April 9, 2012 at 16:40Create Society 2.0 or a new project from the creators of Web Observer
Last week I told all respected members of the Habr community about how we developed the Web observer service , and today I would like to talk with you about a new project that we started working on not so long ago.
Without plunging into political discussions (let’s not abuse me team haber :)) I dare say that the results of recent socio-political events in Russia caused depression and apathy among the socially active population of our vast Motherland. Someone dropped their hands, someone goes to rallies (that imho does not give any result, but not about this post), and someone thinks how to make life better. After thinking a little, we decided to make a service that will help society organize itself and cope with those problems whose solutions cannot be provided to us by the authorities. And there are a lot of such problems, if you think about it, for example
- Spontaneous construction of parking lots in yards, with which residents of nearby yards disagree (for example, children's playgrounds are demolished)
- Garbage on the streets (if in Moscow this is not so relevant, then in some cities outside the MKAD it is a real problem)
- Extortion of money from small and medium-sized businesses by SES, firefighters, officials and other authorities
- expensive foreign cars abandoned by owners and blocking departure from yards or tram tracks
- violation of various standards by the builders of roads, houses, etc., which leads to consequences of varying severity - from traffic jams to the collapse of buildings. As far as I know, Yandex with its I-traffic service carefully analyzes the causes of congestion, but since this is not their main specialization, it would be at least strange to require them to regularly improve the road situation in the country.
- Theft and inappropriate spending from various budgets
In my opinion, this list goes on and on. Our task is to organize a modern society in Russia (and in the future, not only in it) in such a way that it itself includes regulatory mechanisms, and we would provide it with a tool for this task. Convenient tools will also be provided for journalists and government officials who are interested in doing their job at the proper level (I am sure that with a general dislike for officials, we cannot exclude the possibility that among them there are honest people who also want to make the world a better place).
There are several provisions that will be key when working on a project:
- Using top-level (but always proven) technologies / frameworks / methodologies for the project.
- The source code will be open to all who wish to read it.
- Public figures, journalists, experts from various fields will be invited to work on the project
- Core Team development will consist of leading experts, everyone will be able to commit the code, but it will be reviewed by our experts
. Now I would like to ask you some questions:
- Which problems you see in your city / region, what or who exactly slows down their solution?
- Which of the problems are more priority in your opinion, and which are less?
- What functionality would you like to see, what exactly would be more in demand, and what would be less?
It would be great if you could ask the same questions to your friends and relatives who care about what is happening around and share in the comments.
At the same time, we are analyzing the requirements that we ourselves put forward to the product and having received your feedback we will compare it with our vision and separately I will write a post about what happened.
UPD 0 : Another question (creative :)) - what would you call such a social platform? Do not rely solely on Public control - we have a lot of ideas in our head to help our society and we will implement all of them :)
UPD 1 : Raised a high-level description of the functional from the comments in the main topic:
Our task
1 - collect information
2 - structure her
3 - to draw public attention to it
4 - to organize experts in this field
5 - to carry out a series of activities to solve the problem
6 - track the status of what happened and keep the public informed.
An example is the lack of a pedestrian crossing on a busy stretch of road. The work of the system will look like this:
1 - information gets into the system
2 - all the necessary documents / evidence are collected, etc. - photos of the road section, lack of transition, complaints from residents to the administration, etc.
3 - for journalists from the corresponding region, the information is provided in the form necessary for publication
4 - experts on road works that are in the region are involved to assess the time / cost / feasibility of implementation, etc.
5 - a working group is being formed, funds are being sought, etc., while the knowledge of the lawyer included in the working group is used to prevent officials from delaying the deadline, saying that there is no budget, etc. All statuses are displayed in system
6 - when the transition is made - the status changes to complete and (for example) grateful citizens can somehow thank the members of the group for the work done - say a good word or treat them with beer :)
Without plunging into political discussions (let’s not abuse me team haber :)) I dare say that the results of recent socio-political events in Russia caused depression and apathy among the socially active population of our vast Motherland. Someone dropped their hands, someone goes to rallies (that imho does not give any result, but not about this post), and someone thinks how to make life better. After thinking a little, we decided to make a service that will help society organize itself and cope with those problems whose solutions cannot be provided to us by the authorities. And there are a lot of such problems, if you think about it, for example
- Spontaneous construction of parking lots in yards, with which residents of nearby yards disagree (for example, children's playgrounds are demolished)
- Garbage on the streets (if in Moscow this is not so relevant, then in some cities outside the MKAD it is a real problem)
- Extortion of money from small and medium-sized businesses by SES, firefighters, officials and other authorities
- expensive foreign cars abandoned by owners and blocking departure from yards or tram tracks
- violation of various standards by the builders of roads, houses, etc., which leads to consequences of varying severity - from traffic jams to the collapse of buildings. As far as I know, Yandex with its I-traffic service carefully analyzes the causes of congestion, but since this is not their main specialization, it would be at least strange to require them to regularly improve the road situation in the country.
- Theft and inappropriate spending from various budgets
In my opinion, this list goes on and on. Our task is to organize a modern society in Russia (and in the future, not only in it) in such a way that it itself includes regulatory mechanisms, and we would provide it with a tool for this task. Convenient tools will also be provided for journalists and government officials who are interested in doing their job at the proper level (I am sure that with a general dislike for officials, we cannot exclude the possibility that among them there are honest people who also want to make the world a better place).
There are several provisions that will be key when working on a project:
- Using top-level (but always proven) technologies / frameworks / methodologies for the project.
- The source code will be open to all who wish to read it.
- Public figures, journalists, experts from various fields will be invited to work on the project
- Core Team development will consist of leading experts, everyone will be able to commit the code, but it will be reviewed by our experts
. Now I would like to ask you some questions:
- Which problems you see in your city / region, what or who exactly slows down their solution?
- Which of the problems are more priority in your opinion, and which are less?
- What functionality would you like to see, what exactly would be more in demand, and what would be less?
It would be great if you could ask the same questions to your friends and relatives who care about what is happening around and share in the comments.
At the same time, we are analyzing the requirements that we ourselves put forward to the product and having received your feedback we will compare it with our vision and separately I will write a post about what happened.
UPD 0 : Another question (creative :)) - what would you call such a social platform? Do not rely solely on Public control - we have a lot of ideas in our head to help our society and we will implement all of them :)
UPD 1 : Raised a high-level description of the functional from the comments in the main topic:
Our task
1 - collect information
2 - structure her
3 - to draw public attention to it
4 - to organize experts in this field
5 - to carry out a series of activities to solve the problem
6 - track the status of what happened and keep the public informed.
An example is the lack of a pedestrian crossing on a busy stretch of road. The work of the system will look like this:
1 - information gets into the system
2 - all the necessary documents / evidence are collected, etc. - photos of the road section, lack of transition, complaints from residents to the administration, etc.
3 - for journalists from the corresponding region, the information is provided in the form necessary for publication
4 - experts on road works that are in the region are involved to assess the time / cost / feasibility of implementation, etc.
5 - a working group is being formed, funds are being sought, etc., while the knowledge of the lawyer included in the working group is used to prevent officials from delaying the deadline, saying that there is no budget, etc. All statuses are displayed in system
6 - when the transition is made - the status changes to complete and (for example) grateful citizens can somehow thank the members of the group for the work done - say a good word or treat them with beer :)