Salsa Commons exists for one main reason: To help all Salsa users be powerfully effective.
Through Wired For Change and DemocracyInAction, part of our combined missions is to help nonprofits and campaigns realize their vision for the potential of technology and effectively use the tools we provide. We truly believe that the right tools in the right hands employed in the right way can change the world. We're already seeing that theory in practice.
We do a lot for our users. Aside from top-notch regular support, we provide a regular webinar training program, in-person trainings in many geographic locations, have excellent documentation and resources, and we’ve instituted a new program to orient new members on Salsa.
However, given that we only succeed in our mission if our users succeed in theirs and are given the support necessary to do that, we are taking our support programs to the next level with Salsa Commons. We hope this space dedicated to our users, partners, and developers will evolve into one of the most robust user communities around a toolset that we’ve ever seen.
We've always been different from our competitors in our mission-based approach, dedication to accessibility, transparency, and commitment to building a collaborative platform. With Salsa, we're separating ourselves even more by revolutionizing and democratizing software development.
And what better way to do this than to open it up completely to our users and to the outside world. We don't just contend to be the first truly open platform for nonprofits because it makes for a nice press release.
Salsa Commons is a place for real people to get the most from Salsa, and for Salsa to get real with its users. It's about transparency and giving users the power to shape the platform to suit their particular needs. It isn't a collection of generic responses, but rather a community that collaborates on answers, solutions and ideas through conversation.
This is also a place for users to connect with a broader community of Salsa partners and developers to extend the functionality and create the most robust online campaigns as possible. That's why Salsa was built to be the most flexible and extendable organizing platform around.
Extending Salsa is about building a larger, stronger progressive movement and doing it in a progressive way. WIth minimal (HTML + Javascript) technical knowledge, Salsa Campaign Managers, Partners, and Developers can create custom on-demand applications that leverage the Salsa platform as a hub for managing and sharing information that drives many different applications on top of it. The Salsa Commons "Kitchen" will be the place where folks can create, access, and share all of these TAPAS (Tools, Applications, Plug-ins, and Add-ons for Salsa). Pretty neat, huh?
Best of all, anyone can tap into this on-demand architecture because everyone has a seat in the Salsa Kitchen. Now jump in and start cookin'! (or just pass the chips)
Copyright 2009 Salsa Labs, Inc.
