[Sosfbay-discuss] Call for County Meeting Agenda Items

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

>Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:13:52 -0800
>From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
>User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812)
>To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
>References: <BAY140-W148A16EE9C527D0C58C6259E730 at phx.gbl>
>Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] Call for County Meeting Agenda Items

>Brian Good wrote:
>> The County meeting is Wed. 1/6 at the San Jose Peace Center on 7th
>> near San Fernando.
>> Please send me agenda items.

>- what are we doing to build on the attraction of statewide campaigns so 
>that we can reach out to and attract more Greens for the county?  
>Database, mailings, organization. Cameron is our repository of technical 
>and practical knowledge on what it takes to make something work for the 
>long haul.

We've already surveyed "off the shelf" software and tried the
most popular.  Campaigns with money have been outsourcing their
IT work since before everybody else did that.  GP-US uses
a company whose name sounds like "Democrats Inaction" whose
major customers are all Dem Party candidacies and 
Beltway non-profits.  Greens in San Francisco and Atlanta
offer consulting and hosted applications, but not for free.

I lashed up a very simple application for Warner's campaign
a few years ago.  As long as you keep the requirements
bare-bones simple, it's no more difficult than setting up
and learning how to use the off the shelf stuff.
(I used Postgresql and plain old Perl CGI, far more efficient
than Drupal.)
And you end up with something maintainable.
I'll do it again this year if local or county candidates
want to use it.  I'll need a current snapshot from the
Registrar to seed it.  that takes a request on letterhead
from our county Party's council.

-Cameron