[hackerspaces] Collaborative coding - lowering the entry barrier for beginning hackerspaces

[Barry Coughlan]

Hello from 091 Labs,

We're a newly formed hackerspace in Galway, Ireland - we've been open 5
weeks. We're finding that the administrative side of things is consuming far
too much of our time. One of the things we're working on is to design,
document and share projects that are useful to hackerspaces worldwide. For
example, we're currently working on an open alarm system and motion
detection security system.

One of the areas that takes up way too much of our time is event management.
This email is a call for spaces interested in collaboratively coding such a
system that would meet our needs. We'd all like to lower the entry barrier
and see even more hackerspaces popping up around the world, and this could
greatly help with that.

This would involve fleshing out an essential features list, after which I
can design an architecture and mock objects so that each participating
hackerspace can code a part of the system independently, and we can stick it
all together at the end. My aim is to have a working version of this by next
Saturday - very doable if a few spaces get involved.

Here's the feature list we need for 091 Labs:
- Customisable HTML form that inserts into an SQL database
- Wordpress plugin to include this form (and optionally require
authentication)
- A PHP backend for approving events and sending them to various social
media sites (this would be the best bit)
*The idea being that we can reduce the administrative crud by the person
holding the workshops giving the required information and being able to send
it out to facebook/twitter/blog/calendar with one click.*
--> Event announce on Twitter via Twitter API
--> Facebook event creation and posting on your group page (Event creation
not allowed by Facebook API AFAIK - could be done using cURL)
--> Wordpress Blog updating to announce events
--> Post to Google calendar
- Be able to create an email template containing a summary of the weekly
events for mailing to members.
- Paypal integration for pre-booking workshops/events & Wordpress plugin
(I'm familiar with Paypal integration and could take this on)

Also anyone handy with Photoshop interested in creating templates for
flyers/posters would be cool, it could work towards creating a "starter
pack" for new spaces to get up and running.

Anyone interested in participating reply before Monday to indicate, and
include other features that would be useful to you (and doable), and I'll
try to have an architecture by Monday so we can collaborate on the project.

Regards,
Barry Coughlan
http://091labs.com
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