What’s with the Webdogs?

The back story is that the Webdogs.org domain has long been used by Legal Services of Northern California as a test bed for all kinds of projects. Among recent examples are its use for beta testing of design and component variations of the LSNC.net website; to test custom installations and configurations of the WordPress open-source publishing platform, now used widely at LSNC external and internal web locations; and to test versions of the Pika case management system which LSNC has adopted program wide.

Simply put, Webdogs.org has been our favored, safe, real-web location for building crap and blowing it up, without anyone getting hurt. That’s the kind of folks we are. Others call us “Webdogs.” You can, too.

The front story is that we have re-purposed the top-level of this domain for use as the Webdogs 2.0 blog. At its heart is experimentation with better ways to provide transparency to the LSNC advocate and support staff, and to the larger legal services community, about what technology projects LSNC and others in the legal services and larger public-interest advocacy community are working on. One practical goal is to detail what works and what doesn’t and why, from our perspective. Another goal is to offer assessments and recommendations of tech-related applications, tools and whiz-bang stuff that advocates may find useful. We consider ourselves part of the “reality-based” tech community. You know, like, stuff we would actually have reason to use at LSNC.

The principal author at this site is Brian Lawlor, but there is little he ever writes here or at PikaDocs that is not the also the product of other LSNC voices and contributors. Chief among these are Mark Sawyer, Ed Lachgar and Cathy Ferrell, collectively known within the LSNC community as “The Gizmos.” Brian is the first to admit he’s the sizzle; the other three are the steak.

Maybe some of what we write out loud about will be helpful to others. You decide.