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Would you give $20 for that feature/fix/documentation you've always wanted in a module/theme/distribution?
Yes? Great! Would you pledge $20 for the chance to give that $20? Wonderful! Please make your tax deductible contribution, which will only be charged if we raise enough to do this, in the next three days!
If not, why not? Serious question— the goal is not to extort money from you, the goal is to extort either money or information (or both). What would make you unwilling to pledge money toward something you think Drupal needs? Please let me know by contact form or in the comments.
So you have goals to evaluate for worthiness and practicality, we intend that Snowball (the platform to get community initiatives rolling) will:
- Allow asynchronous aggregation of wants and needs. We don't want a mad rush of fundraising campaigns (like this one); instead we want to see what people are offering to put time or resources toward, and then help an actionable plan take shape.
- Provide a platform for the instigators, the organizers, the advocates, who are crucial to making things happen in any community.
- Give people with more money than time or talent (for a particular task, so that means most of us) a direct way to contribute.
- Get your most-wanted improvement to Drupal made... provided we find enough other likeminded people who act on their convictions.
- Make the world a better place.
Is this a fool's errand? If so, i have the credentials. but please say why Snowball as a concept doesn't hold together. If not a fool's errand, i think we can continue to broaden those involved in this "initiative to make more initiatives possible" until it is possible itself. Join in and even pledge a few bucks for the effort on CrowdTilt while every cent (if the funding level is reached at all) will go to build it.
David has been doing web development for 12 years now and Drupal development for the last 6. In his early days as programmer he read about the Free Software movement and immediately wanted to be part of it.
He started contributing to different free software projects but the majority of his work has been made for Drupal, as a core contributor and helping to fix and improve some contrib modules he enjoys helping Drupal become better so that more people can adopt it.
Benjamin lives and works to connect people, ideas, and resources so more awesome things happen.
A web developer well-established with Drupal and PHP, he has also been enjoying programming projects with Django and Python. His work with Agaric clients has included universities (MIT and Harvard University), corporations (Backupify and GenArts), and not-for-profit organizations (Partners In Health and National Institute for Children's Health Quality).
Benjamin tries to aid struggles for justice and liberty, or try not to do harm in the meantime. He is an organizer of the People Who Give a Damn, recognized as an incorporated entity by the IRS and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts charities division. He has also supported several artistic and philanthropic ventures and was a founding, elected director to the Amazing Things Arts Center in Framingham, Massachusetts.
He led 34 authors in writing the 1,100 page Definitive Guide to Drupal 7, but he is probably still best known in the Drupal community for posting things he finds to data.agaric.com where developers running into the same challenges find, if not answers, comfort that they are not alone.
You can get more (too much) of ben on a cooperatively-run part of the fediverse at @mlncn@social.coop.
When continuing development of a web site, big changes occur every so often. One such change that may occur, frequently as a result of another change, is a bulk update of URLs. When this is necessary, you can greatly improve the response time experienced by your users—as they are redirected from the old path to the new path—by using a handy directive offered in Apache's mod_rewrite called RewriteMap.
At Agaric we regularly turn to Drupal for it's power and flexibility, so one might question why we didn't leverage Drupal's support for handling redirects. When we see an opportunity for our software/system to respond "as early as it can", it is worth investigating how that is handled. Apache handles redirects itself, making it entirely unnecessary to hand-off to PHP, never mind Drupal bootstrapping and retrieving up a redirect record in a database, just to tell a browser (or a search engine) to look somewhere else.
There were two conditions that existed making use of RewriteMap a great candidate. For one, there will be no changes to the list of redirects once they are set: these are for historical purposes only (the old URLs are no longer exposed anywhere else on the site). Also, because we could make the full set of hundreds of redirects via a single RewriteRule—thanks to the substitution capability afforded by RewriteMap—this solution offered a fitting and concise solution.
So, what did we do, and how did we do it?
We started with an existing set of URLs that followed the pattern: http://example.com/user-info/ID[/tab-name]. Subsequently we implemented a module on the site that produced aliases for our user page URLs. The new patten to the page was then (given exceptions for multiple J Smiths, etc via the suffix): http://example.com/user-info/firstname-lastname[-suffix#][/tab-name]. The mapping of ID to firstname-lastname[-suffix#] was readily available within Drupal, so we used an update_hook to write out the existing mappings to a file (in the Drupal public files folder, since we know that's writable by Drupal) . This file (which I called 'staffmapping.txt') is what we used for a simple text-based rewrite map. Sample output of the update hook looked like this:
# User ID to Name mapping: 1 admin-admin 2 john-smith 3 john-smith-2 4 jane-smith
The format of this file is pretty straight-forward: comments can be started on any line with a #, and the mapping lines themselves are composed of {lookupValue}{whitespace}{replacementValue}.
