Monthly Archives: October 2012

Jennifer Pahika challenges us to “code a better government”

Posted on by
Reply

Code for America

I have watched the “Code for America” movement with great admiration.   This movement encourages programmers to take a year off to do community service working with government.  I believe that this movement is creating a very special community of technology empowered servant leaders.

The following TED talk by Jennifer Pahika shares the mission of “Code for America” and the impact of the movement.   As we enter this season of voting, it’s important to remember that voting is only one way that we can influence government as Jennifer remarks.   In particular, I believe Jennifer Pahika and the “Code for America” fellows promote 5 killer ideas in this talk!

1) “Government is what we do together that we can’t do alone” — @timoreilly

2) As a community, we should encourage citizens to serve each other for the benefit of all. These acts of service can be big or small. It all matters.

3) Apps can help remind us of the needs in our local community and connect people together. She shared the example of CitizensConnect .

4) Government can become a platform to lead citizens to serve each other.

5) In many cases, the movement is discovering ways to save tax dollars.

Abstract: Can government be run like the Internet, permissionless and open? Coder and activist Jennifer Pahlka believes it can — and that apps, built quickly and cheaply, are a powerful new way to connect citizens to their governments — and their neighbors.

If you’re interested in learning more about this movement, there is a “Code for America” summit is happening this week.   Check out the Twitter Buzz.

In the Macon, GA, I am pretty excited to see the collaborations between my university, the College Hill Alliance, and Code for America.   To learn more, please visit the following article: http://codeforamerica.org/2012-partners/macon/

This movement has also inspired a number of other citizen empowerment movements.   In particular, I would encourage you to visit “Random Hacks of Kindness.”

What would you challenge our community of citizens to build to enhance government together?  Share your comments below.

How to build a social networking site for free using Elgg

Posted on by
Reply

Elgg

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest have disrupted traditional channels of communication.   While these existing sites are useful, organizations often need to establish their own social networking platform.    Instructional designers often use services like Ning.com to enable students to learn and collaborate.   Some corporations see potential in social  media collaboration, but do not want to encourage Facebook activity at work.   In my case, I am interested in building social networks that support alternate reality games.    The platform needs to support customization, gamification, branding, and analytics.

On a personal note, I have been moved by many of my friends who have been out of employment.    I believe it would be cool to design a social networking community that supported job seekers.    Great communities learn how to connect their strengths and gifts to opportunities.    I would like to connect job seekers to each other.   I would also aspire to connect job seekers to great education and mentors.   And the whole experience should be fun.

Over the weekend, I reviewed an open source and free platform for building a social network, Elgg.    On my existing PHP/MySql hosting site, it was simple to install.   Like WordPress, the platform features a number of themes and plugins.   Plugins and themes can be installed simply moving the content into a “mods” folder.

Here are my favorite features to Elgg so far .

  • Community support and documentation:  Community support and documentation for the open source project is active.   From searches on YouTube, you can find tutorials on setup and management of a Elgg website.
  • The Wire: How would you like to build your own Twitter?   Elgg has this as a feature.   140 characters. Hashtags.  It’s all there.  Enjoy!
  • Google analytics: For the data geeks out there, you can install a plugin to measure the behavior and health of the site using Google analytics.
  • User registration using Twitter.com: Using a plugin, you can enable your users to sign into the social networking site using Twitter.   This process involved registering the site with Twitter.com as an application.
  • Themes:  Theme support looks pretty good.  It will be interesting to learn how to create themes.   The themes that look like Facebook look pretty amazing.   I found a few issues which prevent me from using it.  In general, the theme capability is pretty awesome.
  • Gamification:   I am using a plugin called “Userpoints” to add a basic points system to the site.   As a user of the site, you can obtain points for certain actions on the site.  (Posting to the wire, posting blog entries, commenting, etc.)    The points values awarded per site action can be configured.
  • Plugin authoring:  At some point, I will need to create my own plugins to establish a system of badges or other game elements.   From a quick review of the documentation, Elgg makes this possible.
Here’s another sample Elgg site — SwampBook.com

If you could build your own online community, what would you build?