After a not so great period at work in January, when one of my projects got cancelled “for the time being …"(the final decision still doesn’t seem to be taken), things improved greatly at work.
Because she wanted to keep her supporters informed of the proceedings and decisions taken within the mesa 7 of the Asamblea Constituyente, Helga asked me to set her up with a Riseup mailing list. Servers at Riseup were down, however, so I needed to come up with a different solution. In the end, we decided on a Google Group and the constant stream of emails that has been coming since then testifies to both the good intentions of - at least some - politicians and the fact that Google can be used without too many difficulties by non geeks ;-) (referring to me as well as to Helga)
Mid February, mentioning again to Annabel that we really ought to update the No Bases website, I heard from her that some semi volunteer/programmers were working in this and would present their proposal one of the following days. (Communication could be better here at the office!) However, a month further now, we still didn’t get any proposal from the specialists …
I don’t remember how it came up, but the No Bases Network for a long time has had the plan to start with a database on all known foreign military bases. After playing a bit with the Google Groups, I was quite curious to find out what else Google could do for you once one was in the possession of a Google account …
Btw, I won’t deny Will’s influence in totally - although with some reserve - converting me to Google … ;-)
So, I started to experiment with Google Spreadsheets. They just had released a very cool feature that allows you to produce questionnaires, which you can send out by email and when people fill them out, the entries will automatically appear in your spreadsheet! A very cool feature, but unfortunately still in its “kid’s shoes”, with the necessary bugs that remain to be resolved ...
My search for another application that would allow me to collect data via on-line forms led me to Dabble DB. Which is really, really great!! I’m a total convert! You can get an account for free as long as you register your data under the Creative Commons license, which is just perfect for the No Bases Network. And the cool thing is that they make it dead-simple to embed the whole questionnaire in your website - or blog: check out my test on siathehedgehog - and visitors to your site can search the database without the need for an account.
I ended up making three questionnaires with Dabble DB. Unfortunately they’re not on-line yet, because I don’t have access to the current No Bases website and the people from the Network need to make some decisions first on which way exactly they want to go with their to-be-renewed website …
Something else positive about all this geeky stuff is that I got into contact with one of the people of the Network - totally by chance cause I didn’t know he was part of the red (communication …). I contacted Wilbert, a Dutch guy, because the Transnational Institute he’s working for made a great database - although smaller in scope than what we were thinking of - and it would have been a shame not to incorporate those data … He proved to be very enthusiastic about the idea of on-line gathering of data and on top of that he also had been thinking about restructuring the website and had similar ideas as me, which provided me with the proverbial “green light” to go on with my experiments. It’s nice if your work is appreciated!
February 14th, a rose was awaiting every employee at ACJ …
Will, Karla and Kai’s office had a very nice smell that day as well. The floristeria on the ground floor must have started working at 4 or so in the morning, preparing hundreds - if not thousands - of roses to be sold that day and the stairs going up were full of flowers.
Valentine’s day is a big thing in Latin America!
After the questionnaires, I moved on to make another Google Group and set up a blog. When my Google Reader (another great thing! Sorry to spam you with all these links …) one day came up with an article on yet another new feature: Google Sites, I started thinking of making the new website myself ... The Network seems to have money available to pay people to make and maintain a website, but why waste so much money if you can make an easily maintainable interactive website yourself.
So, I bought my own domain name (hedgehogdilemma – Sia obviously became a rather important part of our lives ...) and started experimenting with both Google Pages and Google Sites, again all for free. Very cool!
And apart from all of this, I would like to experiment a bit with Google Earth … There are some cool mash-ups possible these days, i.e. combining Google Earth with other types of data. Hope to find some time for that once the whole decision-making process is over and the new website is coming along all right …
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