The Seeds of a Drupal Media Coalition
In order to catalyze the First Phase of Development in the Echo Chamber Project Roadmap, I need to align myself with other grassroots media activists using Drupal as well as interested Drupal developers.
Based on the conversations I've had at recent conferences, I think that there is enough overlap between a lot of various citizen journalist and collaborative media efforts that a "Drupal Media Coalition" could help advance the interests of a broad range of projects and the larger Drupal community as a whole.
I initiated a working group at the CivicSpace user's summit in NYC for Drupal developers and site maintainers who were interested in forming some sort of coalition. I actually didn't have a chance to formally introduce this idea to everyone during the working lunch as I had intended because a number of interesting side conversations had evolved -- including one I was having with Brady Jarvis of code0range.net and Aaron Pava of CivicActions.
Here are the steps that I see need to happen in order to create a Drupal Media Coaltion.
- * Gather all of the Drupal media folks under a "Drupal Media Coaltion" that involves a range of developers and sites interested in citizen journalism & collaborative media functionality within Drupal.
- ACTION: Follow up with some preliminary contacts.
* Collaboratively spec out various development tracks that will be useful for a broad range of contexts within the Drupal Media Coaltion.
- ACTION: I have the macro view of my Roadmap. I need to further specify the First Phase.
Receive feedback on my First Phase specs for how others could use it.
Look at the roadmaps for other projects in the coalition to find further symbiotic partnerships with other projects.
UPDATE: I received a price quote between $3,000 & $3,500 to develop the Drupal modules required for Phase 01.
* Use Fundable.org to raise donations and funding on a per project basis (e.g. Jo Lee is using using Fundable for development of the CitizenSpeak CivicSpace module.)
- ACTION: Follow-up with Jo Lee to see how this Fundable fundraising strategy is working for her.
UPDATE: Jo Lee decided to abort her Fundable fundraising goal of $7,000 because she set the minimum donation too high ($50) and the number of people too low (140). She told me, "That's a problem for me since my user base may make $10 contributions but CivicSpace developers might make more."
I wonder if people can donate multiple times -- like making three $10 donations for $30.Lee also responds,
- The dollar amount is up to you. For example if you need to raise $100 you can set your campaign for 10 donors at $10 each or 20 donors at $5 each. But once you hit save, you can't edit the number of donors and dollar amount and you only have max 30 days to raise the money so you need to have your plan in place. If your goal is to raise $1500 and on the 30th day you have $1400 - you get nothing. Ouch!
* Use the network of contacts that each member of the Drupal Media Coaltion has in order to gather enough micropayments to pay developers to produce the specified modules.
* If the desired amount is raised for a project, then funnel the raised money from Fundable through an umbrella of a non-profit organization in order to make the donations tax deductible.
- ACTION: Need to see if this is logistically possible through Fundable's site. I imagine that the non-profit umbrella would take care of a lot of the proper tax deduction paperwork.
* The non-profit then pays the chosen Drupal developer to create the specified module. The non-profit takes anywhere from a 0 to 10% cut of the total transaction depending on the scope of the non-profit's mission.
- ACTION: Need to find a suitable non-profit umbrella.
* Everyone is HAPPY!!!
- * The Drupal Media Coalition gets it's functionality developed by affording to pay for custom module development.
* The module developer gets paid for the work.
* The Drupal community gets additional functionality.
* The benefactors get satisfaction from helping build a long-term infrastructure that is helping create an emerging political and media ecosystem of grassroots, personal democracy!
