[iRail] Commuters' strike

Sat Oct 30 23:06:41 UTC 2010

Hey list,

I think Koen makes a pretty good point. We should show a button on the
mobile site for supporting a virtual strike. In meantime we should as
well release a new mobile webdesign based on jquery mobile (example
proof of concept here http://dev.irail.be/jq ), and go for a press
release.

Proposal to press-release and thus what we should implement and
accomplish by then:
 * On the 15th of November iRail will do a virtual strike. This means on
that day you'll be able to go to the site and click a button. This way
you'll show your support for a better national railway company with less
striking days.
 * On the 15th of November the iRail team will be launching their new
interface which should be finger-friendly and optimized for iPhone,
iPad, android, symbian, and other mobile devices.
 * iRail remains by the people for the people and is developing native
apps called BeTrains, which is already available for android and soon
for iPhone, Nokia devices, samsung phones and windows mobile.
 * If any developer wants to use trainschedules on their website or
somewhere else, they can do that through the API: http://api.iRail.be
 * iRail is a community project and anyone is welcome to help out on
project.iRail.be. There are a lot of interesting things about to happen.

I really need your feedback on this one. Is this the right thing to do?
We should as well in some way work together with the facebook guys or at
least inform them that we're doing this. Can anyone contact them and
give them a link to this mailinglist post or maybe give them my e-mail
address? Anyone has any better/other idea that might be worth
considering?

Thanks a lot and before I forget to mention it: this community rocks.

Pieter

On Sat, 2010-10-30 at 07:43 +0200, Koen Delvaux wrote:
> Commutere strike initiative is doomed to fail:
> Bad communication, bad activism and too much effort demanded from the
> participant.
> 
> BUT
> 
> Idea for press release:
> 
> Irail organises virtual commuters strike
> 
> Besides the commuters strike, there is also a virtual strike. People
> who use the irail.be application daily to know if their train wil be
> arriving on time will see a "virtual strike" button in their
> application on the day of the commuters strike. With this button,
> users can express their desire to go on strike against the union
> actions of nmbs/sncb.
> The virtual strike has been organised on popular request of the irail
> users. The irail team expects that as much as 60% of their users will
> participate in the virtual strike.
> By organising this action, the team behind irail wants to express
> their sympathy with customers who are disgrunted by the latest actions
> from nmbs/sncb unions.
> 
> If you think this is feasible I think it can get some press attention
> if we seed it. Details have to be looked up (is it on monday? Is it
> against unions or against sncb/nmbs? I didn't quite follow :))
> 
> Greets,
> 
> Koen
> 
> On Oct 30, 2010 2:06 AM, "Pieter Colpaert" <pieter.colpaert at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi List,
> > 
> > on the 15th of November some people got the idea of having a
> commuters
> > strike. The details of this are on facebook
> > (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=157172534318954) and enclosed
> in
> > this mail.
> > 
> > My questions to our community:
> > * Do we need to do something as the iRail community?
> > * Do you have any ideas? We sure have to stay up: we can't let the
> user
> > experience suffer, but we can put a link on the results page.
> > * Can anyone bring me in touch (phone number, instant messaging,
> > email, ...) with the starter(s)?
> > 
> > Any feedback welcome,
> > 
> > Pieter
> 
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