I met with a Presidential campaign yesterday. They asked me to advise in general on their web site, but when we got into our discussion, I learned they were doing the static html thing. So, I demoed three CMS' to them - Drupal, Typo3, and a fork of Backend my company developed. They were blown away by all of them,. But I steered them to Drupal for speed of setup, flexibility and features. As a matter of fact, if you compare the features to what Howard Dean has on his site, you are basically setup with everything he has.
Having managed campaigns for a living in a previous life, I realized that if a Presidential campaign is this far behind technologically, then there are likely hundreds of candidates running now and next year that will not have a system in place. Additionally, most do not have the budget of this campaign and are unable to hire developers, designers, and writers, but know it is necessary.
So, I am considering investing some time and resources in starting a service to offer Drupal, design, development, writing, and marketing/strategy services to campaigns. There are a number of products and firms that serve that market, but they are all either very expensive or they are very difficult to use.
I am posting here to gauge the interest from the community in taking part on a freelance basis. Currenly my firm offers design, development, hosting, and marketing services to small businesses and have done fairly well in just a year. I would be willing to work out the details, handle the PR, provide the hosting, and manage the projects from our site and system.
Thanks for any feedback.
Brad
Comments
Campaigns, etc.
I would be interested in helping. I have talked with some campaigns (more informally) and been getting response that suggest there is a latent desire and need for this type of thing.
Building community in a political sense with still managing the content, etc.
----Martin----
Sound great
Martin,
Thanks for the reply. LEt's try to get together via email to discuss what we have both learned and how we might be able to "feed" each other in terms of leads, tools, people, etc.
Brad
brad at clickbrain com
Brad Nickel
Web Marketing Services
http://www.clickbrain.com
Makes sense.
RSS is great if you have content you want to give away; clearly this is true of all ten candidates. By the same token, I can see where it might be difficult to educate the various campaign staff members about the benefits of the approach.
Are you making any inroads with this?
EDIT: This via metafilter -- http://www.democrats.org/blog/
*Sigh* At least they're blogging. We can work on interactivity later, I suppose. *Grin*
Inroads
Yeah. We are trying to do an install now to begin moving content over. Unfortuantely they have dedicated box, but PHP is run as CGI module. I just started doing some searches here for these errors. Looks like a pear issue. The admin there changed the php.ini file per another topic here on drupal.org.
By the way, if you could not tell, this is Bob Graham's campaign.
You can see the error here:
www.bobiniowa.com/drupal
Hello, Bob Graham's Campaign!
Pretty deep error, as I'm sure you've noticed. I've I'm interpreting this right, what's happening is that it's trying to look for files otherwise in the include directory in your pear directory, instead.
Did some digging around and I suspect you may be able to get around this by editing your .htaccess file. Look for the section with all the php_value entries and add one that goes:
php_value include_path="."
But don't quote me on this. Frankly, I'm not totally sure I understand why the two are confused. Two things to check just off-hand? One, is there a specific reason the include path is pointing directly to the pear directory? That doesn't seem right to me.
You have: usr/local/php/share/pear
Whereas mine is just: .:/usr/lib/php -- I'm not totally certain of the function of '.:' in that statement, but on my own box I'm also seeing .:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php and I bet you could tack that line at the beginning of your ini file entry if the path to pear absolutely had to be there and just go: .:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:usr/local/php/share/pear
if it really needed to be there.
I'd also make sure, just to be safe, that conf.php, database.inc, module.inc were actually in the includes directory (seems obvious, so they're probably there, but when in doubt, make sure everything's plugged in) and that the file sizes match the file sizes you've got in your local copy -- if they don't, you might just have bad files.
Hopefully this gives you something to play with, anyhow -- there's probably someone else here that could hand you the answer in their sleep. For the sake of form, though, you should set up an account and post your results to the forums support and troubleshooting area, or better still, sign up for the support mailing list and ask there -- usually has the best response and many here prefer it.
Good luck!
Thanks.
