AyudaPy.org: From Weekend Project to Key Civic Movement During the Pandemic w Marcelo Elizeche Landó

Speaker 1: Today I'm going to talk about a project of mine called Ajuda PY or Ajuda Pi. That's it doesn't matter. I'm well Uh first uh I uh this is my first talk in English, so uh So I want to say sorry in advance to the lab live caption lady. It's going to be challenging for both of us. So uh first something about me. That's me. That's the best picture I have of me. And also my mom wants to show that to me to show it here. Well this is my handle in everything like Meliseche It's easier usually than my name.

Speaker 1: So I'm a developer and InfoSec consultant. I'm a Python Software Foundation Fellow. Currently I'm working at Moody 's as a software engineer. and I help to organize the Python Paraguay community. Well, uh that's the logo of Python Paraguay, that's the handle if you want to give some love there and especially if you speak Spanish. We do meetups and we we do a streaming on the YouTube channel about the meetups with the with the talks Okay, so uh this is a slide that uh probably it's going to help a few of the of you. Uh that is that is Paraguay, it's a country the size of California with a population of seven million

Speaker 1: And the TLD is dot py, but you can't buy uh just that PY. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. That is why the project is called adjudapy. org and not adjuda. py But yeah, there is a reason for that. All the reasons are stupid, but well, that's for another talk. Cool, let's continue. Well I'm going to give you a little background here. This project uh occurred uh dur during the pandemic, during the lockdown. In Paraguay we have like at this really strict lockdown since I think it was March 11. It was uh even uh with mobility restriction, like you couldn't like go more than a few blocks from your home.

Speaker 1: So uh Paraguay is a country where there is an insufficient social safety nets that so that you're like if you and also uh the the c the informal sector of the economy it's something like more than the 50%. So there is a lot of people that live die day by day by day by day. So if they don't work one day, they don't eat that day. And when the lockdown occurred like that happened to a lot of people. Also, the government uh reaction was totally inefficient, uh, even when they tried to do some kind of help like they you know they pop up some website and at the minute the website uh went down

Speaker 1: and also like it was insufficient also And as I said, like we had uh also my mobility restrictions. So in like in the light of this, uh you know everybody wants to help and I I saw that a lot I saw that you know people trying to you know to do their best to help people and sometimes uh one thing that happened is that uh you know like you saw like in social media that you know this uh I don't know, like this old man doesn't have to eat and you know and there were like I don't know fifty people helping that old man and that's something really good but you know as a programmer I think like probably it's not the most efficient way to dist distribute help and thinking about that

Speaker 1: well uh uh who really knows uh uh who really knows one's needs uh it's oneself so I try to with those two I try to create a platform where the people that need help can say what they need. and the people that want to help just can go there and see who is he's in who is in need. So I now in a weekend I start like doing something like start coding uh behind this idea and by the Monday I have something like it was like not it was something you know mm less than 200 lines of code

Speaker 1: but it kinda worked. So that is the I just released that with a tweet. Like that is a the roughly translation. of the of the tweet uh with a gif of how to use the platform. So uh I think here is the gif Yeah, so basically you have only two buttons. You do one click, you put uh whatever you need, and you put your name, your phone, and your select your location. And you put some reference of or address and you can upload a picture if that's necessary. And well, that's the whole flow for the for the uh help requester and if you want to help you have the map

Speaker 1: and you can see like who is like near you to that didn't help that didn't help. So uh I just released that tweet like you know it okay I did this and let's see what happened So what happened? Uh uh the the project like uh go it went like explosive like uh At the at the I I I had like the the first help request like twenty minutes after that tweet. I had the first uh pull request from my repo uh two hours from that. And so people start getting involved, uh people start sharing the platform. And well like

Speaker 1: you know like in the uh I think the second the the second day I have like 200 help requests and the third day it was something like 1000 and it continued growing like that So uh a lot of people uh uh got help, like uh there's some tweets of people that it got help or they helped somebody and they were like really happy about that. Like most of the people really need like for me the idea initially was to create a platform for any kind of help. But uh slowly started becoming like a humanitarian platform. Most of the uh what people need was like food, supplies and medicine So uh also uh as I say

Speaker 1: uh we have some community responses. Uh this is like uh the date of my tweet that is the date of the first PR, so it's like just a couple hours or something of difference. So that's it was something that was amazing. And after that I after one hour I got another PR and so on. So uh You know, everybody really wants to help and you know the developers or whoever what whoever was uh had some skills or not, they try to help. Also the commun people that I don't know start uh creating uh some tutorials.

