Hackfest - Citizen Empowerment web app for better governance

After the post-adrenalin Rush of RubyConfIndia, we are proposing a HackFest which will get us all together to build a web-app. We cannot accommodate more than 25 people for this - so be quick to decide!

When

10 am on 11th June, 2011 (Saturday) till

7 pm on 12th June, 2011 (Sunday)

Come and go as you please at your convinience -- The Hackfest is on for 48 hours!

Agenda

Saturday (11th June)

10 - 11am - Introduction - Overview of the app, What it is, why we're making it and most importantly how! (Peter & Gautam)

11am - Pairing up, task allocation and start coding!

2pm - lunch

8pm dinner and review (were are we at and what do we have to do to launch by sunday evening). We can continue working as long as we want -- we shall even try to provide for some space to sleep!

11am - continue hacking!

2pm - lunch

5pm - final review & deployment.

7-8 launch, dinner and party!

9pm - The End (Do help us make it a happy ending)

Snacks and drinks available throughout.

Non-technical Corner

Project creation corner - The aim is for everyone to create one project by the end of the weekend i ll have a white board for project ideas and a form people can fill it out to add a project.

Marketing corner - A whiteboard for marketing or how people might be able to help keep the momentum going.

The Brief

This is a web app to empower citizen's to create 'projects' for better governance in your locality or city. For example, 'Anna Hazare's Anti-corruption' campaign or the 'Proposed Metro in Pune' or the 'Failure of BRTS' or the 'Tree Plantation Drive in Baner', "How to Save Ramnadi" etc.

Projects can be Issues in your locality that you want the Government to look into or new Ideas to improve the locality or city that the Government should undertake. Using Viral Social Media, we can involve various representatives (RTI activist, social workers and government representatives) to take this up to the next level.

Stories are publicly shared here: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/295039

Sponsorship

In true Aussie spirit, this Hackfest is being sponsored entirely by Peter Spiers.This project is his idea and he is keen to see how much the Pune Ruby community can deliver!

He will be providing for Beer, pizzas and soft-drinks throughout the duration of the Hackfest.

The Hackfest

The hackfest scope, stories have already been outlined and updated on Pivotal Tracker! Those interested can RSVP for this meetup. If you are interested in the pre-planning process (design, architecture, stories etc.) please send an email to Peter and he will add you to the project on Pivotal Tracker.

Tentatively, this is what we are looking at:

• Rails 3.0.x and Ruby 1.9.2

• MongoDB as the data store

• Devise + Omniauth for authentication

• Cancan for authorization

• Mongoid-geo for geo-location.

• HAML & Sass for templating.

If you are interested in learning or contributing, don't miss this event.