I meant to write about this a few weeks ago, but it slipped my mind.

A local company called Sierra Bravo is putting on a little "fun" raising event called the Overnight F1 Web Challenge, in which a bunch of Web designers and Developers will stay up all night putting together a Website for a non-profit or charity. From their Website:

One part geek Olympics, one part community service project and one part race-against-the-clock—Sierra Bravo’s F1 Overnight Website Challenge will partner deserving Minnesota non-profits with teams of talented web developers for 24 hours of fun collaboration culminating in a fully operational website for each participating non-profit.

I think this is a great idea on a few levels. First, it puts experienced Web dev people, who often cost quite a bit of money, right smack in front of non-profits, which are often strapped for cash. Second, it puts a bunch of Web geeks together in a room together, which is always a good time. Third, it's an opportunity for people to make some connections and do a little networking.

Accelerated Content Management

The first thing I would do is slap up a content management system (I'm a big fan of Drupal). This will allow the non-profit you're working for to easily maintain the Website after the challenge is over. Also, a content management system will allow the integratio of modules for advanced functionality and a custom theme in a relatively short amount of time. Using a well-known CMS will also make it easy for the non-profit to get technical assistance and help down the road.

One great thing about Drupal is that their are already a bunch of Modules built that work great for non-profits. I'll highlight a couple drupal modules that will help any non-profit here. These tools are freely available as open source tools that run on the widely-supported Drupal platform.

CivicCRM

CiviCRM is a powerful contact, fundraising and eCRM system that allows
you to record and manage information about your various constituents
including volunteers, activists, donors, employees, clients, vendors,
etc. Track and execute donations, transactions, conversations, events
or any type of correspondence with each constituent and store it all in
one, easily accessible and manageable source.

Find out more at: http://civicrm.org

Donation Module

This is a module for accepting donations via Paypal.

Paypal IPN is used to capture the donation information and store it in the database.

Donors and the amount donated are shown on a Donors page. If the
user is logged in while donating, a link to their profile is shown on
the donors page.

Find out more at: http://drupal.org/project/donation

The news surrounding the 35W Bridge Collapse has been horrendous, as everyone can imagine. The rescue effort has now changed to a recovery effort. Meanwhile a lot of us are stuck wondering how something like this could have happened. Aren't government officials and organizations supposed to inspect structures like this on a regular basis?

It turns out that they are supposed to, and they did. Here is a snipped from the National Bridge Inventory report in 2003 which leads some pretty strong clues as to why the bridge collapsed:

• Deck Condition: Fair.
• Superstructure Condition: Poor.
• Substructure Condition: Satisfactory.
• Scour: Foundations determined to be stable.
• Bridge Railings: Meets currently acceptable standards.
• Structural Evaluation: Meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is.
• Water Adequacy Evaluation: Superior to present desirable criteria.
• Bridge Sufficiency Rating: 50%

• Non Redundant Structure
  

A University of Minnesota Civil Engineer in a report to MN-DOT recently noted that this bridge is considered to be a non-redundant structure. That is, if any one member fails, the entire bridge can collapse.

So, what's being done to prevent something like this from happening in the future?

Current bridge design -- using Redundant Engineering Techniques -- allows single pieces of the bridge to fail without causing the entire bridge to collapse. It would be wise of governments and municipalities to learn from our tragedy here in the Twin Cities and start looking at their own infrastructure asap.

Who's to blame?

I think only time will tell who is to blame for the 35W Bridge Collapse, however I think that our wonderful department of transportation is going to have to answer a lot of tough questions.

Just a quick note to say that our thoughts and prayers go out to anyone who was involved with or has friends + family that were involved with the horrendous crash on 35W in Minneapolis.