Kam has changed my sleeping and working patterns slightly this week...

On Sunday Night we(mostly Kam) added editing capabilities to the info windows.
You'll notice that if you click on the + in the upper right of a marker's window you can now edit a ticket. We'd love to change that "+" to "edit" but we don't have the capabilities yet or rather we haven't found the time to search the google maps css for that image. The session ended around 2:00 after 1/2 hour of looking for my car keys to drive Kam home.

On Monday over the course of Ravens V. Patriots we(mostly Kam) solved the bug that was I.E.
It turns out that there are caching issues with Explorer. He can tell you more about the solution, but new markers automatically appear on the map now in Explorer upon creation without refresh. I Designed some more web 2.0 headers to accommodate a future list of "recently clicked" and "recently fixed". Then in true alpha style I added the images to the home page without any corresponding database queries to show results. I was hoping we would get to that on Monday too, but I also didn't think the Ravens were going to really play football.
Session ends at 1:00 without hunting for keys.

It is Tuesday at 12:15, now seeclickfix time, and I(no Kam) have just spent an hour attempting to add "recently clicked" and "recently fixed" info to the home page.
I failed...He's The Programmer. I'm the Designer.

When we started talking about this idea, we were excited. Rather than debate all the organizational issues upfront, I suggested getting together to build a really early prototype. Through building the site together, we could learn if we have a shared vision (seems that way) and continued passion for the idea. Since we know and trust each other, we were choosing to postpone the discussions of incorporation (for profit/non profit), ownership, titles, expenses, etc. Those things are theoretical and basically irrelevant if we don't like working together and don't like the product.

We'll see how it evolves. In the time we spent on the project this weekend, we do have continued passion and an amazing amount of functionality. You can now search for a location and open a ticket in the market pop-up window. You can also edit an existing ticket, including setting the status to closed. Right now it emails us every time a ticket is opened and we'll be responsible for contacting local government. We're still working on the functionality to automatically report it to local governments. The site works best in Firefox right now since Internet Explorer works differently.

Last night at dinner with friends we were talking about the relative advantages of incorporating as a non-profit or for profit. I believe that many for profit organizations can work for social good and therefore do not rule out that structure for this project. Is there enough revenue opportunity to be funded by investors and become self sustaining? Or would we be reliant on grants ongoing? Will users trust us more or less if we are for profit? I'm grateful that in the US we can get the ball rolling with a project like this without being required to get a government license.

A question that we've been putting a lot of thought into is how to attract attention and help the early adopters believe in the power of the site. I believe that building a group of users and a strong sense of communitty, almost a sense of ownership, among a core group of users will be important to building critical mass. Some have wondered if building that level of passion among users is easier if they understand we're a non-profit. An example of that might be Wikipedia. On the other hand, there are a number of for-profit projects that have strong user collaboration and content building.

Another issue that was raised at dinner with may be related is legal liability for us and for the towns. We have yet to really research this, but we were discussing the concept that local governments might be concerned about an increase in legal liability after being informed of an issue. Something to research and understand better. Overall, I think we believe that as a matter of policy more transparency provides benefits that outweigh the risk. I wonder how this will impact our decision. More to come on that.

Kam was curious to see what we've spent on the project so far. Since we're not counting our own time, our cash expenses have been extremely low to date. We're using computers we had anyway and server hosting from Ben and Google. And with open source software like the LAMP stack, we're not paying for that either.

Check out the list which I'll keep updated as we go along. Notice I've included HomeSite for now - I'm not sure if that is going to prove important and may just count that as a personal expense. Kam found some other free IDEs for Javascript that may work better.

At a holiday party last night, I got a chance to practice pitching SeeClickFix to few folks who are both web savvy and knowledgeable about local government. It was great to hear their ideas and share the excitement. One of the people we talked with said she could help introduce us to the right people in city government. It's been my hope to demo the site at City Hall once it works. I think we could get great feedback on how to make things more useful to local governments.

One idea we heard already is to provide integration hooks for and web 311 or work order service that local governments might be running. My sense is that there are very few local governments with the sophistication and/or resources to (a) have a web-based citizen response system and (b) have the ability to make modifications for integration. There are vendors who do this work for local governments on a SaaS or contract basis. It probably would be a good idea to have some discussions with the existing vendors to find out what they think about this idea. I could imagine that a geocoded RSS feed would be a useful way for us to do it.

In addition to getting feedback on the features, we talked about how to spread the word. The key question is how to get people's attention so that they start using it. As we get traction, this should be an important story for the press which could drive further usage. Particularly the local press (in New Haven the example might be Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent) probably has an interest in residents working to improve the city. First step is to make the site useful enough, then get a few people using it so that we can show the value and then really start spreading the word. We spent time debating if we should attempt to get people from multiple towns using it all at once. My inclination is yes - because we want people to know that this is more than a local effort. It's local everywhere.

If we're lucky we might get an additional team member out of the party, too. Wow, who knew you could get so much done while having fun.

We got the alpha site live last night. What do you think? We're pretty excited to see our idea become a reality - even with limited functionality.

OK, so we spent the first our of our 8 hour jam session figuring out how to get on the wifi at me house. And most of that time on the phoe with some nice lady from AT&T. Oh, that was the automated system talking to us.

Then Kam coded like mad, while I wrote copy and made food and Ben helped everywhere. In the middle of fielding a number of unrelated calls, Ben was was still able to whip up our very own Web 2.0 looking logo in not time flat. Fades, rounded edges and mirrors come together so nice. And don't forget Kam and Ben spend time arguing the usefulness of acutally reading hte Google Map API vs. just cutting and pasting the example code.

After coffee #2 and while considering coffee #3 Kam and Ben came up with the following song parody. Probably needs a little work.

Potholes and light fixtures that don't work
Storm drains that are clogged and cause flooding
Cracks in the sidewalk that eat old ladies
These are a few of my least favorite things

When the kids tag
When the rain floods
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad