Drupalcon Boston 2008 - multilingual

The Witness Video HUB

zoeyk — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:03:16 +0000

The WITNESS Video Hub is a participatory website where anyone, anywhere can upload human rights related media that can be used to create change. The site features web-based video upload via cell phone and other mobile devices, content distribution, tools for online community building and advocacy, and Google maps integration with a custom-designed full-screen mode and switcher.

From a technical perspective, the WITNESS project required covering new ground in both Drupal and in third-party integration. Working with the team at WITNESS, CivicActions built a robust and full featured video upload, conversion (transcoding), and playback suite for the Drupal content management system, called Media Mover. With Media Mover at its core, the site enables users to upload and categorize video with a comprehensive vocabulary including both geography and issues. This system of organization allows users to find, watch and share relevant videos, and then join groups and campaigns around the world using the Organic Groups module.

Comprised of an information architect, a designer, a project manager, engineers, and themers, the CivicActions team has worked in close collaboration with Witness–from an initial strategy phase to beta launch and ongoing iterative releases. With its rich toolset, the WITNESS Video Hub feeds the populist shift toward user-generated content and increases the reach and impact of organizations doing human rights advocacy.

Amnesty International

zoeyk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:48:34 +0000

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. The organization has more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and coordinates this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues. Amnesty International’s Project IMPACT involved a complete replacement of the organization’s website and CRM system, as well as the completion of a global brand strategy and the replacement of a vast document management system of over 50,000 reports.

For the IMPACT project, CivicActions worked with Amnesty International to create a Drupal interface that synchs with the newly adopted al Fresco document management system, multi-level publishing and translation workflows, a custom CiviCRM implementation, and a theme that maintains Level 2 accessibility in the four core languages of the site (English, Spanish, French and Arabic).

CivicActions completed this work in 6 month-long sprints, and continues to work with Amnesty to improve and enhance the features of the site. The site provides the Amnesty International Secretariat with a new set of tools, an open source CMS, and most importantly, a scalable and community-supported foundation to build upon into the future.

Machsomwatch.org

liorkesos — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:53:41 +0000

Machsomwatch is an established Israeli political organization which is made up of mainly mature (50+) women.
They create massive amounts of content which is fed into “daily reports” which are the by-products of physically traveling to the much discussed Israeli checkpoints and documenting the outcome of their “shift”.
By their physical presence they reduce the amount of violence or harm of human rights.
The challenge in this site was to take a very non technical organization and leapfrog them in to a web2 site featuring a google mashup letting you zoom in to the level of the lone checkpoint.
Movies housed and embedded from youtube, a massive flickr gallery which eventually took over the flickr embedding altogether.

The real pride here is the process the machsomwatch team have passed (I have one of the lead team members get adicted to pressing f5 and finding a fixed website - she tries it on other sites as well :) ).
The internal process and empowerment that was the result of the joint work on the site resulted on really cool situations (Imagine your grandma analyzing google analytics reports and having arguments regarding SEO with her fellow adult friends.

It’s a multi-lingual site (English and Hebrew) (using i18n) and is very interesting to read, look at pictures and learn about the Israeli occupation from a very personal and humane level.

Developed by Drupal.fm (Known as Linnovate locally in Israel)