OpenSit - an online practice journal

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Dan Bartlett, modified 10 Years ago at 8/23/13 3:11 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/23/13 2:15 PM

OpenSit - an online practice journal

Posts: 46 Join Date: 7/20/09 Recent Posts
Hi all,

I am looking for some people to test out and potentially contribute to a new web app I've been developing, called OpenSit.

A little background: I have maintained a practice journal since I first started meditating (5 years ago), and have a record of every timed sit to date (written, or on my laptop). I have always found a journal to be indispensable for recording how sitting has effected me, and to remind me of things that I sometimes forget a few weeks or minutes later.

Alongside my own journalling, I've gained a huge amount from reading through other people's practice journals, on sites like the DhO, KFd and the Hamilton Project. Besides face to face meetings with other meditators, these journals have inspired me more than anything else.

I also think journals will continue to play a big role in the 'normalisation' and demythologisation of spiritual practice - and we need more honest, sincere examples of individuals putting the effort in and experiencing the profound, transformational results.

This appreciation for journals and practice logs got me thinking about better ways to maintain, share and improve them.

Currently I use Evernote to store my journal entries. It's a brilliant piece of free software for storing notes, snippets of webpages, PDFs, pictures, and anything else you can think of. It makes a better practice log than a standard Word document, as dates are added automatically and the UI is good for browsing and reviewing. You can also add tags which is handy.

But there are still lots of things I think we could benefit from, that neither existing software or discussion forums offer - the ability to follow practitioners and see all their updates in a chronological stream (a la Twitter); easy bookmarking of favourite entries; tools to connect with new practitioners; exploring new possibilities for internet-based teaching and research, and plenty more.

So instead of working within the limits of software unsuited to the task, I decided to build my own web application, grounded in a truly practice-focused ethos - a place for contemplatives to record and share their practice. I work as a web developer and project manager so I already had a good idea of what needed to be done and how to go about it.

This is how OpenSit started off. Since then the idea has grown considerably in scope and vision through initial development and discussions with others. At this point it might be useful to just head on over, sign up, and get a feel for the site: OpenSit
If you want to browse without signing up, I have begun to add some of my first journal entries here

Currently the design is something I've put together, but I have my brother working on branding as that's more his area of expertise. Of the other basics planned, I'm still working on:
* Search functionality for users, content, etc. You can type stuff into the search box but it won't do anything yet.
* Private stream if you don't want your journal to be publicly viewable. For now, everything is public.
* Notifications when people comment on your sits or start following you etc.

What's coming next?

There are already lots of ideas in the pipeline: contemplative glossaries, teacher/student functionality, iPhone/Android apps, automated 'trainer' scripts... I have added most of these ideas to UserVoice. From that link you can read over them, add comments, and upvote what you think is most exciting/important. You can also add your own suggestions, which I thoroughly encourage.

Some of the ideas are a way off, but I hope by laying down a solid foundation for people to record and track practice we can easily extend it in response to user needs, and new technologies. The larger aim is for OpenSit to become what I call a contemplative expression platform (excuse the geekery), supporting a global contemplative community that in turn will help foster an open discussion of meditation and its transformative effects, from equanimity, to energetic phenomena, to enlightenment, thus promoting and spreading the pragmatic, DIY approach to spiritual practice that many of us care so deeply about.

So there are a few things I'm looking for.

Mostly, people to get stuck in with the app and give feedback. If you're interested please head on over and register. Feel free to add any previous logs you've got and new ones as they happen. Add all your logs or just interesting ones, it's up to you. I'm not sure how people will use it yet. Personally I'm reading through old stuff and adding any entry where something pertinent came to light, or where there were slight tweaks to technique, or something weird happened, or some confusion cleared, as this is the stuff that's really useful.

This is an alpha release so expect some teething issues, but the main functionality should work. Although there will still be plenty of development and UI tweaks going on, your data is safe and you can download it at any time. Sometimes the site might take 30 seconds to load - the 'worker' goes to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity! But once it's awake it should be fast. Once people start using it more regularly I will splash out more.

The best way to give feedback is through the UserVoice (the purple tab at the bottom of all pages). You can submit ideas/suggestions there, as well as bugs/issues. You can also see if other someone else has already suggested/reported something similar, and upvote it.

For now I am happy to carry the development load myself - I love coding and it's fun to be able to roll out new releases and features each week if I have the time. But longer term I am on the lookout for other developer-meditators who can help with new features, API development, tests and other geekery. I would ideally like OpenSit to be driven by 2 or 3 developer-meditators who build and look after the site when they have the time. On the tech side, OpenSit is built on Rails 3. It already has a single page app feel thanks to Turbolinks. In the future I want to write a full test suite and a nice API which would make development of third-party apps easy peasy.

If you have other talents - copywriters, UX specialists, experience with similar projects - please feel free to get in contact too.

Finally, I am not trying to pull people away from this discussion forum or any other; I'm just saying try OpenSit for your practice logs - it's made for them ;-)

Thanks,
Dan
hello@opensit.com
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Dan Bartlett, modified 10 Years ago at 2/23/14 9:09 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/23/14 9:09 AM

RE: OpenSit - an online practice journal

Posts: 46 Join Date: 7/20/09 Recent Posts
We've just pushed a big re-design of OpenSit, and it now works well on mobiles and other devices too.

Happy sitting!
Dan
hello@opensit.com

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