====== Social Networking WG Meeting 2025-06-07 ======
A meeting of the [[Social Networking]] working group.

Facilitator: Sarah
Present 6

===== What would you like to see come out of this project? =====

  * I would like to hear how you plan to run meetings in the future as you discuss all the aspects of such a project. To work efficiently in all that complexity.
  * Sustainability (in terms of organisation, people's time)
  * Documenting what we tried and learned, even if we don't go ahead with anything, to help others. Documenting things in a way that others can adopt
  * Functional social network
  * Scale. Become a household name within certain groups.
  * Doesn't further isolate people in the way that social media can do
  * Check in that it's having a physical impact on people's lives
  * Use nodes to connect people with locals and create resilience
  * Tackle accessibility challenges
  * I'd like to see a system that can support distributed organising with multiple groups/aspects.

===== What questions & challenges can we identify for this project to address? =====

  * How would we make this accessibile to as many people as possible
  * How might we use this to support action in person and reduce isolation
  * How might we keep data live, archive unneeded things
  * How might we work well together, run meetings, etc
  * Fears
    * Late stage capitalism quickly turning into techno feudalism
    * Timescale on this before the law makes it impossible
    * Ethical concerns of using these platforms
  * How do we ensure that we're serving a just society and not perpetuating the tech industry's problems
  * How do we engage with councils and local community groups
  * How might we leverage our existing expertise
  * How do we understand what existing local community organisations want
  * How far can we push people away from the slick, corporate digital experiences that they have come to expect
  * What are the mental models that people have for these systems
  * What are the activities that people will want to perform with this software and how can we make this smooth and easy
  * How do we acknowledge, recognise the priviledge that we may hold
  * How do we share the values driven underpinnings and solidarity
  * How do we position radical goals wihtin a broadly appealing project
  * Where would we put servers if we had themMeet

===== Tentative answers to those Qs based on current knowledge/ assumptions =====

  * We could have small information sessions about our existing expertise

===== How we might get better answers? =====

  * How we engage other community groups and get more knowledge from them
  * Can we explore both problems and solutions at the same time
  * "Eating our own dogfood" - trialling a platform ourselves

What questions do we want to answer by doing that?

  * We should define a set of research questions
    * Specific case-by-case questions
        * How does sign up work
        * What is my experience of logging on
        * Do I get lost
        * What are the privacy implications
    * Broader qualitative questions

===== Next actions, interested roles, and how the group will stay connected. =====

  * Create throw-away Instances: (Jade), Wade, G
    * Mastodon
    * Lemmy
    * Bonfire  
  * Compile research questions for our internal evaluation: Sarah, Jax
  * Short list of organisations that me might want to work with: Sarah, Jax
  * Digital platforms and documentation: Jade
  * Next meeting: Organise (Jade), Facilitate (Jax)  (next time Albury)