I am going to send this over to their admin. I should clarify that at this point I am helping them out and advising, but am not officially a part fo the Graham campaign. That said they are excited about using Drupal and I appreciate the help. I also think this will be a great exaple/case study for our future use. In the meantime I am working with a designer on an interface to the campaign sales site and will be posting some ideas and questions soon on modules, themes, business model, and community pArticipation. Really want this to be something everyone can benefit from.
I will let you know if we were able to fix.
Brad
Brad: So long as you're at
Brad:
So long as you're at it, may as well push for PHP 4.3.3. -- no reason not to stay up to date.
I agree, though; 'open source politics' won't get off the ground without community participation, although in the final analysis, the framework IS available to anyone with the presence of mind to want it.
Was thinking of a poll earlier that came out before Gen. Clark announced his candidacy where well over fifty percent of the people polled couldn't identify ANY of the democratic candidates.
There's a good interview with Joe Trippi in this month's 'Fast Company' that's interesting just because it demonstrates the level of awareness being built. By the time the next election rolls around, there may very well be a push-button newsfeed that will bring the candidates directly to your web site. For now, though, the technology still belongs to the people who recognize it's requirement and can get cozy with it. Given the state of the art at present, though, that's not a bad thing, either.
In all, I'd really encourage steering your people towards Deanspace as well. Not for the branding, obviously, but for the model. All of the effort is directed towards a single candidate, but by the same token, it's open to the public as well. If our rollout goes anything like what people are talking about, it's going to be FORMIDABLE.
POst to support
Good point on the support forum. Will post there shortly.
Thanks,
Brad
One more thing
phpinfo:
http://www.bobiniowa.com/phpinfo.php
INI File
Here's Their PHP.ini file:
register_globals = on
include_path = "/usr/local/php/share/pear"
track_vars = on
short_open_tag = on
magic_quotes_gpc = off
magic_quotes_runtime = off
magic_quotes_sybase = off
session.cache_expire 200000
session.cookie_lifetime 2000000
session.auto_start = off
session.save_handler user
session.cache_limiter none
allow_call_time_pass_reference = off
Check this out
DeanSpace.org
They are creating campaign specific flavor of drupal for Howard Dean's campaign.
At least one Wesley Clark Drupal site out there
Namely mine: Charlottesville for Clark
Before starting it last week, I'd had a bit of Drupal experience in setting up a prototype of a site for use by a specific academic community. Then on very short notice I volunteered to create a local Web presence for Clark supporters. Drupal suggested itself as an ideal content management system, and indeed I was able to get the site live and useful very quickly. But it's not something a newbie could do; I have pretty extensive experience as a Unix/Linux/Apache/etc. user and administrator.
Revolutionize Campaigns!
Here's what campaigns need... Does drupal aready provide this functionality?
- Admin creates a calendar event (i.e. canvass precinct 172 on Thursday, Nov 20th).
- Registered users sign up to volunteer for the event
- Several day(s) before the event--email reminders are sent out to the users signed up for those events.
Possible Event Attributes:
- Title, Desc, Event type (meeting, canvassing, fundraiser, etc.), date/time/location, Coordinator (user/email), # volunteers needed, alert/reminder intervals (1,3,5,7 days before, etc.), comments, status, active start and end dates.
Good ideas
I like this idea, but would like to see an even tighter integration between the system back end and the user data. Being a member should be a multilevel thing that is more granular in how you can report on what members want and need. Some may want to volunteer. Some may want to volunteer and throw a house party. Some will knock on doors, answer phones, etc. Also want to track things like money raised, have personal pages where they can make appeals for fundraising, track it, etc.
It would seem we could use taxonomy to do so in terms of using categorizations that are assigned to users and then having the ability to communicate with them, create blogs for them, notices, appointments, node level access for them, etc.
I realize this is a tall order and right now am happy to have anything in terms of a module that gets me where I want to be, but also see the need for a tighter integration of what members/users are and how we can interact with them.
