CivicActions

OpenToSolutions.com's inception was a blog put together by six graduate students of the advanced multimedia class at UC-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. The class focuses on modernizing crime reporting; taking a solution-oriented, contextual approach to reporting about crime in Alameda County. OpenToSolutions.com focuses on two types of violence: domestic violence and violence against those who are homeless, as well as the prevalence of guns in homicides;using blogs, multi-media and maps to report and inform about local community resources.

Amnesty International's Project IMPACT was a complete replacement of the organization's website and CRM system, as well as the completion of a global brand strategy and the replacement of the vast document management system.

For the IMPACT project, CivicActions worked with Amnesty International to create a Drupal interface that synchs with the newly adopted al Fresco document management system, multi-level publishing and translation workflows, a custom CiviCRM implementation, and a theme that maintains
Level 2 accessibility in the four core languages of the site (English, Spanish, French and Arabic).

CivicActions completed this work in 6 month-long sprints, and continues to work with Amnesty to improve and enhance the features of the site.

When Science First, a New York based public relations firm, came to us with the idea for SolveClimate.com we were immediately interested. They described their site as a group blog that would track the presidential candidates and politicians on key climate solutions. Not little stuff like changing light bulbs - but the big solutions that will have immediate and measurable impact on the pollution-causing climate change.

The premise of the project is that American's are really all in this together. While we might find ourselves in specific constituency groups based on our demographics, occupations, interests and beliefs - or by age or faith - we really do have common ground when it comes to climate change. We all need to realize that, not just the politicians.

SolveClimate.com covers climate change news and relates it to a set of high-level solutions, a select number of constituency groups, and leading presidential candidates. Users can sign-up for the site and subscribe to email updates based on categories, or simply subscribe to RSS feeds. The site offers three lists: Daily Headlines about climate change, Blog News and Comic Relief (blog posts on the lighter side).

In addition to the constantly updated content on the site, there are also explanations of the key solutions to climate change, profiles of the candidates and background information about the constituency groups. There is also a "Jargon Watch" glossary of terms and links to resources.

JustCauseIt.com is the online community and social media companion to the forthcoming JUSTCAUSE Magazine. The site features social networking and groups functionality. Users can create "Causes" and ask others to join them in making positive change in their local community or the world at large, post blog entries, or events alongside editorial content that will appear in the magazine.

The Great Turtle Race is a partnership between TOPP (Tagging of Pacific Predators), Conservation International, the Leatherback Trust, and MINAE (Costa Rica's Ministry of the Environment and Energy).

The race was organized to raise awareness of the plight of leatherback turtles, whose population has been declining dramatically due to multiple factors including pollution, the fishing industry, human interference with nesting habitat and others.

The race follows 11 leatherback turtles, tagged with sensors that broadcast data on their location, speed, water temeprature, depth and other data to a central repository. Turtles were sponsored by businesses including Yahoo, Dreyer's Ice Cream, and West Marine, and by schools including Drexel University and Bullis Charter School.

CivicActions implemented an innovative flash-based race page for the site, "widgets" for each turtle to support viral messaging and has been working closely with TOPP and the GTR team on their social networking and viral messaging strategy. GTR has been featured on the Stephen Colbert Report twice (when Drexel University named a turtle for him, and more recently a race update.)

When the Free Software Foundation came to us in the spring of 2006, they were in the process of redrafting the General Public License (GPL). The new version, GPLv3, would take a hard line on the issue of Digital Rights Management. The FSF wanted to increase public awareness of DRM and shift the discourse from the media industry's frame of "protecting content creators" to the dangers of a world where all content and information are locked down with digital restrictions.

We worked with the FSF to develop the concept for a campaign that would organize technologists to take direct action both on- and off-line to spread the message that DRM represents a danger to free culture and computer users' privacy. DefectiveByDesign.org was born.

The campaign targets Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors aiming to make all manufacturers wary about bringing their DRM-enabled products to market. DRM products have features built-in that restrict what jobs they can do. These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design". DefectiveByDesign.org's aim is the abolition of DRM.

In the first six months over ten thousand users signed up for the site and took part in online actions against the RIAA and record labels. Hundreds participated in "real world" actions at Apple stores and a Windows conference and Microsoft Vista Launch events. Many more have planned and executed their own actions at colleges, high schools and workplaces around the world.

As a result of DefectiveByDesign.org's efforts, DRM is now often referred to as "anti-consumer", or "controversial" when mentioned in news reports. On April 2nd, 2006, EMI records and Apple announced they would begin offering EMI music free of DRM on the iTunes Music Store. The announcement followed a one month campaign targeting Steve Jobs to take action to end DRM.

We Can Do Better is a web-portal created for the Archimedes Movement as a tool to help them activate a growing grassroots community of people working to reform the Oregon State health care system. The portal provides the Archimedes Movement staff with a way to stay in touch with activists, share information, and organize members for strategic activities.

The toolset provided gives local chapter and group leaders the ability to invite new members to join their group, notify group members about local and regional meetings, publish notes, share documents for community comment, and communicate with other chapters and groups statewide. Other tools provided include a user-contributed photo gallery, a resource archive, and a place for users to share their stories about health care in Oregon.

The Congress For The New Urbanism had recently upgraded their organizations website to Drupal, and sought to do the same with the site for their annual Congress, a conference on New Urbanism. They had a different theme for this site and wanted it to share some content with the new CNU.org site.

We set up a multi site installation with custom table sharing to achieve their goal. Both sites share some key Drupal database tables and a CiviCRM installation and database. Content that is specific to the CNU XV displays under that theme, and content that is shared between the two sites displays under the theme of the referring page.

MCV Education Fund, like many small civic organizations, had a website that grew up with them organically over time. The organization knew it was time to reposition themselves on the web. We worked with Creature Kind Communications, and Jennergy Designs to develop a rich website that is easy to navigate, and easy to keep updated by the organization's dedicated staff.

We deployed the Drupal Content Management System (Version 4.7) with the CCK and Views Modules to create content types for the various resources produced by the MCV Education Fund. The site shares a similar look and feel to their sister organization the Montana Conservation Voters, but different color schemes distinguish them. Many publications which had formerly only been available as PDF downloads are now available as online content. The new site treats articles from MCV Education Fund publications as individual units of content allowing more flexibility in searching, and relating of articles to each other.