Progress on "version 1x" - any early adopters ready to give it a try?
Submitted by patdunlavey on Fri, 08/18/2006 - 15:40.
I've been very busy the past several weeks going down our long wish list of improvements and adding them to the "1x" branch of Advokit. The main difference between this work and the improvements I made for the version 1.0 release is that now I am now letting myself muck around with the underlying data model of Advokit: adding new tables and adding new fields to existing tables. For example, I added an "interests" table for keeping track of activist interests so that when we want to fill a job, we can search for activists who, for example, have indicated that they are interested in tabling.
You will not be able to use your existing Advokit database in the next version without updating it. I have avoided any changes that might cause data to be lost in an upgrade however, and it should be pretty easy and safe, once we have an official release, to run an upgrade option in the installer to upgrade both the code and the database of any existing installation.
I don't have a release date in mind yet, primarily because we have not "frozen" the database schema. Until we have a "schema freeze", you should not expect to be able to grab the latest snapshot of the code off our SVN server, start up a live instance, and later upgrade it while still live. The upgrade mechanism relies on upgrading from a known schema (e.g. version 1.0.0) to the new schema, and right now we're in between versions and the data tables and fields change sometimes on a daily basis. On the other hand, if you don't care about being able to upgrade your live 1x installation, or if you are comfortable with messing around in databases, there is no reason why you could not start using 1x, even in a live campaign.
The fact is that due to the way the Advokit code is structured, it's pretty difficult to accidentally break something that is already working when you add new features. My own sense is that the current 1x code is actually more stable than the official 1.0 version.
I am very interested in getting some feedback on how this version is going. I would also like to delegate some documentation authoring. If you are comfortable with installing and troubleshooting LAMP applications, I'd encourage you to checkout the 1x branch now (point your SVN client to https://svn.advokit.net/repos/advokit-installer/branches/r1-x-dev) or grab the tarball, run the installer and give it a whirl. In a week or so, around August 27th, I am planning to set up a 1x demonstration instance, and I'll post a notice about that.
Add one early adopter to the list!
Submitted by jfung on Tue, 12/05/2006 - 13:45.
Looking forward to trying this out after my installer finishes. Keep up the good work!
Micro-targeting
Submitted by patdunlavey on Wed, 09/06/2006 - 09:36.
You can already "micro-target" voters based on any voter data that you have. You can also design a voter filter based on previously recorded responses to questions on questionnaires. In version 1.0, you need to do this by editing the filter sql (you need to know the question_id and answer_id - create sql filters that look like - va.question_id=3 and va.answer_id=1). In version 1x (development branch) you can make this easily in the Add/Edit voter filter interface.
Something I recently discovered is that you can create very dynamic questionnaires by putting voter filters on questionnaire sections, where the filter is on the response to a question! You could have a scenario where you have one questionnaire section that asks a few questions. When the questionnaire is submitted, one or several new questionnaire sections appear that are based on the responses to the questions just answered. With a little thought, you could get pretty sophisticated!
Yes, very helpful.
Submitted by dvawest on Sun, 09/02/2007 - 19:45.
Yes, very helpful. Candidates do keep track of who blogs, likes to write LTEs, is a voter registrar, etc. This could be very useful for doing targeted voter outreach - eg including "activists who knit" for a fundraiser etc.
Mp3Monsters
interests are good
I love the interests fields (though I have only seen them display for activists so far).
Activist interests
Yes, very helpful. Candidates do keep track of who blogs, likes to write LTEs, is a voter registrar, etc. This could be very useful for doing targeted voter outreach - eg including "activists who knit" for a fundraiser etc.
Voter interests
I can see candidates using this extensively to do "micro-targeting".
You might even go further to include classification of these by categories of interest (hobbies, faith, organizational membership, issues).