Some Campaign Mgrs say Websites are Counter-productive
I just finished working on a Seattle City Council campaign and previously on the successful grassroots Seattle Monorail project. More experienced political operatives tell me they limit campaign website online info because there are few real benefits to outweigh a very big disadvantage; it provides their opposition with far too much information.
The median age of 4x4 voters in Seattle is 59 years old, most do not go to campaign websites for candidate information, however your opposition's workers are frequent visitors. They glean schedule information and quote your position papers out of context (from the website) to use against you during public forums. So far only a tiny fraction of registered voters ever see a local campaign website and usually there is little reason for them to revisit it. This observation applies to more traditional static HTML brochure content sites. What has changed to bring real voters, not just campaign volunteers who are already voting for you anyway, to the website?
I am told fueling opposition research is a genuine problem created by campaign websites. It is not just coincidence that political races are described using military terminology. Defense and counterforce tactics are very important.
I would be very interested to learn how other political campaign staffs have dealt with this issue regarding websites.
-- Thank-you
Some Campaign Mgrs say Websites are Counter-productive
In the traditional sense of how campaigns are run, you are dead-on. By that I mean that traditional politicians that have indefensable issue positions, will be harmed by the opposition research you mentioned, but for the most part I think it is bogus if your candidate has any kind of a brain and can defend their positions.
On median age, I also think it is incorrect.
1. Look at Dean.
2. Many seniors do surf the web. One of our volunteers on a campaign I am working on now is a senior and spends a great deal of time on the net and telling other seniors to visit.
3. Publicity is key. If you put your domain on everything you hand out, then it is likely to pay off with interested voters.
4. Even if the general voting public does not visit, concerned citizens tend to and they tend to become volunteers out on the streets knocking on doors and contributors.
LoveForMayor.com Launches
OK folks. The first client for our new campaign service based on Drupal has launched. It needs much work, especially on the theme, but we are getting there. I posted to have a designer get paid to help us, but did not receive a single reply. Would like to have a place where we can post projects.
http://www.loveformayor.com
My client is running for Mayor of Miami-Dade county. He has a good shot at winning. Our site has resulted in much interest from other campaigns and organizations locally and we will be signing deals soon.
There are a number of modules we will need for this. My idea is that if a developer creates a needed module, we will make a donation for every site we put up that uses it. Let me know your thoughts.
We will also be happy to donate to Drupal.org for every site we launch.
We will still need folks that can design themes and those that can integrate designs from html into themes. We would pay per theme or by the hour for this.
Please give me you feedback on this.
Modules that will be needed:
Newsletter - We have a developer of an open source project called phpmultiple newsletters that has agreed to integrate into Drupal as a module.
A better event module. We are currently using the one from Deanspace, but it still needs work. We also will need one that allows volunteers and fundraisers to have their own space for coordinating their events and fundraisers online like they do on Dean's site. The company that produced that charges far too much up front to make it worthwhile for small candidates.
Fundraising module with subscriptions and one time donations that works with merchant gateways and ties into the volunteer coordinator pages to track what they have raised.
A custom forms module, so campaigns can create their own forms with fields they need and store and access the date and define where it will be sent.
So, that's the news folks. Let me know what you think and any feedback you might have. We expect to have several new clients in the coming weeks. This will include local parties, candidates, and non-profits.
Brad Nickel
Web Marketing Services
http://www.clickbrain.com
brad@bradnickel.com
877-243-0405
Keep in Touch!
Brad:
While our interests are slightly different, our functional needs are the same. I am working on a few sites for charitable organizations where people can volunteer time when needed as defined by the organizations themselves. I need something so that the organization schedule an event and note how many man hours of help they need. Volunteers need a search capability to find events that:
a) they want to be involved with
b) need help when the volunteer is prepared to provide it
Please keep in touch. Anything we build here will be contributed back to Drupal. If you end up with an events/volunteer module similar to what I've noted above, PLEASE let me know.
All the best,
Andy Rutherford
Webcraft Solutions Sdn Bhd
tools on dean's site
convio is the provider of the tools dean uses.
http://www.convio.com