channel?

[Christopher David]

For a door-to-door canvassing tool I'd recommend building in Meteor. (Meteor is also what RocketChat runs on - that may have some code we could grab over.)

Meteor is easy to learn, and offers one-line exports of HTML/CSS/JS applications to Android or iOS apps, with Cordova support to tap into native phone functionality like accelerometer, GPS, etc. So no need to program C# or Java and maintain separate code bases per phone OS. So if for some reason someone has a Windows phone (heh) they could just use the web app and have the same user interface.

I can start on a prototype asap if there's interest in going the Meteor route. How are we handling github project management? Should I create a basic Meteor project in my own github repo, and someone from the Lessig github fork it?

[Chris D]

Angular/Ionic would also be a good choice for a door-to-door app. One-click export of HTML/CSS/JS code to Android/iOS apps with native functionality through Cordova.

On Monday, September 7, 2015 at 2:42:54 PM UTC-4, aaronlifshin wrote:

[GameDevSam]

I'm willing to contribute to an app, however, I want to focus on a web backend where users can plan and prepare a route, and then later access it from their phones. It would be pretty cool if we could then have a voter facing website where people could sign up to have a "Lessig" specialist come to their house to explain the plan in person or something.

We could then double up the routing app as a list building service.

Whatever language / platform you develop on is perfectly fine by me, as long as it's web based.

- Sam

[Chris D]

Cool. I'm thinking we should do Angular/Ionic because we'll probably have more Angular devs than Meteor, and it's a bit easier to integrate with a third-party data backend. I'd recommend Parse for that, or Firebase could work too.

I'll create a repo tonight and get at least some design thoughts into a readme people can discuss on. Anyone else want to weigh in on tech stack for this?

[Aaron Lifshin]

Let's get to an MVP that does not do path-finding for the user, but simply shows all the addresses within a certain distance of the canvasser, and allows them to select the next one.

Once it's selected, other canvassers should see that it has been "spoken for"

The most important thing is then to be able to enter a status against the visited address, and color them based on that status, so that canvassers can see the map go "green" or whatever.

A

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[GameDevSam]

Based on this design I suggest we go with Firebase for backend data management, since it specializes in real-time data synchronization. I can do work on the backend client once you have something in place.

- Sam

[Aaron Lifshin]

We have members on the team who are familiar with Firebase, so I back that.

I would like to get input from Dave Furfero and Chris Bucchere on javascript frameworks.

It is important that we keep the development as accessible as possible, so that more volunteers can roll on.

A

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[GameDevSam]

Keep me posted on any developments with this project, I'd like to contribute.

Github @gamedevsam: https://github.com/gamedevsam

[Austin Fatheree]

I'd love access to the slack channel.

I have experience in knockout, angular, and react.  I've done cordova apps in the past as well.

Anyone have experience with react native?  

-Austin

[fu...@lessigforpresident.com]

If you're interested in joining the Team Lessig Tech channel on Slack, please complete our brief Tech Skills Assessment. This will provide us with your contact information (so that we can send the invite) and an idea of how best to allocate your skills and interests to the campaign's needs.

Cheers,

furf

Tech Volunteer Coordinator, Lessig 2016

[fu...@lessigforpresident.com]

Austin,

Did you ever receive an invite to the Slack channel? If not, I can help you there. Please complete our brief Tech Skills Assessment. This will provide me with your contact information and an idea of how best to allocate your skills and interests to the campaign's needs.

Also, I've messed around with react-native but haven't completed an application. I was working on a small video messaging app before I got sidetracked. I was amazed how much I could get done so quickly. Have you done much with it? Think you could build an app for Lessig? There are a few projects we have in mind... let's talk!

Cheers,

furf

Tech Volunteer Coordinator, Lessig 2016