Open App Ecosystem and Collaborative Technology Alliance

I'd like to have the OAE continue to manage itself, as best it can, among the people who are doing the work. We some work scheduled for this coming week on the vocab translations, let's see if we can coordinate.

I would also like to see something like the CTUG proposed recently, but I agree with several comments in that thread that we should wait until we got something to show.

Hey @olisb and others, great work on the collaborative.tech site. I'm just trying to sign up but I prefer to sign up or login to sites using HTTPS (to prevent MitM attacks on my passphrase or data), and I notice that you don't seem to have HTTPS working. This can be set up using gratis HTTPS certificates from Let's Encrypt, and there are bots you can use to automatically update your certs just before they expire (see our experience with this at CoActivate).

I note that RiseUp recently joined the Association for Progressive Communications. Is the CTA reinventing this wheel? If not, what makes CTA different from APC?

To be clear, although there are sometimes benefits to pooling resources, and avoiding fragmentation of effort, I don't think it always helps to throw all cats in one sack ;) Groups or networks can sometimes work in a similar space, while having very different goals, priorities, rules-of-engagement etc. But if that's the case, it's good to be clear on both the difference and areas of overlaps, both so people can choose the appropriate venue for their participation, and so different organizations can work together as appropriate.

I'll give you my opinion (based on my opinion of the original CTA).

APC says,

The APC mission
APC's mission is to empower and support organisations, social movements and individuals in and through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to build strategic communities and initiatives for the purpose of making meaningful contributions to equitable human development, social justice, participatory political processes and environmental sustainability.

The original CTA seemed to be more about software; in particular, software platforms and software development groups. And often about people seeking help or money for their software platform projects.

Some people and organizations in CTA were interested in social justice and the other goals of APC, but it was not an explicit CTA goal.

It just hit me, like a bolt of lightening from the blue, that this might be one major reason why the CTA keeps petering out. If we focus on building collaboration apps targeted at people building collaboration apps, the whole thing is at risk of becoming an inward-looking circlejerk. I totally support free code app devs eating our own and each other's dogfood, for software freedom reasons amongst others, but maybe what we really need to inspire effective collaboration is some use cases from outside the app dev world to get our teeth into.

For contrast, look at what Drutopia are doing. Their tech (a Drupal 8 distro aimed at not-for-profits) is still in alpha, but already they have active partnerships with organizations who are eating their dogfood for real world purposes, like running an election campaign, or websites for worker-owned coops (on main street, not online one). Maybe the CTA needs two types of membership; developer organizations and user organizations?

Very useful revisiting of these issues, thanks @strypey and @bobhaugen
One thing that I can imagine helping greatly is for people who really understand the different organisations / group / alliances / movements / whatever actually talk with each other in depth. The kind of reflective listening that has the very best chance of each party being and feeling heard by the other, and hopefully, understood. That's the kind of basis, as I see it, for each group to move to more clearly articulated collaboration, with the distinct roles clarified, and the methods of collaboration explained and perhaps even planned out a bit.

This kind of depth knowledge and understanding should go way beyond a superficial approach with speculative ideas on any division of responsibility. It's too easy for any of us to imagine what someone else's responsibilities "should" be, and then to feel critical that they don't take on what they have never even agreed to.

So is there anyone central enough in APC who might be willing to engage at that level? I'd really enjoy getting beyond our "readings" of mission etc. towards genuine current appreciation.

Hi @strypey - thanks for your encouragement - and yes https would be a good addition... I will fix that when i can find time... or any other collaborator would be welcome to too!?

But you're right - whilst i don't always condone putting all cats in one sack ;) i do hate re-invented wheels... and since CTA progress has stalled so much I wonder if it does make sense to try and roll it up with https://www.progcode.org/ and http://opensupporter.org/ and other similar ventures like http://www.civicstack.org/ and https://diglife.com/

- although obviously that's easier said than done and encouraging true collaboration between groups is often, imho, as hard as trying to herd cats into a sack.

Hi Oli @olisb -- yes, that's what I'm trying to get at: it can be like herding cats, but when people actually talk deeply to each other suddenly and magically the cats transform... I've seen it happen in our cohousing community, so why not out there in the wider world?

Hi @asimong - I totally agree, and really appreciate your efforts to make us all realise that a bit more. The hard part is getting those talks set up - I'm struggling to even get email replies from progcode and opensupporter - I'd love to have them at https://2018.open.coop to try to help initiate the kind of discussions you describe in person - which might make further online collaboration a bit easier... @all feel free to help encourage that to happen too - if you think it's a good idea!? :)

@olisb I think the order of operations you laid out is pretty sensible. The "holy trinity" concept is bang on IMHO, and I agree it's good to have a critical mass of collaborators before making formal choices about collaboration tools.

But, having been involved in global networks since the late 90s, I'm pretty sure that if all groups have to do is pledge to do some collaboration at some undefined future time, you'll never get that critical mass. I suggest that the pledge needs to include a clause along the lines of:
"we pledge to provide at least one person from our group to actively liase with the CTA mothership, at any given time."

I suggest the forum for ongoing, informal chat among the liasons be an email list, hosted by a suitably neutral party (RiseUp? Disroot? CoActivate?). Reasons for that:
* it's a fairly neutral tool, everyone already has an email address, and knows how to use it
* it's asynchronous, so it's not too demanding or distracting from everyone's main projects, especially if everyone knows how to use folders and filters (or set up a separate email account for the CTA work)
* an email list serves as a point of focus that scales up or down easily with the group energy, unlike a web tool it doesn't get as overloaded and overwhelming if discussion heats up, or look sad and abandoned when there's a thoughtful pause in activity
* because we all know how bad email is for decision-making (hopefully), we will focus on what it's good for; relationship building and divergent discussions on possible strategy and tactics, recruitment, partnerships and alliances etc

The other thing we could try, as a CTA flagship project, is to set up an instance of Mastodon or Hubzilla, with an account for the reps from each member group (ideally with SSO so folks can use their existing collaborative.tech credentials to sign in). This would allow us to have informal, asynchronous discussions, but in a public square, where people from other orgs and projects can watch and chime in, from their own fediverse homebase. I'd be happy to help set this up.

EDIT: divergent, not convergent, crucial difference!