Guest Speaker Talks about Webtool Needs of Campaigns | 10/22/2006 Meeting

Posted by Ken

OVERVIEW

22 October 2006, Sunday, Affinity Lab, 3-5pm, Open Discussion Until 05:00p. Matthew, Nathan, Brian C., Andrew, Carter, Ken Guest Andy Miscuk

SUMMARY

First time meeting at Affinity Lab's conference room on 18th Street in the heart of Adams Morgan. Six persons and one guest speaker reviewed the business opportunities related to campaigning and politics in DC. Brian C. donated coffee and doughnuts. Wifi connection was solid.

DETAILS

  • Donations: Food-$18.50 Brian C., Conference Room-$30.00 Ken
  • Carter--37signals.com new gig job board
Special Guest Andy Miscuk
  • Ken introducs Andy.. --4th term as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner; --U.S. Army Paratrooper, U.S. Army Special Forces and commissioned as an Army Military Intelligence Officer; --Taught Computer Science as an adjunct professor at The American University and Northern Virginia Community College; --Worked in the Information Technology Industry for about 15 years; --Andy's experience spans the industry, programming, networking, project management and support; --MBA, University of Pittsburgh; --Ran against 16-year DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, first opposition ever in the DC Democratic runoff.
  • Ken suggested maybe Andy could discuss why he chose ngpsoftware.com for his campaign website. In it there is a webform using a service that calls on Active Server Pages.
  • Andy Miscuk begins his presentation which covered a good case study of why they chose ngpsoftware (for federally required filings), and the difficulties in getting personal information in the age of third party caretakers of people's email. Andy also talked about his experience in teaching.
  • Andy says there's little money for coders in politics. Be sure to get all or most of your money in a guaranteed fashion or at least up-front.
  • Andy talks about the generation gap in politics as represented in technology usage. He breaks the group at about the 40 year old mark. Above 40 years and that person doesn't understand Instant Messaging, Friendster, Myspace, etc. The nonprofit and political world fits neatly into the over 40 crowd. Moreover 18 year olds generally don't vote. Andy talks about NGPSoftware.com, which is a Democratic only provider of web and email tech. Andy is quick to point out that there are also Republican-only tech providers. A campaign needs a contact management system on the web similar Outlook. A campaign site needs to trap personal info, trap donation info, and volunteer info, and must get payments up-front. Andy mentions Peoplesoft ("seevil") which is 100% modifiable (?). NGPSoftware is excellent for producing Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports that are compliant with law. Talks about 3rd party Plakso that complicates getting people's email. Talked about Roboform, all passwords encompassed in one source. Similar to Gator but without security and selling of privacy issues. Roboform has a good toolbar. Mentions the value of taking opendomain dbfs like Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) data and correlating it with other data. Such as car owners and car registered owners, with voting public. DC DMV will sell you the database. Talked about rates and strategy--Ken offered info on his rates, which started a discussion about rates, and rights to code. Andy offered the suggestion of encapsulating code, in Windows--using dlls, creating a repository and selling from that depository back to yourself the encapsulated code in order to protect your rights to the code.
  • Nathan mentions briefly his website coding and design gig with an Old Town clothing store. Nathan mentions Cake, a php rapid development framework similar in scope and design like rails. Nobody else in the room has heard of it.
  • Andy returns to government work driving demand for leading technologies. 6 Ruby coders vs. 6k dot net coders. The dot net will get the contract. Talked about how Wordperfect locked in legal firms with their ability to easily keep legal docs updated. Andy talked about packaging code into dlls (maybe gems) and selling the packages to yourself in order to protect the code.
  • Andrew talks about Ryan Tomayko's online article entitled, "How I Explained REST to My Wife" when CArter asks about the upcoming REST-ful version of Rails.
  • Ken asks about Rails group in Dupont Circle--does anyone know about them. They had their first official meeting last month. It is suggested that they may be the related to the Revolution Health group. Ken suggests that they join forces once in a while if anyone is a member or knows one of the organizers.
  • Ken passed around a list of upcoming OReilly books and several members put in requests for copies of the books. Ken made it clear that he would require a review of the publication, perhaps a few paragraphs of opinion about the publication to be published online.

RESOURCES

  • 37 Signals New Rails Gig Postings. Postings cost $100 for 30 days.
  • Cake. , PHP framework that gives similar concepts and usability as RoR. Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC.
  • National Geographical and Political Software NGP Software, Inc.. , seeks to passionately deliver technology and support to Democrats and their allies. Founded in 1997, NGP operates according to our core principles: Take good care of our clients; operate with honesty and integrity; and charge reasonable fees for the products and services we provide.
  • Ryan Tomayko's explanation of REST (12/12/2004).
  • Roboform password manager .