Aspiration was delighted to host AdvocacyDev III from July 31 to August 2 in Oakland, California. The third annual convening of developers, organizers, and activists working with open source tools for online activism brought together 45 practitioners for discussion, collaboration, and trainings. Electric Embers hosted their second annual Most Excellent AdvocacyDev Veggie-Friendly BBQ Shindig Sessions included...
- Show and tell on all the latest open source eAdvocacy platforms and tools, including the latest from CivicSpace/CiviCRM, Radical Designs Activist Mobilization Platform (AMP), GoodStorm, and others.
- ScoutSeven's DotOrganize project, and the findings of their research on needs and gaps in nonprofit eAdvocacy and database capabilities.
- MobileVoter shared the latest in Cell phone/SMS organizing techniques, and joined in discussion on how to better integrate SMS support into open source eAdvocacy tools.
- PICnet demo'd their brand-new NonprofitSoapbox platform, which integrates other open source tools and platforms.
- Emerging technologies: Discussions of the role of VOIP and the Asterisk platform, and How-To's on activist blogging.
- Prototyping new advocacy tools: Using Ruby on Rails to do rapid web development.
- Building and configuring CivicSpace/CiviCRM sites
- In-depth Drupal development session: Module development and theming
- Business Development: How to pay the bills and work on advocacy development projects)
- eAdvocacy Capacity Building: What trainings, documentation and knowledge sharing is necessary to grow the pool of practitioners in the eAdvocacy space. What is needed to better empower local organizers with local causes to use these tools?
- Open standards and open API's (Application Programmer Interfaces) for eAdvocacy: what's needed to allow better data sharing, pooling of legislative and other public data, and enable feature interoperability between platforms? What eAdvocacy “mashups” are useful and possible?
- Email Deliverability: While features and functionality of open source advocacy platforms continue to grow, deliverability of associated email blasts continues to decrease as service providers raise spam barriers and network neutrality is threatened.
- Usability: how can online activist tools be made friendlier and more accessible for organizers and activists?
- Trainings and skillshares on various platforms, tactics, and techniques.
The event took place at East Bay Community Foundation Conference Center in Downtown Oakland.