Contributoria

Contributoria is a community funded, collaborative journalism platform. It allows journalists to propose stories – along with how much it’ll cost to write/research them – and a community to back those proposals, follow them through to publication, and offer input.

I came on board the project quite late, as a second pair of development hands. My primary focus was front-end development, translating to translate Dean Vipond‘s designs into robust front-end code, developing rich interactions in Javascript, and then integrating those templates with Dan Catt‘s backend. As that progressed, I also began developing front-end features and pieces of functionality throughout the site, metaphorically sitting between Dean (the design lead) and Dan (the tech lead).

An article in the process of being backed.

The site launched in January 2014 in beta; development continued, focusing on rolling out a complete set of features for pitching, drafting and publishing articles, and also delivering the editorial/business team the tools they needed. During this time, I also helped put some basic project/task management in place, to prioritise tasks and plan future months’ work. My involvement wound down around the end of March of that year, though I’m still keeping an eye on the project from afar.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Contributoria grows – its very much a ‘live’ project at the moment – and it’s been exciting to play a role in it, however small, at its inception. And, of course, an excellent team to work with – thanks to Matt, Sarah, Dan, Dean, and all the writers who’ve already joined in.