Gautam Rege writes:

Pune Rails Meetup announces Hackfest: Citizen Empowerment web app for better governance.

After the post-adrenalin Rush of RubyConfIndia, we are proposing a HackFest which will get us all together to build a web-app. We cannot accommodate more than 25 people for this – so be quick to decide!

Come and go as you please at your convenience — The Hackfest is on for 48 hours!

The Brief

This is a web app to empower citizen’s to create ‘projects’ for better governance in your locality or city. For example, ‘Anna Hazare’s Anti-corruption’ campaign or the ‘Proposed Metro in Pune’ or the ‘Failure of BRTS’ or the ‘Tree Plantation Drive in Baner’, “How to Save Ramnadi” etc.

Projects can be Issues in your locality that you want the Government to look into or new Ideas to improve the locality or city that the Government should undertake. Using Viral Social Media, we can involve various representatives (RTI activist, social workers and government representatives) to take this up to the next level.

Sponsorship

In true Aussie spirit, this Hackfest is being sponsored entirely by Peter Spiers. This project is his idea and he is keen to see how much the Pune Ruby community can deliver!

He will be providing for Beer, pizzas and soft-drinks throughout the duration of the Hackfest.

The Hackfest

The hackfest scope, stories have already been outlined and updated on Pivotal Tracker! Those interested can RSVP for this meetup. If you are interested in the pre-planning process (design, architecture, stories etc.) please send an email to Peter and he will add you to the project on Pivotal Tracker.

Tentatively, this is what we are looking at:

• Rails 3.0.x and Ruby 1.9.2
• MongoDB as the data store
• Devise + Omniauth for authentication
• Cancan for authorization
• Mongoid-geo for geo-location.
• HAML & Sass for templating.

If you are interested in learning or contributing, don’t miss this event.

When, where, how

This event will start at 10am, on Saturday June 11 (tomorrow), and will continue for 48 hours. It will be in the offices of Webonise Software, Mantri Lavendula, Survey No. 52/4/B/2 of Village Bavdhan Khurd Pune.

You can join at any time, and leave at any time. The event is free. It is also officially “closed”, but that shouldn’t really stop a passionate Rails hacker from being able to attend. Just contact the organizers Gautam Rege, Anthony Hsiao or venue sponsor Shardul Mohite and plead until they allow you in.

See the Pune Rails Meetup page for details.