Campaigns have to be about SERVING constituents FIRST … this is done tools or apps that serve a real need for something we need to do ourselves … this is what DOGFOODING our tools is about … it’s really up to us to make the tools, equipment, apps that we depend on.

A political campaign’s assets are its dogfooded apps … it is the long process of first finding, trying and ultimately selecting the best available open source tool … then proficiently really USING and customizing the best practices of an open source tool FIRST … before we play with code … then, after we have some sort of coherent picture of what we are attempting to do … developing a working, valuable PRODUCT or SERVICE together that really engages the co-builders that we want in the campaign … we do not really want people who cannot figure out how to work with others or have any hope of developing their own way out of their own paper bags … a WINNING political campaign depends upon self-starter DEVELOPERS who eat their own dogfood.

So, instead of the old way of fundraising and asking old donors to write big checks, we first look at ENLISTING people who want or even NEED to BUILD their own tools rather than have others do things for them … the campaign is a network of builders who are part of the development community, but will be at different points on their own journey … for starters, we expect that people will at least at the beta-user or prototype-expermenter level in refinement of the campaign apps for voters who build things … it’s all about ENCOURAGING people to take a small step outside of their comfort zone … to develop their own mindset of developing in their own way … and in a way, that INVOLVES other technical savvy users as friends figuring out how to build something together … because, if you’re under 45 [or are an old geriatric capable of thinking like like a youngster] you understand why ALL of us need to be DOGFOODING our own apps and toolkits now.

Therefore, the campaign is about SERVING our constituents FIRST … serving ourselves first by DOGFOODING … in a MODERN campaign, rather that some campaign for your parents out of the 90s … is about enlisting the right constituents as knowledgeable testers, thought leaders and and co-developers as we all dogfood our own apps and tools now.

The archetypal example of how we find, use, master, develop and dogfood our own apps is DISTRIBUTED VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS**

At first, we might look into other DVCS … like Mercurial and there are others … of course, we might also have some awareness of other centralized VCS approaches like Subversion and particular features that we need … but let’s assume that we have looked at the universe of DVCS and decided upon Git. The first order of business is to really MASTER the use of bread-and-butter, baseline, STANDALONE basic Git commands. Any application will be like this; Blender, for example, exhibits this same principle – 20% of the application commands are used for 95% of your work. 80% of the commands will not be used by most users, but become valuable for experienced power users. In Git, as we have mastered the basic STANDALONE Git skillset, with experience, the more participatory level of Git commands make sense to a user … then, as we continue to move up, the project integrator level of Git commands have value and we get to the repository administration level Git commands. Finally, we reach the point where whole Git landscape makes some sense and we can see opportunities to simplify and refactor OR possibly even extend Git in a meaningful way. At that point, since we understand WHY we care as much as we do about the Git tool, we can subscribe to the git mailing list for developers/maintainers or maybe, at first, we just try to follow the major developments from that list with the summarized Git Rev News.

Practically, it is really the USE of the application, like Git, that matters. We can think about things like the best Gitflow practices for working with others, or we might see the shortcomings in those practices and move on to a more refined or advanced level such as the GitLab Flow Best Practices … which are mostly about really making continuous integration/continuous deployment models work a lot better … this includes things like doing code review better and things like Gerrit … although some of it is about shifting left further to use intelligence in the linting/testing/debugging/dev’ing that happens even before code review with a GitDeep implementations of generative AI foundation model or a quasi-proprietary, branded approach like Gitlab Duo’s Generative AI Coding Methodology … but all of these practices, depend upon really internalizing the thinking behind the entire GitLab CI/CD toolkit … or using a similar GitHub-centric approach with thousands of Actions to automate a development workflow like the OpenCommit AI tool for improved commit messages… but it’s all about making the most of what others have done and what sorts of free resources are available for open source developers, such as taking advantage of GitLab/Github Pages for development documentation.

Of course, DVCS might not apply to everyone … so maybe we can think about something that EVERYONE probably needs to do … like READING … email or RSS feeds. If we want to go in that direction, we might start with something like a spin on Thunderbird’s email/RSS reader] … maybe an RSS reader with added intelligence as in NewsBlur … the upshot of our DOGFOODED aim to SERVE the constituents FIRST!!! is that we will FIRST build something we need to use, ie a tool that helps to READ radically more [and read it better] than we are currently able to read with the toolset we have.

Brainstorming a list of topics for apps to investigate

Here are some ideas for what that list of dogfooded might look like:

A) AccidentalInvention or TRIZ.tips to apply the contradiction matrix and 40 principles from the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
B) Business development CRM for entrepreneurs, professionals to market per their products, movements, research funding, open source projects
C) Coaching, discipline accountability app … did you use your 86400 seconds as you intended today? What’s your plan to improve tommorow?
D) Diet, cooking and meal planning app to helps people buddytrack their meals, food coops, dierct sources, glucose/keto/vit D levels
E) Exploration app to buddytrack and safely accelerate the exploration of new cultures, new recipes, maverick music/art
F) Funnier.Be app to help people buddytrack a deeper interest what brings the funny; not just laughing, but what makes people ponder
G) Gunowners app that helps gun owned to find shooting ranges, gunsmiths, gun clubs, gun shows, gun shops in their area
H) Healing app to help people buddytrack recover to wellness, herbel medicine, traditional chinese medicine, yoga, flexibilty
I) Improvment app, not just sports, but practice like you play, buddytrack highly specific practice sessions, drills, etc
J) Job search app to help find better remote work and develop their own syllabi level-up professional skillsets/certifications
K) Kick it app to help people buddytrack their attempts to kick bad habits, addictions, vices, the bad habits of being themselves
L) Listify app for people to buddytrack their bucket lists, reading lists, watch lists, shopping lists, to-do lists, wish lists
M) Music/art/festival app that helps people buddytrack creative events, workshops, museums, galleries, dances, performances
N) Nature/gardening app buddytrack gardens, food preservation, composting, plant exchange, landscape architecture, ecosystem resto
O) Outdoors app that helps campers/hunters/fishers/hikers buddytrack outdoors events, shops/services, club travel opportunities
P) Party app for FUN, parties, weddings, reunions, anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, holidays, celebrations, even funerals/memorials
Q) Quantum learning app for autodidacts to buddytrack self-directed syllabi/certifications, programs of study, MOOCs, bootcamps
R) Real estate app that helps people buddytrack home improvement, home repair/maintenance, home security, real estate
S) Sports app that families and athletes buddytrack their athletic passions with similar families in their region or state
T) Training app that helps people to buddytrack shared hard core fitness/martial arts goals with competitive athletes, enthusiasts
U) UltraFrugal app to help people lower their expenses, rideshare, upcycle, recycle, barter, trade, share, rent, lease, auction, refurb
V) Venture app that helps isolated entrepreneurs and professionals kibitz over the problems of side hustles or investment struggles
W) Wellness app to help people buddytrack their health, fitness, nutrition, sleep, mental health, stress, meditation, yoga, tai chi
X) X-networking app-of-apps glue that helps pols to find like-minded activists in their states, Congressional Districts, Twitter/FB
Y) WHY, Knowing Your Why, WISDOM sharing as well buddytracking those impossible, impenetrable problems and root cause investigations
Z) Sleep hygiene app to help people buddytrack their sleep habits, sleep apnea, sleep studies, sleep clinics, sleep doctors