2015 Agenda

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Aspiration events are first and foremost convened to strengthen the ties and social networks of technology practitioners in the non-profit/non-governmental sectors.

The #npdev session list is co-developed with participants, facilitators, and partners in the time leading up to and during the Festival. We strongly encourage you to join in the fun at this unique and interactive gathering!

The agenda is designed and facilitated using Aspiration's unique participatory model, in an environment where powerpoint slides are discouraged and dialog and collaboration drive the learning.

Our philosophy centers around getting participants into small-group discussions where they can discuss topics they are passionate about and get answers to their questions and curiosities. Sessions at Aspirations have particular traits; we de-emphasize presentations and lecture, and instead focus on "break-out" sessions that are self-organized whenever possible .

Wednesday November 18

Introduction

Spectrogram

Wednesday Breakout Session I

Important to document the people who are documenting, doing the human wrangling as just as important as the code writers. Coalition of partners, education of people in the context of the software.
Get further from the scary "and then they went to jail" stories into a more relatable. Things you do on the internet you don't want everyone to know about, shre that. Those discussions get people to think about privacy and how they can control information in person rather than on the internet.
Talked about OwnCloud and where it falls short (collab). Talked about "why" on "why transfer" which is bigger than Gdrive.
Challenges and pain points. The technology and frameworks work with your CMS, if you're contracting with a third party. Managing a contributor base. How do you vet people, get them to come back for more. Do you source volunteers or pay translators? Then maintenance. who updates for all new languages? TransEffects has a free plan for FOSS. Mensource(?).
Talked about stages of strategies, what's included, what order they go in. Barriers to healthy living.
History, comparison to wordpress. Building custom themes for drupal, basic modules. Also back(?)
Take young adults on autism spectrum for testing jobs in the software space. Offer free services.
talked about challenges to creating that, some ways to make it happen. Why would we want to do it?
basic concepts in widely used crypto tools. Some people who had tried to get better at it, but had been frustrated. Don't use PGP. Do use Signal and OTR. Do use Tor. Careful about VPNs. Crypto Concepts relevant in post-Snowden era.
lots of CRM, we made a list! People really like talking about CiviCRM, still the only open source one. SalesForce is free for nonprofits, but "free" like in "drugs." Be careful where you put your data (meetup.com won't let you have your data back). Think about your data model, what you want to store and use it, etc before you chose your tool. Think about security because you're dealing with people's private information. Or something.

Wednesday Breakout Session II

Privacy is important, you don't know the identity of your visitors. Privacy compromised on web by third-party trackers. Keep everything on your own servers so you can control who has access. Also be sure your website loads well over Tor. HTTPS. Common misconceptions: decreases your SEO (not true) -- Google prioritizes HTTS sites.
Talked about creating an environment for changing a large org. Internal campaigns. Ways to foster a culture that facilitates change.
Folk from Palante and Open Flows shared their experiences. Good to have people in the co-op that can easily come to consensus. need to be sensitive to personal lives. Different models to setting up, profit sharing, cost. Lots of people around who might answer your questions.
What life looks like on the other side for 43mil emails. Benefits -- own dev team, make own share button. But some things get harder (punctuated equilibrium) -- see yourself in a "sending email business". Some things are the same -- need a concrete Theory of Change.
Brainstorming about what comes to mind when we think about "security." It's an overlap of digital, physical, and mental. Interrelated and interdependent. Don't exploit or cannibalize other domains. Walk your talk. As a trainer, be aware of how your identity plays into your work. Also self-defense training and digital training, see the two come together in a program. Open Source means "more open, transparent, less private," and how we can combine these conversations.
Grant is awesome. Translated complicated ideas and concepts into easy for new folk. Sites need constant care and updating (esp for malware etc). Research plugins to be sure the developer is legitimate. Roots to find out more information. Different layers of themes and plugins, backend dev versus live site. Backups! Do them!
Defined failure as "not meeting expectations" internally or externally. Need time to reflect, tools to reflect and prevent similar failures. How to create healthier, more reasonable expectations for self and others.
Treat your servers like cattle, not pets. Config management makes everything better for recovery, sharing collective wisdom as accidental admins. Don't trust your cloud hosting provider -- either have your own, or distribute across a bunch of servers so it's hard to access everything. Lots of anecdotes.
Different communities of practice we participate in, then how those were formed, organizational structures, what worked well for each or wish were better about them.

Thursday Breakout Session I

Thursday Breakout Session II

Friday Breakout Session I

Friday Breakout Session II

Friday Breakout Session III