CampaignFoundations.com

Microsoft Corporation is trying to buy Yahoo Incorporated. If it succeeds, it will own email service to about half of North American progressive activists. Due to progressives' inexplicable preference for Yahoo Groups, it will own most electronic forums for and about progressive organizing.

When we set up your website, if you prefer, we can provide you with the capability to provide multi-lingual content to the voters who browse your site. Providing multi-lingual content requires that we patch the base code to accomodate this requirement. That also means that the core code running your site will be somewhat older and more difficult to upgrade as new versions come out. But if your community speaks Spanish and English, or French, Farsi, Tonga or Tamil or some other language, this can be an obvious trade-off to make.

Your website won't automatically translate your content for you. That still takes real live humans who know both languages involved. But we can provide a framework for you to publish your campaign's content in the multiple languages which make sense in your community.

CampaignFoundations.com's Partners have both joined the Free Software Foundations' signon letter encouraging non-profits to forgo the proprietary lockin provided by Microsoft so-called Vista "upgrade".

"The same secure, stable, free software which runs CF's servers which host our clients' sites also runs our desktop computers," said Hugh Esco, a partner in the web application hosting and development firm, serving the needs of Green Parties, their candidates and Green minded non-profits. "The scope and pace of development within the Free Software community leaves few reasons to consider the proprietary alternatives. And the risks to our own freedom and the environment leave plenty of reasons why we ought to reject the proprietary options."

The Green Party of England and Wales today backed an international call from the Free Software Society (FSS), New Internationalist, Friends of the Earth International and People and Planet in calling on social activists and progressive organizations to join with them in rejecting Microsoft's Vista operating system, and to encourage instead the adoption and use of free open source software (FOSS).

The advent and use of free software is a promotion of the computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSS categorically state that free software 'is about freedom, not price. It is software whose authors intentionally extend users the freedoms to study, copy, modify and share their work. While proprietary software functions by dividing people and using technical restrictions to block communication between them, free software was created with individual freedom and social solidarity in mind.' (1) Derek Wall, Green Party male Principal Speaker, backs the call. "Free software offers social activists an alternative to what a system like Vista represents. Using free software, we can further social and environmental justice without supporting growth based on waste, control and short-term profit."

The utility of hosting a website in the interactive web is the ability to get feedback from the users of your site. Perhaps the simplest way to do that is with a contact form. Of course your site comes pre-configured with donor, subscription and volunteer forms if you want them. But the Contact module permits you to quickly set up a contact form and have user feedback appropriately routed within your organization to the key campaign supporters who are ready to followup with the voters of your district.

Here is how to do this.

Security is a concern whenever you share your data and web applications over the internet. The user privilege system for the drupal content management system and our other applications is a part of the answer.

But these days one does not have to have political opponents to attract 'graffiti artists' who will vandalize your website. Spammers, those same folks who fill your inbox with unsolicited and unwanted email also write scripts which create user login accounts on content management systems, authenticate those user accounts by email and then use them to post commercial advertising with links to their clients' sites. Its all designed to boost their rankings in the search engines.

But you can stop these robots from spamming your site. And your hosting package includes all the tools you need to do so.

Rob Thornton last week announced the release of the first publicly available version of CiviVoter and a new drupal module called Canvasser. Development was supported by the Green Party of Canada. Rob describes this as a "Developers' Release", not yet ready for prime time. But that too shall come.

This story recounts the role which CampaignFoundations.com played in bringing this to the public.

When I was on staff with the Georgia Green Party I worked with other Green IT developers on what I at that time called pclSupport. It was envisioned as a collection of scripts designed to make the Georgia voter database accessible to the Precinct Campaign Leaders who could actually put it to use canvassing their neighborhoods in support of Green candidates.

If your campaign plan involves bringing together multiple staff or volunteers in an office setting to move the work of the campaign forward, reading this article could save you thousands of dollars or alternately make possible campaign capacity you might not have thought possible.

Its an investment, building an LTSP network, requiring some technical skills. But it could be a solution which makes a functioning office possible for a low-budget campaign. And its a solution which makes sense even if you are investing in all new equipment for every desktop. Using the client-server model lowers maintainance overhead. If every workstation in the office boots off of only one server, that means that you have only one server to upgrade, maintain, backup and secure from abusive access.

Long before one puts down a qualifying fee or appoints poll watchers or is sworn into public office, a candidate has got to get their own office in order. Consumer grade machines can now be had for $300.00. Even linux compatible hardware fax modems cost less than $80 these days. We don't have lots of money to spend on software and hardware, but we need to build an office machine capable of supporting the communication demands made by a modern campaign. This article explores some of those demands, takes a look at those requirements and suggests open source tools using open standard file formats which affordably allow you to interact with the world around you, while preserving your control over your data.