To actually consume this mapping somewhere in our rules, we must let Apache know about the mapping file itself. This is done with a RewriteMap directive, which can be placed in the Server config or else inside a VirtualHost directive. The format of the RewriteMap looks like this: RewriteMap MapName MapType:MapSource. In our case, the file is a simple text file mapping, so the MapType is 'txt'. The resulting string added to our VirtualHost section is then: RewriteMap staffremap txt:/path/to/staffmapping.txt This directive makes this rewrite mapping file available under the name "staffremap" in our RewriteRules. There are other MapTypes, including ones that uses random selection for the replacement values from a text file, using a hash map rather than a text file, using an internal function, or even using an external program or script to generate replacement values.
Now it's time to actually change incoming URLs using this mapping file, providing the 301 redirect we need. The rewrite rule we used, looks like this:
RewriteRule ^user-detail/([0-9]+)(.*) /user-detail/${staffremap:$1}$2 [R=301,L]The initial argument to the rewrite rule identifies what incoming URLs this rule applies to. This is the string: "^user-detail/([0-9]+)(.*)". This particular rule looks for URLs starting with (signified by the special character ^) the string "user-detail/", then followed by one or more numbers: ([0-9]+), and finally, anything else that might appear at the end of the string: "(.*)". There's a particular feature of regex being used here as well: each of search terms in parenthesis are captured (or tagged) by the regex processor which then provides some references that can be used in the replacement string portion. These are available with $<captured position>—so, the first value captured by parenthesis is available in "$1"—this would be the user ID, and the second in "$2"—which for this expression would be anything else appearing after the user ID.
Following the whitespace is our new target URL expression: "/user-detail/${staffremap:$1}$2". We're keeping the beginning of the URL the same, and then following the expression syntax "${rewritemap:lookupvalue}", which in our case is: "${staffremap:$1}" we find the new user-name URL. This section could be read as: take the value from the rewrite map called "staffremap", where the lookup value is $1 (the first tagged expression in the search: the numeric value) and return the substitution value from that map in place of this expression. So, if we were attempting to visit the old URL /user-detail/1/about, the staffremap provides the value "admin-admin" from our table. The final portion of the replacement URL (which is just $2) copies everything else that was passed on the URL through to the redirected URL. So, for example, /user-detail/1/about includes the /about portion of the URL in the ultimate redirect URL: /user-detail/admin-admin/about
The final section of the sample RewriteRule is for applying additional flags. In this case, we are specifying the response status of 301, and the L indicates to mod_rewrite that this is the last rule it should process.
That's basically it! We've gone from an old URL pattern, to a new one with a redirect mapping file, and only two directives. For an added performance perk, especially if your list of lookup and replacement values is rather lengthy, you can easily change your text table file (type txt) with a HashMap (type dbm) that Apache's mod_rewrite also understands using a quick command and directive adjustment. Following our example, we'll first run:
$> httxt2dbm -i staffrepam.txt -o staffremap.map
Now that we have a hashmap file, we can adjust our RewriteMap directive accordingly, changing the type to map, and of course updating the file name, which becomes:
RewriteMap staffremap dbm:/path/to/staffremap.map
RewriteMap substitutions provide a straight-forward, and high-performance method for pretty extensive enhancement of RewriteRules. If you are not familiar with RewriteRules generally, at some point you should consider reviewing the Apache documentation on mod_rewrite—it's worthwhile knowledge to have.
Websites powered by Find It connect people to all that their communities have to offer. Developed under the guidance of the Cambridge Kids' Council on a Free and Open Source License, Find It ensures that people from all backgrounds can easily find activities, services, and resources.
Find It's design was informed by hundreds of hours of research, including over 1,250 resident surveys and over 120 interviews with service providers. Six years of research and development and continuous improvements has resulted in the Find It approach and platform, ready to be implemented in cities and communities around the world.
About the Map
The Climate Justice Action Map (CJAM) is a custom mapping tool that pulls 350 events and groups from multiple data sources (eg: ActionKit, EveryAction, CiviCRM) and displays an interactive map supporters can use to get involved.
