Community-Built Community: Mobilizing open source culture for local impact

Summary

This session will describe the unique management, design, and development processes used by a community of volunteers to design build and maintain a Drupal 8 website for AS220, an internationally-recognized urban arts non-profit located in Providence, RI.  

The session will cover how we:

• solicited and organized volunteer involvement
• solicited donated funds and services
• developed new processes to manage the project
• used a pattern-based approach to design to ensure flexibility and consistency
• used the Pantheon platform to coordinate distributed development

Founded 30 years ago, AS220 has impacted the lives of thousands of Rhode Islanders by providing artists with access to space and resources, and providing exposure to and interaction with diverse audiences. AS220 manages five historic properties in Providence and provides living spaces, artist studios, galleries and performance spaces, as well as a broad range of programming for all ages. Their innovative youth program which provides free arts education to 14–21-year-olds, with a special focus on youth under the care of the state, has been recognized by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Volunteerism has been at the core of AS220 — it’s first spaces were literally built by the hands of the local arts community. In AS220’s 30th year, we are harnessing the local open-source community to re-build AS220 once again, this time online. This case study is not simply about having a website donated to a non-profit organization. It’s about developing a process to create a new culture that can sustain and grow the site, borrowing ideas from open-source software and arts communities.

Audience and Outcomes

The content of this presentation will be aimed at leaders of non-profits and social enterprises, project managers, and community-minded developers, but will be accessible to a broader audience. While the specific project we’ll discuss uses Drupal 8, the community-based approach to managing the project and soliciting contributions and participation could easily apply to other platforms.

Community-Built Community: Process

The website process is managed by four structures:

1. Wish List
This is a place for the organization to forecast and record their technology needs. AS220 senior staff members rank each item’s priority. An external technical consultant evaluates and ranks the items by complexity and makes sure the requests are broken into manageable components.

2. Development Roadmap
The roadmap schedules features for development based on priority and available resources. The schedule is based on 3-month quarters to give volunteers and donors a generous amount to time to complete the work.

3. Design Guidelines
The visual design was developed using a pattern-based approach rather than focusing on static compositions. The result is a strong, consistent design language and library of interface elements that have been translated into a Drupal theme.

4. Development Guidelines
The development guidelines dictate Drupal best practices, the use of the Pantheon platform for coordinating distributed efforts, and a long-view site architecture that establishes a vision for future features.

As part of keeping this project transparent and open, we’ve found a home for reporting, brainstorming, and volunteer recruitment in our local Drupal meetup. Since the beginning of the project we’ve addressed many issues in open forums, including:

• internal governance
• licensing and intellectual property
• security
• managing risk and scope

So far we’ve completed most of the initial site building and run a successful hack day in which Oomph, Inc. — a local Drupal development company — donated the time of several engineers for a full day and built a fully-functional online artist directory component for the site. In March we are beginning to work on a custom theme for the site and training AS220 staff on content editing. The new website is scheduled to launch in April 2016.

Next Steps/Learn More

We aim to continue the process, evaluating along the way, while seeking creative approaches to project management and funding for hosting. As our project moves toward transitioning from the heavily technical jobs to maintenance and growth, we hope to engage volunteers with more diverse skill-sets and experience levels.

Sharing knowledge and vision is a core value of AS220. The group has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as an innovator in the practice creative placemaking. As part of this commitment, AS220 has created Practice//Practice, a consultancy that aims to codify and share the policies and practices that have helped the organization grow and thrive. Lessons from the AS220.org website design project will be incorporated in Practice//Practice’s upcoming consultations, workshops, and residencies.

The Speakers

Todd Linkner is an independent design consultant with over fifteen years of experience in graphic, user-experience, and user-interface design. He has worked with clients ranging in scope from small grassroots non-profits to enterprise-scale global corporations. He specializes in brand and user experience design. He has worked with a wide variety of mobile, desktop, and web-based platforms, including iPhone and iPad, Android handsets and tablets, Macintosh OS desktop applications, Blu-ray, and OEM embedded systems. Todd has been part of the Drupal community since 2008.

Alozie Nwosu is a Drupal developer with over 6 years experience in Drupal and 20 years of experience in web development. In 2016 Alozie joined Acquia as a Drupal Developer on their Professional Services team. Prior to Acquia Alozie was a Senior Web Developer at Brown University and an architect of BrownSites, Brown’s departmental web platform serving over 250 production Drupal sites. Alozie has been an avid participant in local and regional Drupal and Open Source communities presenting on Drupal development, technology in higher education, and open-source software at regional DrupalCamps, Drupal meetups and web/technology summits.

Contributors and Donors

This project would not have been possible without the generosity of volunteers and donors.

Donors

• Pantheon, donor of hosting and dev ops
• Oomph Inc., donor of Drupal development
• New England Drupal Camp (NEDCamp), support and project promotion

Volunteers

• Todd Linkner, Independent Design Consultant, TLDA
• Alozie Nwosu, Drupal Developer, Acquia
• Jason Pamental, O’Reilly Author and UX Consultant
• John Picozzi, Senior Developer and Acquia Certified Site Builder, Oomph Inc.
• Rob Aubin, Director of Engineering, Oomph Inc.
• Matt Zimmerman, AS220 Key Member, Founder, FarSounder Inc.

AS220 Staff and Board

• Shey Rivera, Artistic Director, AS220
• David Dvorchak, Communications Director, AS220
• Guillermo Lopez, IT Director, AS220
• Sam Seidel, Director of the Student Experience Lab, Business Innovation Factory
• Ken DeBlois, Product Manager, Acquia