Keep Working Toward Freedom

Hi Everyone! This message was sent to me and I was asked to forward it to you all. If you're interested in continuing liberty/freedom efforts, please check out the website and join the group. Matt is looking to move us all to his website rather than having to pay the cost of meetup.com. I hope to see you join the website group!
Stephanie




What Matt Whitlock wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Please forward this message to your Meetup group members.

Subject: A new tool to carry the Ron Paul R3volution forward

I recognize that much scrambling is going on in the movement to
build something to replace the costly Meetup system. My take
on this, from what I have been able to gather, is
unconventional. All of the potential solutions out there that
I have seen, and most that I have heard about, continue with
the concept of groups.

Groups form a hierarchical structure. They establish
divisions, or boundaries, between subsets of the population.
When attempting to organize atop an existing bureaucracy, such
as the Republican Party, groups divided by state and county
make sense. However, when attempting to organize an organic,
grassroots movement, the group divisions are essentially
arbitrary. I therefore think we should consider alternatives
to perpetuating the artificial boundaries that the group
structure imposes.

The alternative that I envision is a communications network
based not on groups but rather on locations and distances.
Unless I'm writing on an issue pertaining specifically to my
county, I don't really want to talk to everyone in my county,
but rather only to those people who are within a particular
distance of myself, which could very well include people in
other counties! For some topics I want to reach only people
very nearby, and for other topics I want to reach a larger
area. On the receiving end, I don't always care about events
going on clear on the other side of my county (counties in
Florida are large), so I would prefer to "dial down" the
messages I receive to include only those originating closer to
myself.

Such a system wouldn't replace the group-centric system of
Meetup or Google Groups, but would instead be a parallel system
serving a different purpose. Many discussions need to take
place on a county or state level, and those discussions should
be held via the group system, whichever one or ones we wind up
choosing. However, many discussions would be better focused
around individual locations with no regard for arbitrary
political boundaries.

As a software engineer, I naturally had to implement this idea
I've had. The active and fully-functional system can now be
found at www.freedomfortress.net.

In the coming weeks, I will be working on adding an event
system to Freedom Fortress. This will allow users to place a
pin on the map, choose a date, and enter a description of their
event. Then members within a given distance of that event will
receive notification of the event via email. Members will
additionally be able to select a range of dates from a calendar
widget and see the corresponding events on the map. Clicking
one of the pins on the map will pop up a bubble showing the
description of the event.

Another idea, which Nathan Estey, organizer of the National Ron
Paul Organizers Meetup, came up with and related to me, is a
member directory. Members could optionally choose to be
published in the directory and could enter some keywords
related to their profession and skills. Then other members
could search the map by keyword to locate members with a
particular skill.

And all of this operates without the need for segregating the
member population into groups.

I think there is great value in having one of our own build the
tools we will use to organize and communicate. Literally
anything is possible, and we won't have company XYZ telling us,
"deal with it," when we mention a shortcoming or request a new
feature.

I would enjoy your feedback and thoughts about the concept.

In liberty,

Matt Whitlock
Software Engineer
Gainesville Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator
University of Florida Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator

----------------------------------------------------------------

* If you'd like to see the Meetup profile for Matt Whitlock,
visit:
http://www.meetup.com...


--------------------------------------------------

Add *info@meetup.com* to your address book to receive all your
Meetup emails.

To unsubscribe or update your Meetup email preferences, visit
your account page:
http://www.meetup.com...

Questions? You can email customer service at: support@meetup.com

Meetup Customer Service, 632 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 USA


Go to Site:
www.freedomfortress.net
Search the Web | Search News