Sorry I'm submitting this so close to the hackathon! I've been traveling a ton this month. :smile: :airplane:
Anyhow, my idea is basically to generate a newsletter (probably monthly) that would share petitions, legislation, and (possibly) news stories that are relevant to a person's interest in issues. I think sites/apps are cool, but in reality, stuffing something in their inbox that they want to read will probably be more engaging.
The idea is to give them information about petitions that are relevant to them in a timely way without annoying them. Hopefully it will increase engagement due to the immediacy of the medium (e-mail).
I'd like to build it such that at sign up, we take their e-mail and ZIP code. From their ZIP, we deduce a set of issues that would probably be of interest to them and give them the option to reduce/expand that list before finishing their signup.
I'd like to compile a list of issues that we can associate We The People issues/terms with that can be cross-referenced with GovTrack.us terms. From that list of 30 or 50 or 100 or whatever issues, we can then generate a list of relevant petitions and legislative measures.
If we build these pieces out quickly-ish (I doubt it but it's possible :)), then I'd like to add some slick things like showing how someone's representatives/senators voted based on their ZIP code and so on. And obviously, look at adding a small news section to the bottom of the newsletter with stories relevant to the issues they care about.
I can probably handle most of the backend code, but any help would be appreciated if someone is looking for a project to work on. The app will be in Ruby/Rails. I'd love to have a front end person to work with, especially if you're interested in or have experience with designing HTML e-mails (it's a hairy beast to deal with).
Sorry I'm submitting this so close to the hackathon! I've been traveling a ton this month. :smile: :airplane:
Anyhow, my idea is basically to generate a newsletter (probably monthly) that would share petitions, legislation, and (possibly) news stories that are relevant to a person's interest in issues. I think sites/apps are cool, but in reality, stuffing something in their inbox that they want to read will probably be more engaging.
The idea is to give them information about petitions that are relevant to them in a timely way without annoying them. Hopefully it will increase engagement due to the immediacy of the medium (e-mail).
I'd like to build it such that at sign up, we take their e-mail and ZIP code. From their ZIP, we deduce a set of issues that would probably be of interest to them and give them the option to reduce/expand that list before finishing their signup.
I'd like to compile a list of issues that we can associate We The People issues/terms with that can be cross-referenced with GovTrack.us terms. From that list of 30 or 50 or 100 or whatever issues, we can then generate a list of relevant petitions and legislative measures.
If we build these pieces out quickly-ish (I doubt it but it's possible :)), then I'd like to add some slick things like showing how someone's representatives/senators voted based on their ZIP code and so on. And obviously, look at adding a small news section to the bottom of the newsletter with stories relevant to the issues they care about.
I can probably handle most of the backend code, but any help would be appreciated if someone is looking for a project to work on. The app will be in Ruby/Rails. I'd love to have a front end person to work with, especially if you're interested in or have experience with designing HTML e-mails (it's a hairy beast to deal with).