Who wants to work on an open ecosystem of digital tools ?
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Summary of the thread
We are going to make a video conference about WHY, WHAT and HOW we are gonna build this open app ecosystem ?
Things you can do to contribute :
* Please answer the form just at the right side if the page to let us know when you are available for the meeting.
* Here is the google doc of the agenda of the meeting
* Here is the folder in google drive that contains every important documents
Originial thread
Who wants to work in the creation of an ecosystem of open source inter-connected applications to run our open projects ? Or who works already for that happening ?
Open project
An open project is a project to whom we can contribute even if we are not part of the project.
Interconnected
That means :
* when you put information into one app which could be usefull for another one, the information is duplicated.
* You can easily move to one app to another thanks to a menu in the top bar.
* the apps used by a project are easily accessible by a top menu.
Example
I run a project with the objective "create a democratic school in New York". I will need digital tools to run it. I just need to go on our ecosystem, and tick all the apps I need.
Now everyone can see WHAT I want to do, WHY I want to do it, and HOW I will do it. It's geolocalized so anyone near me can see my project and contrib So anyone can contribute to this project by using the same apps that I created.
Moreover, I can see all the documentation I need in a wiki written by persons with similar projects in the world.
I can easily get in touch with all the persons in my city who want to create democratic school to work with them. And all the persons in the world with the same kind of project to help each other.
The actions that we do and need to do are visible by everyone, so anyone can help us.
We adopted a method based on action, without any hierarchy. So it's really easy to contribute. If you want to do it, just do it, if you need advise about something, just ask, no one will blame you for your mistakes, so test things out !
Apps have been created, we just need to link them
Do you want to help us ?
If you want to help us, you can come here : https://chat.lescommuns.org/channel/open.apps.ecosystem
If you have question you can ask me here or on the chat, as you wish !
Hope we can work together !
Matthew Slater Tue 11 Jul 2017 9:37PM
PLANET is envisaged as a platform, perhaps influenced by the early Facebook, except it is useful.
There are now hundreds of platforms trying to find a niche in facebook's monopoly space.
In this post I suggest that the way forward for such things is to define protocols to all all those platforms to share information.
In practice that means REST APIs
I'm now working on a REST service called SolSearch, which very simply indexes geolocialised offers and wants; users of compliant platforms can search across platforms. This is the plan for the LETS & Timebanks which I support. Here's the API
https://app.swaggerhub.com/api/matslats/sol-search/1.0.0
The potential application is much wider of course. Question is, I hear everybody here calling for such things, I don't know what it takes for them to either help code it, or adopt it in their platforms.
Matthew
Draft Sun 16 Jul 2017 1:18PM
In this post I suggest that the way forward for such things is to define protocols to all all those platforms to share information.
I know a group who works on that. They call it the "semantic bus". It enables to make interoperate all the platforms together. But I don't quite know the project. If you want I can connect you with the team ;)
Bob Haugen Tue 11 Jul 2017 11:07PM
I have said before, in another Loomio discussion, that I see actual collaboration, convergence, and interoperation happening when two or more different organizations want to do some concrete work together for some shared purpose. As an abstract idea, regardless of how wonderful, it don't tend to happen...
So who wants to do something together?
Draft Sun 16 Jul 2017 1:20PM
I have said before, in another Loomio discussion, that I see actual collaboration, convergence, and interoperation happening when two or more different organizations want to do some concrete work together for some shared purpose.
I completly agree with that. The fact is here we want to work together. We just don't know how for now ;) But we will when we'll have a clear objective to work on !
Edward West Fri 14 Jul 2017 10:44AM
Thanks @olisb for this -- and Bob, Lynn, and others -- I think I was about 2 years ahead of what I could competently help build when CTA began. It's been a huge experience for me to try to learn how to build a company, while helping to seed a network, and a movement. Still lots to learn about all of these things.
We're finally at a position beginning in August to get more serious about our contribution to the API side of things, and I hope that together we'll be able to do some great things for the collaborative tool ecosystem.
It's been terrific for me to connect with Oliver SB and discuss how to get this in motion again.
Lynn Foster Fri 14 Jul 2017 2:23PM
@edwardwest great to hear from you. Looking forward to fruitful connection in the future, and will be interested to hear where you all want to go with api work in August.
