In December 2009, Dash30 began contributing to an open source project called ThinkTank led by Gina Trapani. ThinkTank is an application that captures and organizes replies to your posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Dash30 was attracted to ThinkTank for several reasons. As an open source project, it represented a collaborative atmosphere rather than a client relationship. The application appealed to us as something we’d like to use ourselves. As an open source project offered was an absence of deadlines. We could work on it between other things without feeling an undo amount of time pressure.

And, most importantly, we thought we had something to contribute.

After forking the github project, installing it on our development server and discussing priorities with Gina, we dove in.

Since then, Expert Labs adopted ThinkTank and in February 2010 Anil Dash announced that Expert Labs’ first major technology initiative would involve using ThinkTank as a platform to help the White House refine the list of Grand Challenges facing us in the 21st century. Grand Challenges is part of President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation in the realms of health, clean energy, national security and education. Expert Labs named Gina Project Director to lead the effort.

Starting with this post, I’ll walk through some of the thinking behind the work Dash30 has done on ThinkTank and our experiences contributing to an open source project. We’ve learned some lessons, met some very talented people and enjoyed contributing in some small way.