Canada’s Debate

I’ve enabled the comments function of the site now (with some handy third-party software called jreactions), which means that we now support feedback.

Since feedback was the final technical requirement I had before I would officially “launch” the project, I am now officially in promotion mode. I will be promoting this site everywhere and anywhere I can in the next ten days and I appreciate any help anyone can offer in this regard. The next step that I will take will be coming up with a formula for electing the first group or “Congress” (hopefully I can finish that tonight or tomorrow) and coming up with an open and honest mechanism for elections. In the meantime, tell your friends!

So far only two people have voted on the Blogging Congress name poll, which is a bit disappointing, although not entirely surprising. I will be going with Canadian Bloggers’ Congress if I don’t get any substantial feedback suggesting otherwise, and will register the domain soon thereafter.

There is still work to be done, but I hope to have the site’s “constitution” and rules done by the end of this weekend, so I can start building a pool of candidates for next week.

The first question people ask me when I get all worked up and start pestering them about the Bloggers’ Congress is usually, what is it? (Sometimes it’s “why are you bothering me?”)

This is a fair question, so I will endeavour to answer it here, and answer a few others along the way. The Bloggers’ Congress is designed to be a site where Canadian bloggers can come together and represent an organized and representative face to our larger community. It is not a Model-UN type organization. The site will provide original content along with newsfeeds and other resources for anyone interested in Canadian politics. Once the site is fully hosted a forum will be added to promote discussion. (Continue reading…)

They said it couldn’t be done, but I didn’t take “said it couldn’t be done” for an answer!

That’s right. Turns out that with a little bit of rejigging with Joomla’s category and link setups I was able to incorporate all of the necessary features for the Canadian Bloggers’ Congress webpage, and do it two weeks ahead of schedule. There are still some minor details that I need to work out, and I do have other features that I would like to incorporate when I have the time and expertise to do so, but for now it is what it is.

This of course means that it’s time to get my shit together and get it actually running. For that, I need three things:

1. A final site name
2. A matching domain name
3. Participation

The first one I will put to the public. The new poll is pretty straightforward… if you vote for other please leave your suggestion in this discussion. The domain I will register as soon as I have the name settled (and the migration shouldn’t take too long at all); which of course leaves the tricky part: participation. (Continue reading…)

Well, my skin is almost done for the Bloggers’ Congress. It’s still pretty primitive, but I can bring myself to look at it while I develop the content and functionality. I still intend to launch by the end of the month.

PS: If someone can suggest a good RSS feed that I can use on the frontpage for Federal political news I’m all ears, the Government of Canada one doesn’t seem to load properly so I’m stuck using the CBC’s national feed.

Well, I’ve got the bare-bones of the Bloggers’ Congress online at congress.canadasdebate.com. The layout is still a bit rough, but I think I can polish it off pretty much completely over the next four or five days. I am of course always taking suggestions or contributions (technical or artistic, not financial.)

Once I’ve finished the design I can move forward and try to figure out how to make it actually work the way that it does in convoluted imagination. Stay tuned…

In the past I’ve hinted at a web project that I’ve been toying with since July, called the Canadian Bloggers’ Congress (or some derivation thereof.) To date there have been two obstacles to my goals with the site: technical, and participatory. I’ve lacked the technical resources to get the site up and running. I believe however that with Joomla (the software I use to run the Surfball webpage) and a bit of patience, I can actually get a prototype-site up and running by the end of the month. Hopefully, once people can see what it is I am trying to do, they will get interested in participating.

If my posts decline (further) over this period, it will be because of work obligations, or my efforts in this regard; and I apologize in advance. I still intend to contribute here daily however.