Speaker 2: de cómo apuntar. Necesito ayuda o quiero ayudar. Si necesitas ayuda, necesito ayuda, que es el She's

Speaker 1: explaining the the whole process of how to use the platform. So uh that was something that was like pretty great to have like people that you don't know like creating tutorials for your platform. So uh and even like also uh another thing like uh paraguay is a bilingual country We speak Spanish and Guarani. Guarani is a native language that 90% of the population speaks both. And in some parts like people only like their mother tongue is Guarani and the I will say like the school and work uh language is Spanish. So they are like

Speaker 1: they think en guaraní and speaking Spanish. So people start like creating tutorials in Guaraní.

Speaker 3: O hasuba kon ara cuera rupi, do ho putisho pe cuera tenbi u, a bein dohutisho pe cuera pirapire, upevare, dere putu sino, ayeta nede ko arape pagina katu hape e ke putuhangwa, ha avei dere ko te menohina ekatu. He started like doing the whole tutorial in Guarani. So that

Speaker 1: was something also cool. I got another tutorial in Guarani here. But this doesn't have subtitles, so. Yes. Also uh regarding the community response uh something that was really cool is that uh from one week that the project was launched uh somebody create an Android app and start sharing like like because I I create an API for this. And after one week of that, so the second week, we have like an iOS app that somebody did because I don't know how to program for iOS. And it was like even nicer. The UX and the everything was nicer.

Speaker 1: But yeah, like we have like uh for for the two major platforms uh we have like an app in two weeks. So uh after this catch-up, the Paraguayan Red Cross uh um come to us And uh they wanted to use the platform as their official platform for helping people in the in the during the pandemic. So I have to make the app more complicated. So instead instead of two buttons, now I have four buttons. So I one is donation centers and the other I want to be a volunteer. So uh good thing it is that in Django I could separate that with the core features and the organization

Speaker 1: features like in different apps But yeah, I'm going to get there. Well, so here is uh open source and our tech stack So uh I created this uh with Django and uh GeoDjango using Postgres and Postgres uh OpenStreetMap Lizlet JS and I was strongly uh an advocate for vanilla JS because I don't know how to program in React. But yeah, it was But I I think it was the good the uh a good decision because uh it lowered the the bar uh for anyone to wanted to help like yeah you just need JavaScript and yeah don't put jQuery or whatever here

Speaker 1: so Many people like I learned some stuff and many people learned some other stuff of how to do stuff in Vanilla. js At first like it was just only templates and I was writing Django templates, but you know after that people that knew JavaScript joined the project so we had like a a nicer I was there and a nicer uh code. So uh probably I know this is going to red but uh the project is pretty simple. Uh it basically like it's uh one form and one map and the form the it's the the model is there there is called help request it has a title a message the name the phone the address and the location

Speaker 1: here you can see this is a uh a field for from uh Hio Django that is a point field so it's easier to geolocate something it's just like one more field like So it's pretty easy. And in the left you have the administration panel and you are going to see that uh You know, funny stuff happened when you put your loc uh locale in Spanish, but you program in English and so you have some categories here. So yeah, like I didn't put the plural correctly there, but yeah, some stuff that happened. So but yeah, as I was saying, like this is the core. And this is the for organizations in this case was the Red Cross, but uh we are after I'm going to plant uh I'm going to talk about

Speaker 1: there is uh other organizations. So uh for Paraguay like uh that is kind of like um like the population is not very big uh having an open source project uh with uh I will say for me it's a lot of contributors like there uh start like you know, everybody was like uh creating issues, cre you creating like solving issues, uh getting PRs, like I think these stats are from like two or three two months from the beginning. So yeah and without knowing I became an open source maintainer. Like that wasn't the the idea initially, but yeah that happened. And well, I'm going to talk a little about the architecture.

Speaker 1: Probably if you have DevOps people here, they're going to hate me. But yeah. No Docker, just vibes. So so but initially it was just uh five dollars per month BPS. I did uh git deployed scripts, like really, you know, source, activate, blah, and pull, and it worked. Uh I uh use uh Unicor as uh uh and it was like so good, like I know that is like it's not the probably the cool way to do it now, but it's so reliable and so predictable regarding the use of memory, so that was good. And yeah, uh I was like, you know, uh

Speaker 1: we already have Sysn D because we were running Linux, so we use that for the process monitoring. And yeah, so everybody is going to , but this will scale? Yeah, you know, you need to ask that question that question. So yeah, when we needed it was like three twelve dollars BPS, uh Nginx as a lot balancers and NFS mount and fs tab for file storage. Again, sorry, DevOps people You know, like I could do like some cool stuff with S3 and uh block storage and stuff, but I don't know how to do that and I'm good at Linux. So this happened and it worked.

