polis VS RC4Community

Most of the work of good public consultation facilitators is (1) stopping those loud/frustrated/opinionated/entrenched people from distorting process, and (2) allowing some people to be heard.

Perhaps surprisingly with (2), public consultations are sometimes almost like public therapy -- allowing people to feel heard so they can then take a step forward, even if it's not a step fully in the direction they prefer. People can make better compromises when they feel heard, they just need to be contained so they don't take speaking time/attention from everyone else.

Disclaimer: highly involved in public consultation, tech, and consensus-building technology through my interest in https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis

Why open source? If you ask me, other than the benefits mentioned above, open-source provides us with a platform where opportunities come to you in ways you have never imagined. For example, I got a 500-dollar freelance offer to integrate RocketChat into an application. I stayed the top contributor of RocketChat this season which increased my reach all over the community. I was also nominated by all my team members to add a milestone commit to the project we were working on. I connected with people from different fields of expertise. Most importantly, I enjoyed all of it.

I’ve been making steady progress on my GSoC project - Poll App Mega Extensions and am additionally also contributing to RC4Community — Rocket.Chat’s portal to its community.