350

350.org is a global grassroots advocacy campaign to cut carbon pollution and stop climate change. Founded by environmental writer Bill McKibben, the group's name refers to 350 parts-per-million, the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, according to scientists.
Their primary campaign tactic is annual coordinated global "days of action" where grassroots citizens stage local events highlighting the number 350 and upload group photos, videos and stories of their actions to the 350.org website. Those stories are then used to generate media and pressure world governments to take action. 350.org's October 2009 and 2010 days of action have been called the largest coordinated political actions in history.

Problem
• 350.org's ambitious plans were bigger than their home-grown Drupal-based website could handle. They needed a team of skilled developers to build a robust, distributed event-management system easy enough for the most unsophisticated internet users to post their events to a global map and directory. The site needed to be translated into at least seven languages. And they needed a stable, scalable hosting environment capable of handling a massive flood of traffic over several days.

Solution
• In early 2009, Warecorp took over hosting of 350.org's website and assigned a dedicated team of Drupal engineers in one of our Offshore Development Centers in Minsk. Working closely with 350.org staff through a series of rapid development cycles, our team built a custom Drupal module for distributed event management that has been used to successfully power two massive global days of action with over 5,000 events in more than 180 countries. The system allows users to browse events on a global map displaying more than 5,000 points overlaid on Google Maps. They can RSVP to attend an event, or add their own, share their events via Twitter and Facebook, and file post-event reports including text, photos, videos, and links to related media coverage. The system is integrated with the Drupal CMS, allowing 350.org staff to feature content from event reports on the homepage, and syncs with the ActionKit CRM (developed by MoveOn.org) to manage users' contact data and process donations. From the Drupal admin, 350.org staff can easily run reports on events by region, country, locale or other criteria.
  
  An international effort, product management was done in Minneapolis, at company headquarters, and product development in Minsk.

Results
• Largest coordinated global event in history, twice: 350.org's 2009 global day of action had over 5,000 local events in over 170 countries. The 2010 "global work party" had over 7,000 events in 190 countries.