[OSGeo-Discuss] Crowd Coordination Project (Kickstarter)

[Miles Fidelman]

Hi Folks,

If you're organizing a crowd mapping or similar project, I just launched 
a Kickstarter  project that might be of interest.
The short form is "smart documents," running in browsers as webapps, 
that talk to each other via P2P protocols - as a tool for keeping 
virtual teams and projects "on the same page." The project originated 
with some work on military mission planning and management, with an eye 
toward crisis management and project management applications.


I encourage you to take a look at
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th 

and if you're so moved, get on board.

A bit more background:

For about 40 years my "thing" has always been the theory and practice of
using the Internet to support virtual organizations. I've scratched this
itch by working on everything from C2 systems and distributed
simulation, to electronic town meetings, online rulemakings, and 
webmarkets.

I've continued to find that the simplest tools seem to be the most
effective - particularly email lists, and various forms of
shared/synchronized documents, both on paper (musical scores, theatrical
scripts) and electronic (RFCs, linked spreadsheets, military mission
orders distributed by email).

This project represents a distillation of a lot of ideas about how to
support virtual projects and teams with "smart documents."  It started
out as some funded work on "smart op orders" that I'm trying to
generalize as an open source tools.  I'm nominally calling them "smart
notebooks" - and the core idea is "keeping people on the same page,
across the net."

Think of a composer, writing some music, then handing out pages to
orchestra members, then telling people to mark up their pages - then
think about writing in a web browser, distributing by email, and linking
the pages so markups propagate automatically.  Functionally, I've been
thinking of the tool as a cross between a DayRunner on steroids, and
HyperCard, retooled for groups, running in a browser. No new tools to
install, no fancy groupware running in the cloud - just web apps
executing locally, email, and a P2P protocol.

If you can help spread the word - by
reposting/retweeting/slashdotting/putting and so forth - that would
really be helpful.  If you know anybody at Wired or Gizmodo, that would
also be helpful (seems like coverage by one of those is a really good
vehicle to successful Kickstarter funding).

If you have a project coming up that needs tools for supporting a
distributed effort - say a large crowdsourcing project, or organizing a
large event - I'm looking for scenarios to support - particuarly if
you're funded

And there's a 30-day clock running, so sooner is better!

Thank you very much for any support you might offer,

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra