RC Office Hours - Tech-Comms - 4/19/26

Committee attendance (#) - Mi, P, L
Outside attendance (#) - Mo

Resulting Next Action Items

- TODO set up a self-signup form for emails
    - this will ping a number of people over email who have admin access to the the account system and will manually create an account
    - needs some copy explaining the potential risks in submitting the info & encourage using burner emails
    - need people to volunteer to be the account creators
- TODO move vikunja project management software from projects.beta.ridgewoodcommons.nyc to projects.ridgewoodcommons.nyc
- TODO migrate the data from the bookstack instance at wiki.commons.nyc to wiki.ridgewoodcommons.nyc

Topics:

• "Tech" issues that are holding us back as an organization

  • Cross group coordination

  • Site/URL confusion

  • Account creation

  • Lack of movement on core "space replication" functions

• Opportunities for clarity

• Individualized pain points - What could change that would make your life easier?

• Things to put a bow (if temporary) on

"Tech" issues that are holding us back as an organization

Cross group coordination

• There's no "many to many communication" channel that isn't scoped in a way to cause people to wonder "is this the right place for this?" e.g. Spokescouncil chat is unclear.
• The entire wall has become this, but mostly in an "attention extractive" way, like "come to my thing," vs "Does anyone want to x/yz?" and there's no delimiter between RC, RC community, and outside stuff.
• Admin committees and working groups are Signal silos

Proposals gathered from various chats…

• Day-scoped chats - Signal chats for M/Tu/W/Th/F/Sa/Su
  • Gives very clear structure, tightly integrates different events
  • Probably pretty quiet.
  • Great for WGs and recurring events
  • Bad for ACs, e.g. facilities, programming, finance.
• "Grand Central Chat" - A unified chat, with members from various ACs, WGs, and otherwise.
  • Probably noisier. Member labels might let it function on mute. (Do @s override mutes?)

All of the above would benefit from using the new-ish Signal "member label" system. So Whether day-chats, or a unified

All chats still suffer from the fact that almost nobody reads group descriptions. Not sure about pinned messages, but in any case they're not visible to new members?

Site/URL confusion

wiki.commons.nyc
*.beta.ridgewoodcommons.nyc
ridgewoodcommons.nyc

Having tools broken up across domains hurts both use and utility

Account creation

Lack of an account makes tools read-only, increases confusion & sense of social capital.

Lack of movement on core "space replication" functions

• programming and rentals management
• mailing list
• finance

Opportunities for clarity

• Division of work
  • Network connectivity
  • Hosted applications
  • Semi-hosted tools
  • Site
• Group names
  • Tech Comms -> 
    • Tech & Intranet
    • Tech & Coordinating
    • Tech & inside comms
    • Tech Infrastructure
      • This could mean that the site becomes a collab between Tech Infra & Outside Comms
  • RC IG coord ->
    • Comms
    • Outside Comms

What could change that would make your life easier?

These meetings are a good start for me, gives a time & place to send people. - LP

Things to put a bow (if temporary) on

• Outline vs bookstack
• Knowledge store ACLs and visibility

Raw Notes from meeting

https://wiki.ridgewoodcommons.nyc/books/admin-committee-shared/page/rc-office-hours-tech-comms-41926

Topics:

    "Tech" issues that are holding us back as an organization 

    Cross group coordination

    Site/URL confusion

    Account creation

    Lack of movement on core "space replication" functions

    Opportunities for clarity

    Individualized pain points - What could change that would make your life easier?

    Things to put a bow (if temporary) on

    Domain Name

    Working group software User Testing (e.g. pantry try riseup?)

    Excitement on

    nyc mesh

    ny mesh

    visibility of invisible work - roles board

    removal of Proposals label on board



meta note if not in chat, can't see chat-shared agendas

Things working well
    * What's Going On? I go to https://ridgewoodcommons.nyc



Notes:
- We need many to many communication channel

    - seems like the giant physical wall is the channel

    - Micro has explored some wall hierarchies

    - Zulip/Mattermost+

    - consensus on signal: skepticism, willingness to experiment, try Signal solutions before bigger project of alt software solution

    - 


    What situations where someone can't find a channel, or there doesn't appear to be a chat.


    Story: New to space: where is everybody? how do I get involved? Where do I find people interested in x/y/z


    - next action item: move bookstack to wiki.ridgewoodcommons.nyc & migrate data. decide what to do about 

    - next action item: move vikunja off beta subdomain

    - 


    - invite code

    - self-signup (open)

    - self-signup (moderated)

    - form submission + manual accout creation

    - unlisted/obscured URL


    - Against 3rd party auth (Google, etc)

    - MVP for self-signup:

      - form at a hidden URL that pings a small list of email addresses that have admin access and can create an account for them


    - bot worries

    - human worries

    - vandals

    - deletion

    - false engagement

    - polution of user database


MVPs
/register

ACLs

- next action item: create a secret endpoint that allows users to submit a form that asks for their desired username & email, email a small number of admins who will then create the account for them. make sure to include some copy the relays the risks of submitting their info 

Tech Infrastructure