Our services and work practice

Web Development: We can handle all aspects of web development projects large or small, from design and customization to hosting and application development. We embrace open-source technologies and web-standard design in all our projects.

Organizing Strategy: With deep real-world experience on the frontlines of community organizing, we know first-hand the value and necessity of effective organizational strategies. Our clients get the benefit of this expertise in the form of plans and advice which address their purpose and organization holistically, and which leverage their network of members to its fullest extent.

Training and Support: Our commitment to building capacity means imparting the necessary skills, knowledge and vision to clients in order to duplicate our expertise. Ideally we “work ourselves out of a job” within the life-cycle of an engagement and leave a client organization better off: more informed, more empowered, and more confident.

To get in touch with us, please call: 1-888-822-4273 or send an email through our contact form.

Practice

We get the job done and we get it done right.

Planning: Many web projects, even those based on the most worthy ideas and concepts, begin with a handicap because of poor planning. Often in a busy business cycle, the planning process is more about completing a sale than it is about creating a workable path to desired results. We believe in investing time and resources in understanding our clients and their objectives, working closely with them to fully grok a project.

Rapid Releases and Delegation: Our projects have multiple stages of development with defined deliverables. We also insist on buy-in and participation from stake-holders. Together these create a cycle in which results are refined, and expertise is transferred. This is a powerful alternative to the fire and forget method of building a site to match a hasty set of requirements and calling it “done.”

Capacity Building: We are adamant that our clients have the knowledge, tools and practices they need to do their jobs after we are out of the picture. We also angle towards a marketplace and a world where our field is increasingly competitive and crowded. That means building capacity, transferring knowledge, and creating expertise.

Transparency: Trust is required in a healthy working relationship. We’ve found that the most direct way to gain trust is to be blunt and honest going into projects and open throughout the engagement. Additionally, turning one project into a learning experience for others offers tangible “ripple” benefits. We take this very seriously, even if it creates more work upfront.

Company Philosophy

Chapter Three is anchored in a belief: networks improve the quality of life for human beings all over the world. It’s our belief, but we also think it’s a fact. Our job is to investigate this fact and build things that work — work with the network. If that’s your goal, we’re your guys.

The keys to making this work are ruthless efficiency (openness and competition), integrity, fairness (to a fault), transparency, platforms, and viable ecosystems. We keep the discussion-to-action ratio low, and don’t lie or misrepresent ourselves. We’re doing our best to walk the talk.

New tools aren’t nearly enough. We need to develop an entirely new practice for building and organizing communities of action. There have been many breakthroughs in the past few years. The cultural mainstream has adopted social technology such as blogging and social networks as hungrily as it did radio and television. We’ve seen radically new and more powerful political campaigns such as Howard Dean’s run for president. We’ve seen the potential for regular people to organize knowledge into a “WikiPedia” which in many ways outperforms the traditional experts-only compellations. Despite all this there is no clear path forward for those pursuing these new forms of organizing.

To get there we will need a full practice: a vocabulary, toolset, instructions, and a compelling narrative made up of real world stories. We are jumpstarting this effort by running what we call an Open Practice: posting tutorials, video screen casts, interviews, and write ups as our own work progresses and as we research others. We will drive the quality and adoption of open social technology, and deepen our understanding and experience of organization and collaboration.