And thanks @olisb and @draft for working on the networking side of things.
@draft can we just stay here in loomio rather than create yet another venue that requires signing up? Or am I the only person who thinks that?
Draft Sun 16 Jul 2017 1:33PM
can we just stay here in loomio rather than create yet another venue that requires signing up? Or am I the only person who thinks that?
You do whatever ;)
It's just if some people want to talk about "How to make an open apps ecosystem", they can do it in the chat, which is a better tool to easily exchange ideas and things in general.
The loomio is great for threads, and constructives and long answers.
It depends of your needs actually. I put the link here, anybody can use it, but people can do whatever they want ;)
Oli SB Fri 14 Jul 2017 3:39PM
Hi @lynnfoster,
Likewise - great to hear from Edward, I think there is consensus building around the need for API work...
I am continuing my outreach and am keen to find more collaborators who would be interested in pursuing CTA v2, with the goal of developing an "open app ecosystem".
I think there are valuable lessons to be learned from v1 - and the various posts on here and in Hylo about why some things to date have failed.
A great chat with @asimong just now has almost convinced me that it will be necessary to go back to basic and start by thinking about governance and social structure, since the values of any tech we build are going to mirror the values of the people that build it... and without some deep, shared vision, values and purpose we may fail.
I'm also keen not to devolve the discussions into any other forums - unless necessary.
best
Oli
Lynn Foster Fri 14 Jul 2017 5:09PM
A great chat with @asimong just now has almost convinced me that it will be necessary to go back to basic and start by thinking about governance and social structure, since the values of any tech we build are going to mirror the values of the people that build it... and without some deep, shared vision, values and purpose we may fail.
I think this is in essence what occurred in CTA v1, and was not resolved. I'm not sure I want to do a whole round of governance prior to doing work though, because some of this level of unity will come more clearly through hashing out the actual work. But some preliminary effort to get better acquainted and confirm basic values and principles would be welcome, especially if there is a project on the ground we want to work on together.
I also think that people can collaborate tactically even when there isn't deep agreement on values and goals, as long as that is very clearly and honestly shared up front. (It took a long time to unearth that in CTA v1, there were assumptions made by all of us, that didn't even occur to us would be different among others in the group.) For example, I (as someone who wants to make change in the current system as quickly as possible and doesn't need to mix day job with movement work) can potentially work with someone who wants to do a start-up with their friends, if we can agree on things like all code is open source, and even if I would rather work with people who are creating a co-op than a start-up.
So in other words, I think this is a fairly complex set of topics that can be worked through somewhat piecemeal as needed, even as we start work on the ground together, which I think is the most important.
Lynn Foster · Tue 11 Jul 2017 11:44PM
@olisb thanks.
All right then, let's do it. I think we need to keep to the absolute minimum what we need to agree on. Definitely open source standards for how the software platforms or non-platforms can communicate - vocabulary and protocols. What technological choices do we need to agree on? What kind of systems architecture? I am not an expert in that area, but I do understand some people like linked open data, some people want to go below the http layer (like scuttlebutt) and other emerging experiments. I hope more knowledgeable people can detail some of that out. But I also hope we can keep it as open as technically possible.
Vocabulary standards is my current primary focus (https://www.valueflo.ws/). @matthewslater post above exposes one of the challenges we have in the vocabulary arena. He is creating an api for offers/requests for LETS and timebanks. We are creating a more general one for economic activity including both exchange and production/creation. Some people around the Open Food Network are working towards a food vocabulary, and considered ValueFlows but saw it as possibly too general for their purposes (discussions are ongoing). We have discussed api's and vocabulary off and on over the years with Matthew too, but have not been able to fold our efforts together. Do we need some way to semantically associate more general vocabularies (like ValueFlows) with more domain specific vocabularies that will work better for some people? And of course ValueFlows is specific to the economic domain, it is certainly not all purpose either. This is just one example to say: this stuff is hard on many levels! Especially during this kind of chaotic transitional stage we are in. We'll all have to go through many cycles of knowledge in creating this kind of ecosystem until things settle out more.
I see @bobhaugen posted while I was writing this about working on this based on actual needs to connect, from the ground up. And I think Matthew also believes this, because he is doing it, and correctly calls on others to actually do it too. I agree - we need to be creating what people need while trying to converge with each other as much as we can.