Last week we reached the alpha phase of our project.

An alpha (which comes before a 'beta') is the stage of development where the fundamental concepts and much of the underlying structures of the system are in place, but the interface isn't ready and many features aren't in place or finished.

In the coming weeks as we move to the beta, we'll have screenshots and more details.

We've submitted our Alpha progress report which describes process in more detail. There are a few screenshots, but they should not be taken as in any way indicative of the final system - they just have some basic layout to enable code testing.

• Alpha progress report
• Latest version of the spec (v5, v6 changes will be merged in shortly)

We presented the Cyclescape project to the Cyclenation/CTC conference in October 2011, to an audience eager to know how it will help their campaigns.

Here’s the presentation we gave, and scroll down for questions and answers.

 [and Text-only version]

Here are some of the questions we were asked, and answers to them.

1. How do I start a group in my area? What if I'm on my own?

Groups will go to a simple webform to apply for a Cyclescape site for their area. They can customise it in various ways.

A person on their own will also be able to create a new group for their area. They can then welcome others who live nearby, to join that group.

It is an explicit goal of the system that we help new campaign groups to spring up and provide them with resources to get them going easily.

2. Can there be more than one group covering a particular area?

Yes. There is no restriction on overlapping groups, as many areas have more than one campaign group.

Groups can, if they want, choose to campaign together. We hope that, over time, the system will help increase co-working between groups so that together they have a stronger voice.

3. How much information can groups share with each other?

Basically as little or as much as they want.

The default is that discussions are not shared, i.e. each group has its own area that is private. It is up to the people running each group to open things up beyond that if they want.

Groups can choose to make their discussions open-access if they wish; they can control who is added as a member of their group; and they can choose to share particular discussion threads if they wish.

The library of best practice will contain national and local examples. The national ones are usually shared. This will mean that a group can publish how they solved a particular campaigning issue, or share best practice photos and documents.

4. In our city we have a problem that the council put in "Pinch Points". They won't listen to us -  how can this system help?

Firstly, the system will help identify who will benefit by its removal, by seeing who cycles through the area, so that you can increase the number of people who can push to make the council change its view. We know this can really make a difference as our campaign in Kingston Street in Cambridge did exactly this (only we had to work out manually who these people were!).

Secondly, the system will automatically suggest examples from elsewhere around the country where the problem has been solved. It will only need one group to create a resource about this.

Thirdly, the system could also provide evidence of where a compromise has been achieved. Our experience in Cambridge, for instance, is that pinch points of 3.1 to 3.9 metres cause the most problems.

The system will basically help you build the best possible case for removing the pinch point, as easily as possible.

5. I'm keen to get involved with Cyclescape but the technology scares me, are you running any tutorials or workshops that can help me get started?

It is a strong aim that the system is self-explanatory and easy to use.

We shall also provide online guides to explain how to get started, and we'll think about organising a workshop, perhaps at another conference where we can demonstrate the system.

6. How does the sharing of best practice work?

Groups can create resources which describe how particular successes have been achieved.

Groups can add photos of good and bad practice. The existing library of over 30,000 photos from CycleStreets will also be available in the system.

Groups will also be encouraged to construct summaries of national/local policy documents, which will be well-categorised (by tagging with key words). This will help other campaigners nationally find out what guidance exists quickly and be able to quote it. This will mean that discussions on, for instance, cycling in pedestrian zones, would automatically pick out the key guidance, show photos and newspaper reports from where it has been achieved, etc.

We want to expand the photographic aspect of the system to create full galleries and downloadable high-quality images of best practice and are seeking funding to expand the system to include this.

7. Is it free?

Yes, groups can create a Cyclescape site for their area completely free of charge.

This is possible thanks to a grant of £27,000 that we obtained from GeoVation. We recognised when applying for this grant that groups all around the country face the same problems, but that few groups have much funding. It therefore made sense to create a campaigning platform that all could use, to avoid the need to reinvent the wheel continually.

8. Will it use the same username / password as cyclestreets.net to login?

We haven’t yet finalised that issue. However, we are hoping so.

9. Will it need further funding in the future?

The system is intended not to require ongoing funding.

However, our initial grant does have a shortfall, and we are hoping to add some additional advanced features in the light of feedback during our consultation over the summer. We need around £10-20k for this, so if you know of a potential source of funding that would help fund sharing of best practice, please do let us know.

The system is open source and so we are going to be working to get people involved from the cycling community who can help with the development.

We’re pleased to announce the name of our new cycle campaign group toolkit:

Cyclescape

We had over 70 suggestions (including some humorous ones), many of which were excellent ideas.

It became clear that many of the best ideas started with Cycle, and we liked the idea that the name would be co-branded with CycleStreets, i.e. Cycle-s-something.

We also thought it was particularly important to emphasise the geographical aspect of cycle campaigning. We thought that inventing a new word, Cyclescape would be a catchy and unique brand that emphasises the idea of improving the landscape for cycling across our towns and cities.

