Open Source software support for the Dean Campaign
From Another World Is Here: Political analysts talk about Dean's success in raising money via the Internet, but they miss the social value of the campaign's clueful Internet strategy. In the past, grassroots presidential campaigns tended to fail because they couldn't compete with established party machinery in reaching enough voters nationwide to win an election. The first grassroots presidential campaign to make at least some use of the Internet was Ross Perot's, and he at least succeeded in influencing the outcome of the national election.
Dean is the first candidate to establish his viability via online organizing, though, and he's succeeded partly because he hasn't insisted on complete control. Dean volunteers are empowered to create web sites, weblogs, and other innovative online presences as volunteers. A community of open source developers have created a complete content management system, Deanspace (originally called hack4dean) to support the campaign. Deanspace is a customization of Drupal, an Open Source platform for web applications, sort of an application server and sort of a content management system. Drupal has many modules to support many kinds of functionality, including weblogs and content syndication. The latter two items are perhaps the most valuable: as built, Deanspace facilitates easy sharing of blog items among Deanspace sites and aggregation of content from any or all sites.
From the Deanspace and Drupal websites: DeanSpace provides a place online for members of your Dean group to stay in touch, share information, work together, and coordinate with each other in a variety of ways. It can serve your existing group or help you build a new online community. Every DeanSpace site starts off with a few basic abilities: there's an online sign-up form for new members, a member directory, and a main page where you can post announcements. Beyond that, DeanSpace is made up of many parts called modules that can be separately switched on and off. So, although DeanSpace has lots of features, you don't have to use them all.
Drupal is an open-source platform and content management system for building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.
Dean is the first candidate to establish his viability via online organizing, though, and he's succeeded partly because he hasn't insisted on complete control. Dean volunteers are empowered to create web sites, weblogs, and other innovative online presences as volunteers. A community of open source developers have created a complete content management system, Deanspace (originally called hack4dean) to support the campaign. Deanspace is a customization of Drupal, an Open Source platform for web applications, sort of an application server and sort of a content management system. Drupal has many modules to support many kinds of functionality, including weblogs and content syndication. The latter two items are perhaps the most valuable: as built, Deanspace facilitates easy sharing of blog items among Deanspace sites and aggregation of content from any or all sites.
From the Deanspace and Drupal websites: DeanSpace provides a place online for members of your Dean group to stay in touch, share information, work together, and coordinate with each other in a variety of ways. It can serve your existing group or help you build a new online community. Every DeanSpace site starts off with a few basic abilities: there's an online sign-up form for new members, a member directory, and a main page where you can post announcements. Beyond that, DeanSpace is made up of many parts called modules that can be separately switched on and off. So, although DeanSpace has lots of features, you don't have to use them all.
Drupal is an open-source platform and content management system for building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.
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