Speaker 1: And also usually you don't need for you know like this got like a lot of traffic. I will say like the third uh VPS it was just for Yeah, for flexing that I could do that, but yeah. So uh I'm going to talk a little more the repercussion of the project So uh as I say like the project like explode like we had a lot of media covering like not only local media, also um media from other places. Here's the the guardian. Like you know, like the news itself is not like really good, but yeah, the project got mentioned as a solution. We have like uh I think this was screenshot it was like from one week from the project.

Speaker 1: We have like uh accessing we got like from everywhere basically Uh this is like uh for this kind of platform maybe it's not a lot, but yeah, yeah, for Parai I think it's a lot. And we uh the one of the good things that happened that for me was like totally uh something that I wasn't expecting is that uh you know as a um People start talking about the project and they want to replicate it. So in Argentina they created this that is called Argentina por vos, like it's Argentina for you And I will say that probably it's uh you know the UI is nicer. They have you know uh designers and stuff, but yeah, but after that I'm going to talk about the UX and why I

Speaker 1: try to keep it keep it simple but yeah I really like this. Unluckily in Argentina the project didn't take the the same I would say like explosion but yeah uh it was a cool thing that it happened Also, this was totally something unexpected. The project got fork in Indonesia So uh yeah, uh I don't speak uh Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian language. But no, I but because uh I know that because of those buttons I know that one say like I need help and they're uh I want to help because those are the buttons that we you have in the platform. And yeah, and they created like everything like that's Jakarta and they start using

Speaker 1: Uh I think the at this moment the project is down, but uh I think it worked for a while there. Um And well, I'm going to talk a little more about the user experience because I think uh for this project was something that was uh I I will say like essential. Uh uh we have to have some UX decisions because we have some challenges. Because uh especially our users, like we have two users, basically the help requester and the one the person that wants to help. And uh I will say that the I will say neither of those users necessarily were uh you know a tech-savvy user. And especially the help requester, probably um

Speaker 1: most of them were uh people of lower income. or even unhouse people. So for for that I we have to take some consideration that it got like pros and cons, like not having no user accounts Like uh you don't you can't ask for somebody that is like having a really bad time to create an email and all the process that got there for creating an account We use like everyday language pretty direct, like uh nothing that usually see in a site, like everything was like a uh call to action like uh hey you press here I'm going to try to find you and something like that. We in every input we use uh examples

Speaker 1: so people knew what kind of information they could they can put there. And we did it mobile first because uh most people uh that is the only way to access to the to the internet And uh as I talk about the two kind of user that we have, uh we have like the help requester and the um people that want to help. We try to focus all the things first in the help requester because that is uh that's the the beginning of the flow. So sometimes we need to took some decisions that you know like it will be better for the people that wanted to help, but it's going it will impact in the people that needed help. uh we have to take those decisions.

Speaker 1: Also uh vertical flow that's maybe nothing nothing that uh could um I will say like how the attention but what happened like this is was a site when when it was launched and everything is like from top to down and you only have one thing per row. That's uh that's the idea like nothing confusing. Uh I have like this long discussion with uh when we were like a lot of developers with uh one of the um front-end guys that really want to put a hamburger menu there. And and yes, it wasn't like a a a long decision, but it was a good, you know, because I had to write like several paragraphs like explaining why. And everybody like I think and everybody agree

Speaker 1: after that. And yeah, so Everything is like top down and vertical flow. This is how it looks now. Like it it got uh you know a little may uh makeover. Um yeah, we have a logo, but we we still uh use the same thing. Like we have like these two buttons that say I need help and the and have and the subtitle there it says uh publish your uh request so people can see and the other one says uh i want to help and it says like find someone that uh near you that need to that need that so you can help him Uh also uh as I say there like on the right you can see it's like uh the first button of all it says like uh Press here I'm going to try to find you

Speaker 1: because we realized that one of the most difficult tasks that people had was using a map And that's not the only thing. Uh people uh many people didn't know their address. Uh that's something that happened. Uh many people didn't have like a proper address because they were unhoused people. So uh also you can see there, like I I probably I don't know if you're going to notice, but like in the inputs you have like these uh examples of the text But yeah, everything is pre-defined and why you need to do that. Like in this description you say like here you can put more details on that. How better you tell your situation, it's more probable that people wanted to help. So it was like giving a motivation why I'm asking this information for you.