Having fixed on a shortlist, we began the process of trying to obtain domain names. This took a surprising amount of work as we wanted to ensure we got all the variants (.com/.net/.org) by way of brand protection.

Unlike three years ago when we bought the name CycleStreets, many Cycle+ names have now been taken and reserved by domain brokers. After approaching some domain holders, it was clear that some of the best names were going to be prohibitively expensive, in the thousands of pounds, which was well beyond an already-tight budget.

In the end we spent more than we wanted to acquiring the name, but we’re very pleased with it. We hope you like the name too!

Cyclescape.net is currently under development and we’ll be setting up a blog there shortly. @Cyclescape will also be the site’s Twitter identity, so do follow that also.

Andy and Andrew, our developers, have been making excellent progress. Many of the core concepts of the site are in place, so we’ll have screenshots of  the system at ‘alpha’ phase in the next few days. If you’re a coder, follow the code work in progress on Github.

Now we need a logo…

Now we need a logo! We like the idea of a curved section of city, with markers on and a bicycle going upwards. Anyone able to help with that?

We're pleased to publish an updated specification for the campaigner toolkit, following consultation with groups and including further changes.

There's been lots of useful feedback submitted by e-mail, twitter, blog replies, and in meetings we've had. These comments were turned into about ten pages of bullet-points (165 points!) for working into the spec.

Many of the points raised were useful points for clarification, or small new features, and a few raised issues relating to group structure. There were no problems raised with the substantive direction and nature of the toolkit.

The Description of the toolkit and what it will do is still available and has not needed to be updated. However, the full detailed functional specification has been updated and is below.

We were delighted to receive various positive comments which very much reflect our hopes for the system. For instance:

"One great advantage I can see is that it'll potentially help balance out the workload within our cycle campaign by allowing the latest status on any particular issue to always be seen on the system. Getting more campaign member involvement will also help with our committee's workload."

"I like the push/pull options of mail list and forum. Can't think of anything you've missed. I'm hopeful that this will encourage common issues to do with rules or conventions to float to the top and be tackled at source."

Things that have been updated or added in the spec, as a result of the consultation are:

• Clarification of the idea of a 'Library' of best practice
• Presence of tips to help best practice in campaigning
• Specification of the polls and petitions components
• Issues relating to federated/overlapping groups
• Committee privacy basis
• Notion of groups having democratically-agreed policy stances that members must adhere to
• Clarifications about grouping and splitting of threads
• Ability to involve elected Councillors rather than just officers
• Tightening of a few areas regarding mail integration
• Emphasis on outcomes rather than endless discussion
• Notion of cross-member 'recommended campaign' topics
• Daily digest
• Removal of the notion of a compromise objective, which could undermine a group's negotiating position
• Addition of avoidance of uploading very large volumes of documents, which could create costs
• And various other minor changes

The latest version of the specification is available. It is now a living document that incorporates updates in the light of implementation as we move into the coding/design phase.

A draft Module structure (work in progress) which describes an implementation of the functional specification, is being finalised. This will form the basis of the developers' work.

Since we won £27,000 for the development of our campaigning toolkit we've been pondering what to call it.

The themes we want to capture in the name are:

• The idea of a central place where cycle users around the UK can submit problems they encounter on the street network
• A central place to facilitate campaigning
• Cycling (!)
• Collaborative
• Well-informed campaigning
• Constructive and forceful debate but without being adversarial
• Improving our streets and routes
• Keeping track of all the problems and being able to manage them effectively
• The ability to say "I'll report it on the … website" and write "Go to … to report/fix a problem"
• Name needs to be short and catchy - long names are harder to type in

Here are some initial ideas we've had, though not all are usable names - it was just a brainstorm. We're not really happy with any of them. Can you help suggest a catchy name? Leave a comment below or drop us a line.

As we announced recently, CycleStreets is one of the winners of the GeoVation contest, with our bid for a comprehensive online campaigning toolkit to assist cycle campaign groups around the UK.

The first phase of this project is finalising a specification for the toolkit. Here is the description of what it will do. This outlines what the toolkit will do, how people and groups will be able to use it. The full specification also has a prioritisation of these features.

We warmly welcome comments from groups around the UK on this draft, and will be publishing a further more finalised draft, incorporating comments received, in a week's time for our deadline of 24th July. Please do contact us to give us your views.

We've tried to include as many of the ideas we've received and come up with as possible. We hope the attached draft will give cycling groups an idea of how much the toolkit will assist their work.

We hope also its themes of bringing campaigners together and, where possible, involving Local Authority contacts will help usher in a collective spirit of work to improve cycling conditions around the UK.

• Description of the toolkit and what it will do: a 2-page condensed summary
• Toolkit specification (summary)
• or Read the full draft specification (warning - long!) (Version 2, 24th July 2011)

Let us know your thoughts.

Older versions:

• Full spec, version 1