Ten days into Vote Report India, it’s time for a long overdue update on what’s happening behind the scene and under the hood.

Technology/ Design

The tech team is hard at work to fix all the bugs and introduce new features. You should see some significant changes on the front page in a couple of days. Having said that, we are aware that we have a long list of bugs and an even longer wish list on the Open Tech Projects page on the project wiki. If you have found a bug that’s not listed on that page, or want to suggest a new feature, please add it there directly or write an email to Selvam (selvam.velmurugan@gmail.com). We can also do with half a dozen extra hands on the design/ coding side, so if you want to help, or know someone who does, write to Selvam (selvam.velmurugan@gmail.com) immediately.

Reporting Incidents

We had close to 30 reports during the first phase of the elections, including some direct SMS and email reports. This is a little disappointing, but not really unexpected. The key, then, is to seed the system by manually entering reports ourselves. The easiest way to do it is from the Newsrack dashboard that Subramanya has especially created for us. Our reports team is already working on entering these news reports, but we can use help from half a dozen more hands. If you want to help, or know someone who does, or have a confusion about the reporting process that isn’t addressed on the reporting guide, write to Dipti (dipti.thuse@gmail.com) immediately.

Organization

We have reached out to National Election Watch and the Election Commission to involve them in the project. We are also speaking to some prominent people to form an advisory board for Vote Report India. We are still reaching out to civil society organizations to form more partnerships. If you have any suggestions on partnerships, please contact Satchit (satchitbalsari@gmail.com) immediately .

Buzz/ Promotion

In the short time we have been around, almost 70 blog posts have linked to us, as per Technorati. We also have a series of news stories and interviews lined up. I’ll update these stories in the press room as they appear. If you know any journalists or bloggers, please point them to the press room and ask them to do a story.

Also, do join the Vote Report India community at Twitter (@votereportindia), Facebook, Orkut, SMSGupShup or Google Groups and subscribe to our blog. If you have a blog or a website, please consider writing about Vote Report India and displaying our banners (200X200 and 150X150) on your blog or website.For details and clarifications, contact me (gauravonomics@gmail.com).

We have also tied up with several online partners for cross-promotion. These partnerships include Al Jazeera, LiveJournal, Global Voices, Indipepal, Desipundit, BlogAdda and NGO Post. Some of them have already put up our logos and feeds, some of them will do so today.

In Summary

In summary, we have had an exciting ten days on Vote Report India, and the excitement is only going to become more intense over the course of the elections.

Tags: Al Jazeera, BlogAdda, Desipundit, Election, Global Voices, India, IndiaVotes09, Indipepal, LiveJournal India, Lok Sabha, Newsrack, NGO Post, Vote Report India

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.