Speaker 1: I tried to keep them most simple as I could this uh to have the less steps as I could Oh, here is another thing that I said like before. Like when you click the first the button on the top that is click here, I'm going to try to find you. uh it automatically uh if the location is working uh selects the the point and also It selects the we we create uh inverse uh geolocation uh service to get from a point to get the the address. Um yeah Google Maps wasn't good for that we need to use uh OpenStreetMaps because it were more detailed like in Paraguay So you have like the direction, the area, the city, the department that is like uh

Speaker 1: ours kind of like a state there And also um like and also it automatically feel this the the the address field uh because if you know there is something uh wrong they can change that Uh so um in like this is the view uh when you look at one help request. And you have like a few things here. Like we you have the phone number there. And if you click it, like this is more for the people that want to help. So If you click on that on that, you know, your phone app opens with that phone number if you click on the WhatsApp button, uh, because everybody is WhatsApp outside the US.

Speaker 1: And so you click on WhatsApp, it opens WhatsApp with a defined like a default message like hey, uh I don't know like the name of this person, hey Vero. I saw your um I saw your request in a Juda PY uh with the title of the request and the URL. So people know like doesn't even need to text to type anything. So also you have like this button to open on Google Maps. So we can uh you know it's easier for navigation. Like if you get the people the the whole flow is more probably they're going to help than if they need to I don't know go out open Google map search for the address and stuff And also, as I said, like one of the problems that we have is that

Speaker 1: uh because we didn't have user accounts We didn't have a practical way to set uh a request as uh that it was help or that it was attended. So uh we rely we we rely on people telling us. So you have after that a button uh for WhatsApp, another for Twitter that say like uh let us know that you have this request. So And it does the same, like uh it also just put put the name of the the number of the request and all the stuff of the information there so we can mark that manually as as done or a ten. So uh thus uh were good decisions. Uh so I'm going to

Speaker 1: say some numbers Here but it the thing is like it's the numbers are not important and I know that many people hate that. Everybody want to know hey how many people uh God help with that and i uh the the answer is i don't know but uh we have uh fifteen uh f um fifteenk uh help requests 3,000 of them they're manually marked as uh attended and done, but you know, a lot of people just help another people and didn't let us know, you know, because it didn't matter. It's like the the the important thing was done. So the impact I can say like is immeasurable. I can I can measure that. Thank you. Uh and also like this is like uh

Speaker 1: I need to translate this like uh it this this person said that uh another thing that uh when we were having the UX thing that of no ha having accounts and not marking the uh the you know the request as done uh it was like and what happened if you know many people like people that are ready help uh got another hell and and and so on And this lady it says on Twitter like uh that is the the nice nice thing of the sincerity of the people, you know, and there's three people that they she asked like hey you already received received help and they say like yeah we already received help. You know, and these are people that probably aren't going to need help like one week from there. But you know, sometimes people are nice

Speaker 1: So uh probably in this thought in this conference doesn't make any sense this slide, but I also have because people asked me like how how you you plan to monetize like no fuck no. I'm going to the especially it's especially the thing is like the initial cost was five dollars so it it was something that it wasn't something really costly and uh I that you know it's easier to cover that and also uh I put like I try to put everything to be unmonetizable. The license is uh Aferro GPL3, uh it's open source, like uh even like the

Speaker 1: The the the data itself is pretty restri it's uh the data itself it's uh I forgot the name of the Uh crap did commons but a restricted one so uh any so for people can't use that. So uh I want to talk a little more about the support receive. Uh what one good thing it was that uh DigitalOcean and New Relic uh got us like uh some credit so we got like to for at least for one year the platform was cost free because they give us to us this so that was really good and uh shout out to those companies and well this probably should be in the repercussions part but well

Speaker 1: The United Nations Developed Program used the data from Ajura Ajura P Ajura PY to get some data and they publish a paper. about the social capital in Paraguay as an asset for combating vulnerability during COVID-19 pandemic. So that was something pretty cool And here are some graphs that uh so sociologists understand and but they look pretty cool and they I for I w for what I understand it help they it help a lot to for them to make decisions on stuff. Yeah, more cool grabs. Well now I want to talk a little uh it's a little more

Speaker 1: in a personal way uh about this talk, about this project. One thing that is uh complicated when you everything you know like everything that you heard recently looks you know it sounds great But uh, you know, the the difficult part of this platform is that you say, oh, I I have like 15,000 requests, but Those are 15,000 people or families that are having like a really bad time. So the success of the platform it's uh it's uh bittersweet, you know It's not something that uh it's good and it was totally different to any project that I had