It can be embedded within websites with many customization options (eg: preset the map center to a location,, show the map’s text and buttons in a different language, show only events related to a particular campaign, etc.).
It uses Mapbox for the map, OpenStreetMaps for the tileset, and Google Maps for the search lookup.
The CJAM Extract, Transform Load (ETL) Application is a data processor written in Python that runs every 15 minutes and pulls in data from those many sources (eg: EveryAction, CiviCRM) via APIs and direct SQL queries. It writes the combined event and group data to a JSON data file hosted on Amazon S3, which is then consumed by the CJAM JavaScript.
Our Approach
We met with 350 in mid-June, with the strikes set for September 20th and organizing pushes in July and August. With tight deadlines, a new team and a new codebase, we quickly got to work understanding the goals of the map, its current implementation and what needed to be done for each milestone.
Users First - Getting Clear on the Goals
On projects demanding quick turnarounds it's tempting to dive head first into the issue queue. We know though, that a project is only successful if everyone is aligned on the overall goals of the project. Luckily, the product team already had excellent documentation (they even had a slideshow!) on what the purpose of the climate action map and its key audiences.
350.org had a slideshow detailing the goals and audiences, helping us gain the background knowledge needed to effectively collaborate.
Goals
- To demonstrate the geographic scale of our work to visitors
- To connect site visitors to the following activities:
- Attend an event
- Get involved with a local group
- Learn about our regional work - To give staff the ability to embed the map on different sites and customize it to suit the purposes of the pages it's being embedded on.
Key Audiences
- Site Visitor
- Map Embedder
These documents were great to have coming into our kickoff call.
Refactor While Learning
Getting familiar with the inner workings of the climate action map was particularly challenging because the code was essentially in two states: the main branch with the original custom JavaScript and a refactor branch where the transition to React.js was happening. React is one of the most popular and widely used frameworks. Converting the application to React made the code easier to maintain and build upon. The original volunteer developer had begun this process of conversion and there were new features written in the new React way, unavailable until the refactoring was complete.
Mauricio and Chris met with him to get clear on how to see the transition to the end. They then set to familiarizing themselves with the codebase and refactoring along the way. By understanding, for example, a long complex function, and then rewriting it into smaller discrete functions, we were able to simplify the code, wrap our head around its inner workings and make it easier to work with for the next developer to join the project.
Debugging Woes
When first working with a codebase it takes time to understand why a new change isn't sticking or why an error is occurring. Logs are a developer's best friend when it comes to debugging. Unfortunately, the logging available was stark. The ETL had a running log, but wasn't saving to a file for future reference or easy retrieval. Chris made the error log easy to reference and even added Slack integration sending a message to the team whenever an error occurred - helping people quickly respond to issues.
Strike Globally, Mobilize Locally
350.org has hundreds of chapters, spread across seven continents, with members speaking dozens of languages. Their mapping tool was built with this diversity in mind. It serves as a powerful storytelling device (goal number one), with a single map conveying the impressive reach of the movement, and not making assumptions as to where a visitor is or what they're looking for.
On the other hand, mobilizing is most effective when it comes from people we know, from communities we're part of. As such, the map can live in more localized contexts, showing just events and groups relevant to a particular scenario. For example, the 350 Colorado chapter can display a map zoomed into the Mountain West, while 350 France can show a map with just events in French.
These custom maps are created using embed parameters. To do this, a 350.org organizer pasted the map onto a page using an iframe, passing in parameters such as language, location and data source by including a query parameter in the url.
However, this approach was cumbersome, technically prohibitive and error prone. We dropped the iframe approach and replaced it with a series of shortcodes, a more intuitive method, that make direct calls to the Climate Action Map API to render a map specific to an organizer's needs.
We added support for the following short codes:
- data-src-search - pass in a location search term and the map will pre-search to that location event-campaign - show only results tagged with a specific campaign, eg: ‘climate strike’
- date-range-start - show events that start on or after a certain date
- date-range-end - show events that end before or on a certain date
- data-src-lang - show map text in a certain language
- data-src-latlong - center the map at a certain latitude and longitude point
- data-src-zoom - set the default zoom level
- data-src-layers - specify which kind of data to show (campaign, event, group)
Now organizers can create any number of maps with criteria meeting their campaign or community's specific needs.
