(Please cc: cl...@e-democracy.org with your reply. Thanks.)
The other week folks from the BeNeighbors.org initiative of my non-profit had a great discussion with the Twin Cities Drupal Users group. The focus was on how Drupal could be used to connect nearest neighbors for all sorts of community goodness (like 80% of them on a block or two including those not online at all or regularly). Anyway, three main approaches came out of the meeting: 1. Multi-tech Small Group (Leverage VOIP Drupal) 2. Dynamic Geo-Based Local Messaging/Alerts - Proximity Connecting 3. Map/Directory to Distributed Groups Near You So before we go too far down the road, I was interested in any connections with existing Drupal modules, projects, or developer communities. So: A. Are there any Drupal groups or projects that you know of who are developing tools for block level connections (like 100 households)? I haven't been able to find them so far. An example might be using Drupal to support neighborhood crime watch. B. Is there an existing module effort to support geo-coding of the street addresses (or mobile place for that matter) of Drupal site members? What about group messaging based on proximity? (What I like about this idea is that it would work on a global online community as well as something hyper local because enabling the X closest members with the topic initiator determining who gets the alert be it 10, 100 or 1000 closest members scales.) C. We are looking for examples of Drupal sites designed to be directories with both "select an area" and pin point options to tie an item to a map. Any suggestions? (Our goal here is to distribute the directory data collection and end up with a nice public-friendly map of where neighbors are connecting online and how to find them.) D. Who in the Drupal community do you know who might be interested in collaborating on these themes? (We are open to creating a Group on the Drupal site, but would rather not re-create the wheel if we do not need to do so.) Thanks, Steven Clift E-Democracy.org