Speaker 1: Because you know, like probably you're not going to read this, but it's uh it's a help request, it's the the the view of the help request. Uh and you know like sometimes I want to, I don't know, hey What happened if I mute move this button here and I try to I don't know to to see how it looks in the in the website and the data like it says like yeah I don't have anything to eat for today uh or I don't know I was trying to um um I will say to uh optimize an uh a query and when I was testing that I have like I got the you know like the information that I got is like uh my baby doesn't have anything to eat today. And that is something that when

Speaker 1: you start working on that, it's it starts really affecting you. And for me it was uh I didn't realize at the beginning but it was pretty difficult because uh I was one of the lucky people that I that I was already working remote. So I didn't lose my job, but you know, the lockdown got declared and for me it was uh Tuesday. The world f was falling apart and I still need to work and after that I still need to uh I I create something that was helping people. So uh I couldn't take, you know, like a lot of time off because For me it was like, okay, we found a bug and yeah, if I don't solve that bug, maybe somebody is not going to eat.

Speaker 1: So it like it put a lot of pressure on me on me And was something that uh was like really difficult. I had uh a really hard time. lost my job at that uh at that moment uh because I not I don't want to responsize the this the the platform I want to it's myself who I need to responsize, but I was under a lot of a lot of things and I didn't uh get the support and help that I needed at that time. So my recommendation is that if you are embarking in these kind of projects oh if you are embarking in this kind of projects, I don't know, yeah, we're back.

Speaker 1: Um I have like 20 developers uh that could took charge. I have many people trying uh being involved, but you know like I wanted to solve everything and Sometimes that is not the best idea because uh sometimes you need to put your oxygen mass first before helping others. And and also this is uh just uh like a unsolicit unsolicited advice Uh you should like everyone should treat therapy like the dentist. Like if everything is okay, just go like one or two times a year. Like not going to hurt.

Speaker 1: So what's next? Uh well, uh like last year we uh associated with uh un día para dar that is uh a giving tuesday uh here in the states it's like in every part of the world uh you they have like a giving tuesday Uh in this case like uh last we try to do uh you know for people to try to help their neighbors. So Um Given Tuesday Paraguay used the Ajuda PY platform as their own. So they were promoting. So in that date you help somebody. So and that was pretty cool. And

Speaker 1: the other thing is that now I'm working, it should have been done, but I still need to uh create. It's a part for for the firefighters because we have uh especially in this time of the year we have a lot of uh for uh forest fires And um and well so the idea with this is that the what the the the firefighters struggle the most is in uh getting uh their tanks refill, especially in rural areas. So uh for this is the idea ever to the people to can If you have like a pool or some kind of water reservoir, you can register there and

Speaker 1: the firefighters will know where they can recharge their trucks. So, how to contribute? Because it's an open source project. We have issues and we have the localization guide We have the GitHub issues. At this moment I would say that it's a little stale the project, but yeah, if you want to check there. You can do it and uh most of the issues is are in English, so that is a good thing. Uh also uh for the especially for the people uh that fork uh our uh our project in indonesia what we did is like to translate all the strings to english first So they can create new localizations.

Speaker 1: So it's it's kinda easy like if you want to uh replicate this project it's kinda easy like you just can use and change the strings and everything works. Pretty pretty cool. Uh well so now I want to um for closing I want to some learnings that uh we have as uh because uh the thing is like it was a personal project first but after that it became a community project so that is why i changed from i to we so we have some learnings One was that uh quick actions sometimes like the timing is necessary and it doesn't need to be perfect. You know, now is better than never as the Sen of Python says.

Speaker 1: Like the MVP was like 20 hours of development, less than 200 line of code in one weekend, three bottles of Fernet, but yeah, in general It worked, you know, like it was like the less performant side ever. Like it just like in the it wrote all the all the stuff all all the locations in the template uh as a javascript. It was horrible, but it worked. And after that I have smart people to join to fix my mess. So another um another uh lesson here is that something simple can generate a lot of real impact. I will say simple is better than complex from the scene of Python

Speaker 1: And here I will say that probably this is uh the reason why I I decide to have like a software career. Like for me it was almost magic that you can create something from almost nothing and it works and in this case that can affect uh real people's life and I have this it's uh um This mother uh wrote to us saying that uh when uh she had only two cartons of milk for their baby And saw the tweet uh talking about the UWIs. She just created a help request and look at now. So for me it's you know

Speaker 1: That baby could eat that night. That's something that I don't know like I I never realized that that's something that I like we can do like coding. It's insane So for closing up, I'm a really big fan of punk, but religion is one of my favorite bands. And since I was a kid, this uh phrase uh of the this part of the song always uh stuck on me got stuck on me and uh it said hey man of science with your perfect google measure can you improve this place with the data that you gather And with this project, I hope that I can answer that question with a yes. Thank you.