What Exactly is the "Future"? - Calculating Timezones with Python
With so many different events happening at any given time, the map risked overwhelming visitors looking to get involved. 350.org's designer Matthew Hinders-Anderson came up with the solution of applying different map pin styles to events depending on when they were happening. Past events have a subdued teal, while current and future events have a strong teal. To emphasize the storytelling (goal number) of the map, current events throb.
To accomplish this, we needed to calculate an event's date and time relative to the current time. Unfortunately, many of the events had no timezone associated with them. However, they did all have some form of location available. Chris found a handy Python tool called timezonefinder that calculates an event's timezone based on latitude and longitude.
With the timezone in hand, Mauricio could then apply the different colors (and flashing) based on the event's time relative to now.
We used Python to calculate an event's timezone based on its latitude and longitude.
Seamless Onboarding
With so many events organized, we wanted potential strikers to find an event to attend quickly. Map embedders found though, that sometimes searches would result in an empty map, despite events being nearby. This is one of the many challenges of designing interactive maps. One example was a visitor living in a nearby suburb of Boston. A search for Allston would turn up nothing, despite there being multiple events within a 5 mile radius. We fine tuned the zoom in behavior to better show nearby events.
There were still edge cases though. We addressed this by showing a "Zoom out" button if a visitor came up empty. Clicking that zooms a user out to the nearest result.
If a visitor gets no results from their search, they can zoom out to the nearest event or group.
The Results
The mobilization plan was to push activists and organizers to plan events from June through August. Then rally as many people to RSVP to the newly created events from August up until the big days: September 20th and September 27th. We rolled out the embed code functionality in August which organizers put to good use, embedding local and regional specific maps on local 350 group pages and climate strike specific websites they had built.
The map was so popular, that other organizations asked if they could embed it on their own sites - increasing the mobilization points and audiences reached. That we were able to do this speaks to the importance of defending the open web and free and open source software that allows for the decentralized sharing and using of tools.
On the first day of the strikes the pin styles came to life, lighting up the many walkouts, rallies and protests happening that day. It was a go to graphic for journalists and supporters on social media to share when reporting on the unprecedented participation.
Ultimately, the numbers we saw was a testament to the long, hard work organizers constantly engage in and the urgency of the moment we are in. However, with tools like the Climate Justice Action Map, built by technology activists alongside the organizers using them, we deepen and widen the mobilizing possible. And in these times of massive wealth inequality, deep political corruption, and closing window of time for the bold action we need, disrupting the status quo is more important than ever before.
Special thanks to the 350.org product team members Kimani Ndegwa, Matthew Hinders-Anderson, Nadia Gorchakova, and suzi grishpul for their vision, management of the project and design and development leadership.
The International Summit of Cooperatives convened in Quebec in 2016. The general message of the conference was that cooperatives are everywhere and one only needs to raise awareness for this idea to spread. That seems to be happening as evidenced by the attendance at this conference - 3000 people from 117+ countries according to the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA.coop) one of the sponsors of #ISCOOP2016.
I have been to many cooperative conferences and events, but this one was very different. From the facility to the attendees, the event had an air of style and conform that went beyond attire. I was swimming in a sea of 70-80% middle-aged men in black suits as far as the eye could see. There were also a few groups I saw that were wearing indigenous dress from India, Nepal, Chile, and Congo. Quebec is a mixture of modern and old culture. There were women in authentic Breton garb serving food in the restaurant we visited for lunch, in Old Quebec City, but they were not represented at the coop summit.
The largest sponsors of the Summit were the Canadian Government, Canada Economic Development, ICA International Co-operative Alliance and DesJardins. You can see a full listing of all the cooperative sponsors for the event. The attendees were mostly members of Agriculture and Financial coops, both small and large. When I say large, I am talking thousands of members. The point was brought up and highlighted that the International Co-operative Alliance represents close to one billion individual members. Statistics are calculated using the Alliance's formula based on active subscriptions. The ICA maintains the internationally recognised definition of a co-operative in the Statement on the Co-operative Identity and they represent 272 co-operative federations and organizations in 94 countries as of January 2014. The National Cooperative Bank released its annual report in 2015, listing the nation’s top 100 revenue-earning cooperative businesses. These 100 businesses posted revenue of approximately $243.2 billion.
A dominant presence by DesJardins, with over 6 million members, and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In my opinion, the BCG message was depressing and the same old Capitalistic message cloaked in a message of "growth" suggesting that "you must grow in order to prosper!" Luckily some cooperative panelists responded with how irresponsible it is to grow for growth sake. A member of DesJardins told me that he personally thinks the coop has gotten too big and we had a great talk about how empathy training should be available to larger entities. Marc Thomas, a DesJardins member, talked about helping people and how the DesJardins cooperative has made some positive changes for him and his community. They are much more willing to lend to smaller cooperatives and they have a host of connections to nurture a small business in start up phases. They play a role similar to a credit union on a much larger scale and they also have deep ties in the community and a network of cooperatives to connect new ideas to funding opportunities.
According to Howard Brodsky there are 50 cooperatives larger than Facebook. Brodsky is Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of CCA Global Partner. He is responsible for creating a cooperative retail powerhouse in the marketplace.
His message was most similar to all the coop conferences I had attended, yet he was much more vocal about how expansive the coop movement is - we are large and we are everywhere. In my opinion, Howard gets it and understands how empathy and caring figure into the movement. He touched on how this simply will not work if we are not honest and caring in our work. He spoke about how important "Stories" are and how they create bonds. The International Co-op Alliance (ica.coop) has built a wonderful way to share our narratives in this digital era - http://stories.coop
Trebor Scholz, a professor at the New School in NYC, and Nathan Schneider, a professor at University of Colorado Boulder, were each on a panel. Nathan's panel was on Multi Sector Activity and he talked about Platform Cooperativism as a way to bring cooperative communities together and how important it is to own the utilities and services we depend on. Trebor on the next panel framed platform coop as a movement and points to the recently published book "Ours to Hack and to Own" as the handbook to get involved in the movement. Copies of book are available from OR Books.
Both panels were lively and got a good response of people talking amongst each other after they ended. Attendees I talked to during the conference were diverse. People from Kenya and the Congo seemed to be the only ones shocked at the implications when I told them about free software. They had never heard of it. People from India that I met either said they knew about it or that they used it in their work. Other people from afar seemed bored and made excuses to not hear about it.
Translation for the speakers and panelists was stellar. No time lag at all and the team was professional and consistent. This did not carry over into the main event participants and attendees. The language barriers seemed to keep people from mingling outside of their party of friends. They sat in groups at the meals and at the sessions. The lunch/dinner seating was round table, with place settings ala extra forks etc. very convenient for conversations. Meals were also used as a venue for a sort of Keynote delivery that happened on several giant screens while the appetizers were served.
The event was full of Pros and positive energy, there were only a few minor Cons:
1. A lot of people in the crowd were unaware of free software, and almost no one used encryption.
2. Most panels were all male - even ones discussing diversity.
3. Some financial coops place most emphasis on growing, as if growth is the only measure of success and value.
Robert Reich got a standing ovation for his keynote with a message that coops are an important part of the business landscape. He spent most of his talk telling an anecdotal touchy feely story with the point that we all need to get along. He seems to be a progressive at times, but he still operates on a lesser of two evils mentality in a two party system - I ask, why won't he support a third party if he is in agreement with most of their platforms?
I spoke to many people throughout the three day event about what Agaric is and what we do. I also talked about Free Software and how it impacts cooperatives and their goals. Some were not aware of free software and the vital role it will play in the future success of cooperatives maintaining autonomy and privacy. I also spoke about Platform Cooperativism and Drutopia as a platform concept. Anyone seeking more information can sign up at the Drutopia.org website to be invited to discussions and have a voice in the process of building a platform cooperative from the ground up.
So, things are looking bright for cooperatives in the future. The cooperative branding and marketing needs building, and the network needs to keep expanding and cross-pollinating. The tireless work and dedication of small groups like the ICA is what makes this all happen. Coops do not need to be large, they need to be nimble and they need to be flexible. With apps like BuyCott it will be much easier to purchase responsibly, buy from cooperatives and support ethical companies. I just got the app and am happily surprised to find out how many dedicated cooperative people there are in the world shopping responsibly already! We can each do our part to make the network stronger and to bring the cooperative movements closer together. How would you bring something cooperative to your community? Even a small local event at your neighborhood coffee shop or a blog post or a Tweet can do a lot to raise the level of awareness of how strong we are together!
The results are in:
Typically an awesome event will end and as time passes, there will be little to no follow-up or tangible results that are published. You wonder if that great project you heard about is flourishing or forgotten. You can see the results of the workshops in Quebec in 2016 and rejoice in the knowledge that we are on our way to autonomy.
Our friend Chuck Bordman has written an excellent blog covering this conference here: Coopmatters.com
