We’re still offering help!

11 months ago we put up a post offering free development time for people wanting to reuse our software.

Since then we’ve had loads of responses and helped a few dozen people take their first steps. But this week, in a short and succinct post, I wanted to remind you that this offer still stands.

There are some caveats.

In order to qualify, you must be a group or an individual who can show us that you have a desire to run online civic and democratic projects like FixMyStreet or WhatDoTheyKnow in the long term, and that you have access to some kind of web developer skills. You can be anywhere in the world bar the USA (apologies US people, our funding won’t cover your country 🙁 ).

What does commitment mean? Nothing impossible, but to make a project successful you will need a few things:

You need long-lasting enthusiasm. We’ll be looking to make sure that you understand the ongoing time and energy commitments a project like this will involve. The technical set up may be easy, but there is a lot of data that needs to be collected. There’s also awareness raising, user support and general love for the site that you’ll need to keep things going. Things start slowly…You have to give them attention to drive usage!

You may need access to a web developer – at least sometimes. While these kinds of sites do, to some extent, run themselves, some work will always be necessary to keep them running smoothly. And while our developers will help you get your site off the ground, you will need your own developer too, both at set-up, and as the site continues to run.

If you don’t have access to a developer, or you’re an NGO that’s doing a wider project of which this could be a small part. We’re also happy to talk to you to see if we can still help! Either way,  just fill in this form to get in touch and give us some information about your project!

Image credit: Building by bartb_pt from Flickr under the creative commons licence.

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