laveshaparker
commented
6 years ago Notes from 2/27 HackNight
- Run on Twilio
- Drastically reduces the cost of Text banking
- Text messages/volunteers go and constantly send messages
- We have features that exist that allow you to mass send messages for people subscribed.
- In the US, as long as people have opted in, you can freely text people
- We could turn that on as we use it. But we really can only add people who actually subscribe.
- Currently in Spoke, you upload contact lists.
- Currently in Spoke, you have different campaigns. That is the unit of sending stuff out. Sky would love to have a campaign which could be structured as an opt-in. "Text this number and you're on the contact list"
- As is, version that would work is to maintain a contact list out of Spoke, and then you set it to the "Not in USA" env flag. Every time you send campaign out, you upload that list and then have a set of volunteers to deal with replies.
- Twilio is a cool API that we can do lots of stuff with. They might even have a subscription list setup. It wouldn't take that much code to write a web form that maintains the list and sends it to all of our contacts. That might make more sense than using Spoke, especially if we don't care about replying to people.
- Twilio.js file in Spoke that shows all the ways to interact with Twilio. Great starting point.
- Great addition to Spoke would be to do "Text
to to subscribe". Would take care of two problems at once! - Twilio has a setup where there are multiple numbers based on area code. Could be useful, tbd. We can use this to our advantage as people are more likely to answer. Twilio lets us buy numbers in specific area codes.
What problem are we trying to solve?
There are two nation-wide Take Back Days held annually. This is a time for people to take their unused and unneeded prescription drugs to designated sites for free and environmentally-friendly disposal. Take Back Days are not on the same days year after year, and people might forget when they are happening. The proposed solution to this is to allow users to sign up for a Texting reminder service, in which they enter their phone number (with no other identifying information), and we send them a reminder two days before a Take Back Day, and then on the day of.
A big concern here is privacy, as people will have to volunteer their phone numbers to this service.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from this project?
Government stands to benefit as they are running these Take Back Days. Constituents benefit by having free and proper disposal of prescription drugs in a "no questions asked" kind of way.
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
The New York Attorney General's office has provided publicly available data here.
What help is needed at this time?
Designers
We need design for the UI that accepts these phone numbers!
Developers
Frontend
We need an embeddable service that can be added to different webpages to collect phone numbers. We also need to asynchronously send that information to a secure DB to be used later as we send the texted reminders.
Backend
We need to process and store phone numbers, protect against SQL injection/sanitize user input. We also need to plug into a P2P texting service (like Spoke or Hustle) to actually send these messages.
Creatives
We need copy for all the messaging and texted alerts.
Data/Security
We need to find a secure way to accept and store this data, as it is personally identifying, and a big tenet of the Take Back Day program is some level of anonymity.
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
We need research for the best P2P texting platform to use to power most of this, and we need basic architectural discussions of how this service should work.
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
Add your name here if you plan to stay on with this project through the March 11 HackDay!
Sources
This is all based on the presentation from the following people! They presented at the Pre-HackDay! Daniel Spencer (full stack dev) - daniel.patrick.spencer@gmail.com Carlos Merced (front end dev) - mail.merced@gmail.com Annie Hirshman (designer) - anniehirshman@gmail.com Anna de Paula Hanika (product) - annadph@gmail.com Daeha Ko (IT) - daehako@gmail.com
If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team with an email to steering@progressivehacknight.org or come find an organizer at a HackNight. We're here to help bring great ideas to life!