So we’ve made some good progress on building out the LOT Carbon Accounts system. We’ve almost completed Minimum Viable Product zero (“MVP0”).
Those scoring at home will notice that “MVP0” is a brand new concept, and it is. Pro-tip, tech people invent new stuff like this to make us feel good about what we have done, even though we haven’t accomplished everything we want to do. As we wade into the actual project and discover what’s hard and what’s not, we have to change plans. Think “Property Brothers,” when they discover that behind the walls there is mold.
In real life, tech projects are almost never completely defined or understood at the beginning of the project, and the optimal path evolves as the specifics emerge from the shadows. Some think of this as weakness, but I like to think of it as character-building.
So MVP0 is a more modest version of what I am now calling MVP1. This is what’s included:
- A database schema that takes into account flexibility between individuals and families when measuring a carbon footprint.
- A double-entry carbon accounting system that considers debits and credits–just like a bank account.
- A hosted database on one of the big three cloud computing environments.
- A web app where the core carbon account view is displayed.
- Individualized views, dependent on who is logging in.
This is all remarkable progress, and pretty great considering the fact we are a set of volunteers putting this all together. But also, not yet where we want to be at the beginning of summer, which is what I’m still calling MVP1. MVP1 is a Carbon Account I hope will be ready for regular consumer use, albeit, lacking lots of bells and whistles, about the time our prototype sequestration project is going. Specifically, what we hope to build is:
- A new database schema supporting the medium-term needs of LOT Carbon Accounts
- Mobile and web versions of the app.
- User security, authentication and fully aligned user and household line-level security.
- Full use of the coolclimate.org Application Programming Interface (“API”)
- Depth 1 (country average) to Depth 3 (limited customization through coolclimate API) carbon footprint functionality.
- LOT Carbon Offset accounting
- Core UI screens including setup, configurable carbon account screen, and core customization screens.
- A core set of visualizations.
This will be a challenge, but I think we are up for it. LMK if you wanna help out!
