How We Communicate

Being a distributed Code for America Brigade, Code for Maine uses a number of tools to communicate effectively. The following tools are largely based on best-practices rather then being proscriptive.

Beehve

Beehve is an alpha-level brigade collaboration tool. Built by members of Code for Maine, the tool ties together all the above tools and exists as our brigade website. The dashboard provides a quick overview of individual projects, recent meetups and the health of various projects.

From Beehve you should be able to get an 10,000-foot view of what’s going on in our brigade. When starting a new project, create the project in Beehve, add a github and waffle.io URL and start assigning tasks. Tools to integrate with Meetup.com and Todoist are coming soon.

URL	http://www.codeformaine.org/dashboard/

Github

Primary tool for contributing code, and document development.

URL	http://github.com/code4maine/

Waffle.io

Primary used to manage individual tasks, Waffle.io provides a kanban-style workboard for Github Issues.

This is very handy for projects like our operations repository which collects and builds the documents and policies that govern our brigade. Users who are unfamiliar with the Github Issues interface can use the Waffle.io workboard to more easily scan the current status of issues and places where they can join in.

URL	http://www.waffle.io/

Google Apps for Non-profits

As with most things in the 21st century, CfM uses Google Apps heavily. A team email address is managed using Gmail, and we often share simple, non-governance documents via Google Docs. Many civic organizations and government agencies still communicate using MS Office document formats, and Google Docs allows us to easily collaborate.

Todoist

Outside of Github Issues, Todoist is how we assign tasks to operations level volunteers. This tool is mostly used by leadership, though anyone can request to be added to our Todoist account and view what tasks have been assigned and completed.

URL	http://www.todoist.com

Slack

Slack is a communication tool for working outside of meetups. In our distributed brigade, chat is often where a lot of discussions take place, so you’ll want to request access to this sooner rather than later. For those interested, Slack even allows you to connect via IRC.

URL	http://codeformaine.slack.com