Microsolidarity Practice Week
Nati and I got caffeinated yesterday and decided we want to host a "practice week": one call per day for 5 days, a space to meet other Microsolidarity people and learn some group practices together.
https://www.thehum.org/microsolidarity
We will love to see some of you there if you want to learn with us how to do more peer-to-peer support in your organisation/community/network.
Option 1: There's a US/EU friendly time May 11-15 at 6pm CEST
Option 2: There's a Asia/Pacific friendly time June 8-12 at 9am CEST
Take a look at the event page and let me know if you have any questions.
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 24 Apr 2020
Sure we can figure it out - I will send you a private message.

Marek Koys Fri 24 Apr 2020
Whoops! I actually didn't realize that by answering the email, it would pop over here:)) Anyway...let's move on, in the name of transparency!😬

Joe Lightfoot Fri 24 Apr 2020
This looks rad, it'll be 2am Melbourne time though so I'll have to just check out the recordings once they are available.
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 24 Apr 2020
Yeah maybe we will run a second one at the other end of the day which will better suit people in Asia/Pacific

Joe Lightfoot Fri 24 Apr 2020
I would be most pleased if that pans out. I'm feeling a strong pull to join. And if it's about getting the numbers, I'd be happy to rally a few folks from my congregation who I also reckon would be keen on joining an Asian Pacific time slot.
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 1 May 2020
We've added another time now to accommodate Asia/Pacific times (5pm Sydney May 25-29). Will love if you can rally some homies! Details here.

Joe Lightfoot Fri 1 May 2020
Funk yeah!! Will do.

Danyl Strype Fri 24 Apr 2020
I'm really keen to participate in this, but if Jitsi Meet is used, I
won't be able to attend (for technical reasons explained in the monthly
meetup thread). Again, I can offer the use bbb.nzoss.nz (Big Blue Button
instance hosted by NZ Open Source Society) as the venue for this.
Alternatively, if you don't really need the video conferencing aspect
and a voice conference would do, Mumble is really good. There are a
number of community-hosted Mumble servers, including the Disroot one
that can be accessed via this web app:
https://mumble.disroot.org/
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 24 Apr 2020
Thanks for the offer Strypey. We're using Zoom. I understand the arguments against it, but I have yet to find an alternative that can compete on the features I care most about.

Danyl Strype Fri 24 Apr 2020
We're using Zoom. I understand the arguments against it, but I have yet to find an alternative that can compete on the features I care most about.
Have you tried BBB (with the Greenlight front-end)?
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 24 Apr 2020
Nope. I'm gunna take a lot of convincing to shift off the tool that is working extremely well for me.

Danyl Strype Fri 24 Apr 2020
Nope. I'm gunna take a lot of convincing to shift off the tool that is working extremely well for me.
You know all the reasons why I think having social change discussions on
Zoom (or any corporate-owned platform) is like flying to the other side
of the world to give a speech about the urgency of climate change. So
I'm not going to labour the point ;) Instead, all I'll say is, I haven't
used Zoom, but I've come across lots of people in the last few weeks who
have used both Zoom and BBB, and say they prefer the latter. If you
haven't so much as joined a BBB room for a couple of minutes to see what
it offers, you don't know what you're missing.
Josh Fairhead Sat 25 Apr 2020
I'm not dogmatic about the tools but my preference is to generally use open tooling as I agree with Daniel in spirit (jit.si being my go to service). That said for commercial ventures like this Zoom seems to be the things that captures most attention, regardless of my distaste for it - it may be different in the microsolidarity circles however - I don't know.
Biases on the table, I did just check out BBB and it looked pretty good. I'd defiantly like to stress test it at some point! Perhaps like the revolving facilitator we can have revolving tools as well? Diversity being the spice of life and all :p
These comments are general rather than thread specific.
Specifically, I'll join for the practice sessions - the price is reasonable, I just need to procure some resources first!

Marek Koys Fri 24 Apr 2020
I'm wine with the ZOOM, but as some people above start proposing alternatives, I think it's worthy to mention https://remo.co/ as well. It is SW under the development of our friend from Hong Kong. It has a lot of great participatory functions some of which are better then zoom in my honest opinion.
John Gieryn Tue 28 Apr 2020
Sounds so cool! Wish I were in the right timezone for it. Maybe next time ^.^
Patrick Hoogenbosch Tue 28 Apr 2020
Hi Nati and Richard. Interesting invitation worth considering. How large is the group of people participating in the 5 day learning program? What kind of people participate, what background? Experiences of others in comparable situations offer many added values.
Richard D. Bartlett Wed 29 Apr 2020
Hi Patrick, so far there are about 20 people, I expect we'll cap it at 30 or 40 so people have a chance to get to know each other. This is advertised publicly so I'm expecting participants will come from different backgrounds.
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 1 May 2020
Update: due to popular demand we've added a second option! So you can choose which week to join us, depending on your timezone:
Option 1: May 11 to 15th @ 6pm Rome (5pm London, 12pm NYC, 9am SF)
Option 2: June 8 to 12th @ 9am Rome (7pm Auckland, 3pm Taipei, 5pm Sydney)
Richard D. Bartlett Wed 6 May 2020
Update about times:
First week is now sold out. We postponed the second week to June 8-12 9am CEST.
Marek Koys · Fri 24 Apr 2020
Hi Richard,
Thanks for invitation. The “practice week” sounds great and I would really like to join but I somehow stacked right before the end of the ordering process on your website.
The payment somehow can’t come through, it keep on saying “Enter Valid Card Number” but I do use valid card number. That’s the card I’m normally using. It’s a MasterCard. it’s issues by a small bank form Czech Republic if that could play some role In combination with the online payment gate?? I have no clue...
In anyways I would love to join the next cohort of your training so I wanted to ask, if you can connect me with someone form The Hum who Is responsible for payments and who could help me to resolve this issue? Eventually I can send you money directly from my bank account > i just need your account number.
Thanks,
Marek K.