How you can help
From Sunlabs wiki
There's a bunch of ways you can be a part of Sunlight Labs and make Government more transparent.
Contents |
Developers
Sunlight Labs always needs technical assistance. There are four main ways a technologist can contribute their knowledge and work to Sunlight Labs:
1. On the Main Page there's a "Big Issues" section. Contributing your field knowledge to these big issues is really helpful. They're large issues that are constant struggles in almost everything we do. Even incremental steps forward or contributed knowledge for what's going on in these fields is greatly appreciated. Specifically, if you have anything to offer, you can create an account in the wiki, edit these pages, and help out by contributing your knowledge and also help coach us directly if you have any specialized expertise in these areas.
2. We keep a detailed list of Project Ideas as we think of them on our wiki too. You can find that here: Project Ideas . If a project has been started, you can click a link to see what its status is. If it hasn't, that means it is up for grabs. Start working on the project, edit the project's wiki page to let everyone know you've started it, and go for it. Send us a link to your source repository so that everyone can contribute.
3. We also need new project ideas-- we don't have all of them. So if you have a new idea, just add it to the list.
4. We maintain a lot of different codebases at GitHub. All of our open source projects are listed there: Sunlight Labs as well as Watchdog.net. Contributions to our existing packages are always welcome.
Generally when people make contributions to our community, we list them as a "Transparency Hero" on our website here
We have quite a community going on in the Sunlight Labs google group where people are talking about their different projects. Please join in here
Designers
Our work isn't purely technical. We also need great design. If you're interested in helping out with your design skills, one thing you might want to do is email the Sunlight Labs mailing list and say "Hey, anybody need any design help?" It is likely that someone will take you up on your offer.
Another way you can help is by dreaming up what a service could look like from our Project Ideas page, making a comp, and inspiring some people. It is amazing how far you can go, and how much of an inspiration you can be by just making a simple picture of an idea.
Evangelists
We also need evangelists to talk about our mission and recruit people to our cause. We're building materials and talking points for talking to people about Sunlight Labs, and if you think you're interested in helping reach out to others for our cause, contact Greg Elin(gelin at sunlight foundation.com), the Labs Evangelism Director and he'll help get you set up.
Have eyes and a good brain?
There's several non-technical ideas on the Project Ideas page on the wiki. You can contribute to one of those, add your own ideas.
