This looks interesting and is one of a whole mushroom field of emerging platforms.
Deffo worth exploring.
There was (is? Donāt recall the name) a platform that mimicked a coffee bar - I tried to persuade the authors to give us a free subscription . One could talk at ones own ātableā or to the adjacent tables, to the whole room, people could present, pictures and adverts could be hung on the walls, you could move from table to table or room to roam. It gave video text etc - must be even more now and it be worth finding out
There are at least a couple of Comms issues Iām aware of within the community:
the interception of DM/ private messages by others and
the visibility to and searchability by the whole internet, particularly the search engines (@RedFraggle )
These two are in turn behaviours & system config settings - so software isnāt the whole story - imho communities also need a representation in the running of platforms - just like any village, town & country has an ANSWERABLE council government & ācivil serviceā
Further: as a community we have shared interests but not a group voice - thatās lost opportunity.
There are lots of platforms in an interesting category listed on
And forms of technology supported democracy See Also on that page - as a SIG (Special Interest Group) Stroke (& TBI & ABIā¦) our voice could easily be more focused on improving the lot of wobblers & thrives
I donāt know of even a Ā½ decent list of BB & similar platforms - the Wikipedia page is hopeless - doesnāt even have Reddit let alone mightynetworks or circle.so/ hive/ et alā¦
I know it might be a bit to organise it, but have you thought of using high-powered telescopes and megaphones jacked into Marshal stacks?
Actually, the above might not meet security and privacy protocols, so instead, I think I have some Clacks somewhere you can use.
That aside, what about open-source models like Jitsi? Open-source is good for community based events because it can tailored to the users by the users if some of the users have deft technical knowledge, cough @SimonInEdinburgh cough.
It is good to hear Iām not the only one keen on open source material, there is much to be said for it.
I would guess I have an 80-90% open source system. I am keen that others know about what this means, what is available, how to get it and how to use itā¦
Iām just checking out jitsi, it does look relevant and I might well try it out very soon.
An open source attitude was ingrained in me at a very young age. My father runs all open source on his desktop machine, he is 88 this year. He even builds and modifies his own computers to the spec of having more RAM and processing power than anything Amazon can farm. Yet, I use Mac. However, I feel this favouritism towards Apple was instilled during my formative university days when Microsoft was flouting its operating dominance, and Macintosh was sort of nonproprietary in many ways. How things change.
