Proposal: Start a fellowship to explore the Social Web

[aschrijver]

 " Let’s Reimagine Social "

 Background: “Protocol laboratory”

The initiative started by @helge to gather feedback in Wiki: Vision for a Fedi Specification and evaluate feasibility of starting a new Social Web Protocol working group, has demonstrated how broad and varied the area under investigation is. Multiple different working groups can be created, who each pursue particular themes and use cases.

General observation:

 Complexity of chaotic social web landscape leads to much wasted time and energy.

For all open initiatives in the fediverse ecosystem there’s real benefit to align, collaborate, cross-pollinate and co-create, and then create synergy together. Following a strategy of “Leveraging the ecosystem” we might get to a strength where an open commons and FOSS ecosystem might begin to challenge real big corporate competitors, like Github or social media platforms.

Considering:

• When a working group is formed, it is crucial that it can stay productive and iterate fast on design specifications.

• If there are multiple independent working groups, they can benefit from common organization, governance and processes. But also collaborative fundraising, if we come this far.

• Discussion in working groups will frequently stray off-topic, beyond scope of WG objectives. These wide-ranging topics are still very valuable, but better held at a higher overarching level.

In other words, reformulating:

 Protocol survey aims to create optimal conditions for Working Group(s) to operate well.

Optimal conditions indicates more than a one-off survey effort and kick-off event. What can be greatly beneficial is a support organization that can facilitate putting putting order to chaos and ensure people’s voices are heard and input to productive working groups and efficient work processes.

Hence my proposal is as follows …

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 Proposal: Launch “Groundwork Labs”

“We Refactor Social Code”

Kind masses of the Fediverse, its time to unite.
Time to “Reimagine Social”, so put your toolbelts on.
We raise anchor of Spiral Island to carry fedizen crew.
Venture out on rough seas, set course to new horizons.
For passion and thrills, not for glory, together we sail.
Past familiar waters, into uncharted Human Web.
Our quest to find a Peopleverse and map our trails.
Discover how online we can truly be our own.

Groundwork Labs is an open-door public laboratory for research on innovative social web technologies, formation of a robust technology base, in support of a rich and vibrant ecosystem.

Protosocial fellowship fosters participation in working groups that co-design technology innovations based on a set of shared values and with emphasis on human rights.

Protosocial fellowship

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Purpose:

• Reimagine social networking online

Organization

• DoOcracy (until replaced) →
  pick up any task and steer it to completion.

Objectives:

1. Social coding movement facilitates.

   • Host “Protosocial fellowship” →
     facilitate #ecosystem:groundwork-labs related channels.

   • Support “Groundwork groups” →
     offer common support, provide shared resources.

2. Protosocial fellowship adopts PRIDEful practices.

   • Pursue “Shared values” →
     safeguard inclusive participation guidelines and well-being.

   • Research “Social experiences” →
     explore, practice, mature social experience design (SX) field.

   • Innovate “Social web” →
     design, implement, support robust fediverse foundations.

   • Develop “Social coding” →
     mature participatory development practices for grassroots ecosystems.

   • Envision “Peopleverse” →
     future where humane technology seamlessly supports people’s in their daily life.

3. Groundwork groups incubate and launch when deemed viable and sustainable.

   • Groups are independent, determine own area of interest and course.
   • Groups may adopt PRIDEful practices to optimize productive co-creation.

Strategy

• Leverage the ecosystem to reap increasing benefit from co-creation and cross-pollination.
• Adhocratic emergence to foster incentives that motivate people to participate proactively.

[aschrijver]

 Social coding aligns with social web

(Copied and adapted from the Groundwork Labs chatroom.)

A bit more background on the social coding movement …

1. It is scoped against social web pursuing a vision of a peopleverse.

   • Social networking: All direct and indirect interaction between people.
   • Social web: All technologies to facilitate social networking online.
   • Peopleverse: Seamless integration of online + offline in support of human activity.

2. It is organized for sustainable co-creation in grassroots ecosystems.

   • Hedonic peer production: Intrinsic motivation is the engine for collaboration.
   • Commons-based: Value exchange designed for empowerment of people.
   • Sustainability-first: Technology foundations based on Sustainable open social software.

3. It is focused on bridging the ‘online social divide’ between technosphere and people.

   • Open social stack: Social layers and solution space inform tech stack requirements.
   • Social experience design: Applied research field, collect patterns & practices, tools.
   • Social experiences: What the social web via the installed base of fedi has to offer.

You can see the massive alignment to the topic at hand. Personally I would like to have the notion of this “social layer” to be central in the development of next-gen social web technologies. Because this is where the tech touches real people and has impact on their lives. Currently we are NOT doing this nearly enough. Another reason to focus on social layers is to break out all kinds of dogmatic thinking that keep dragging discussions into limitations of current tech, or the strong opinions people have about that.

How should our social web serve society in 5 to 10 years?

Is a key question I do not hear anyone ask. It is one of fedi challenges I listed 2.5yrs ago. As mentioned I am dead serious when saying “Don’t build Skynet™ fedizens”. And guess what… we are building it now.

Our grassroots movement is a ‘cloud of individualism’, fragmented an inert by everyone going all directions with their work. There’s no organization structure at grassroots movement levels to help steer technology ecosystems into the green zone of responsible development. We can focus on fragments, not on the whole.

Social coding is a concept to address all this in theory. The social coding movement is a concept to realize all this. Also in theory. And putting practice to that is where applied research and experimentation happens. The movement ‘dogfoods’ its own practices as it develops them.