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Spoke was used for person-to-person texting (“textbanking”) in the 2020 cycle by over 500 organizations - it was built with progressive collaborative development -- Open Source meets Organizing.
This cycle @MoveOn, @AFLCIO, multiple presidential primary campaigns (e.g. @ewarren), @WorkingFamilies, @state_voices and many volunteers and other orgs all made improvements that helped each other.
In 2016 Spoke was created by @saikatc and @sheenapakanati for Coders for Bernie
In 2017 MoveOn adopted and open-sourced it -- then it was hosted at NYC’s @proghacknight organized by @pikittakbo @theilonabrand @feministcoder @sonyabea and others
In 2018 PoliticsRewired started commercially hosting open-source Spoke for progressive campaigns -- including @aoc
In 2019 Shaka Lee and @theilonabrand organized the Spoke community bridging organizations with volunteer developers
In 2020 Arena, a texting volunteer, designed an amazing mobile-first interface and @lperson and @frydajuice integrated Spoke to the VAN which was nuclear fusion for Spoke’s value to political campaigns and other orgs
This is not something that comes from a single cycle -- boom-bust of campaigns CAN feed back into the movement as tech folks from @ewarren @PeteButtigieg did and maybe soon @ossoff
Vendors are often very expensive only for large orgs and campaigns which lock out small campaigns and small orgs -- that’s eating our seed corn
Vendors for political mobilization can put bread on the table for hosting and support and genuine new innovation -- but you can’t sit on your laurels and just collect rents from a political movement.
@_coleedwards+Matteo Banerjee at ScaleToWin and @bean_pooker are great examples of vendors using open source and contributing back to the community
Spoke is unusual now -- but it’s only because orgs and campaigns are so locked into a pure vendor mentality -- I’ve had so many conversations where people thought the Spoke project was a vendor and I, in Sales -- there should be 10s of Spokes for progressive software innovation.
