Events

Aspiration designed the agenda and facilitated this convergence of developer and users of the ActionApps web publishing platform, who traveled from all over the world to discuss the vision and direction for the platform, and plan for capacity building and sustainability of their open source community. Focus areas including training materials development, support for online advocacy features, multi-lingual web sites, and hands-on skillshares. The content management system (CMS) landscape was mapped and discussed, and user survey results were presented.

Another outcome of the first Advocacy Developers Convergence, this event brought together activists and SMS experts to work on building applications to take advantage of cell phone text messaging in various advocacy contexts. The sprint produced a working “SMS Blaster” capable of sending very large numbers of messages to subscribed cell phones. The blaster was used in various Get Out The Vote (GOTV) and elections monitoring projects around the US elections. In addition, substantial new content was posted for NGO use at wiki.advocacydev.org.

Aspiration provided facilitation and agenda design at this event, hosted by wire.less.dk and held to discuss the potential for wireless community networking in developing countries, as well as to introduce practitioners from around the world to one another. Proceedings were logged on an Aspiration-designed wiki.

A direct outcome of the first Advocacy Developers Convergence, this event convened software developers passionate about investigating the potential nonprofit applications for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The VoIP sprint produced an “info-line” application built on top of the Asterisk server platform. The tool allows organizations to set up dial-in information lines for campaigning and event organizing, and has already seen substantial use.

The first Advocacy Developers Convergence brought together developers and allies focused on internet advocacy software. The convergence yielded a valuable and popular web resource (wiki.advocacydev.org) that continues to grow in popularity, has led several projects to merge efforts and share code, and has generated several new projects, including an open database initiative for shared data standards, an Open Source Almanac for nonprofits, a localization working group, and applications from the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and SMS (Short Message Services) sprint events.

Aspiration facilitated and designed the agenda for Green Media Toolshed’s convening of network strategists, foundations and funders curious to discuss what it means to fund networks of organizations instead of individual entities. Underwritten by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the event was a two-day strategy roundtable to identify essential elements of network development to support movement building.