Mastodawn

Hey smart people! My wife and a number of our friends and I are working on a plan to "co-house/start a cult/live closely together" kind of thing. We're at the stage where we need to set up a system for sharing ideas and thinking through possibilities, discussion, sharing examples of housing arrangement models, etc. There are so many different aspects to figure out and just chatting on FB, e.g., isn't cutting it. Email, too, seems too cumbersome. So maybe a kind of online project development/management platform (I'm not a business kind of guy at all, so I don't know all the lingo). Something free, accessible to everyone and "user-friendly" in the extreme would be great.

I have my own domain and can install software there if there is something that's worth trying.

Any ideas? Have you done anything similar? What system(s) did you use? All thoughts welcome! Thanks! #projectManagement #cohousing #coopHousing #cohabitation #communityLedHousing

Third spruce tree on the left Oct 26, 2024

@matthewconroy i could see you going either in a task/to-do/list direction in which case Trello would _probably_ be the easiest, though not self hosted (unless you want to trial the self-hosted list tool Im writing). Or the other direction would be a collaborative wiki. Two self-hosted foss wikis that come to mind are Docmost and BookStack. I can't elaborate too much on either as Im also just kicking the tires on both atm
https://www.bookstackapp.com
https://docmost.com/#screenshots

BookStack

BookStack is a simple, open-source, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information.

BookStack

Matthew Conroy Oct 26, 2024

@tezoatlipoca Thanks! I had not thought of a wiki, but I love wikis. Cheers!

Chris Bogart Oct 26, 2024

@matthewconroy maybe slack or discord?

Matthew Conroy Oct 26, 2024

@cbogart Thanks! We considered them, but we're looking elsewhere currently. Cheers!

Tom Lowe Oct 27, 2024

@matthewconroy how about don't start a cult

Matthew Conroy Oct 27, 2024

@TomL You're kidding, right?

Tom Lowe Oct 27, 2024

@matthewconroy sorry, dry humour is hard to pick up over text :) Some people do actually want to start them, my great Aunty was in one.

Matthew Conroy Oct 27, 2024

@TomL I am surprised that someone would think that a cult starter would announce so publicly that they were starting a cult, but I imagine cult starters probably come in a wide variety, so who knows?

Cheers!

Tom Lowe Oct 27, 2024

@matthewconroy heh heh, I guess you are right! First rule of starting a cult: don't say you're starting a cult.

bit101 Oct 27, 2024

Oops! Ignore my email asking how I can join the cult!

Scott Neville Oct 27, 2024

@matthewconroy at some point stack overflow had a free 'teams' variation, if Q and A is a good format for what you need to track. I confess to finding it insufficient for my household, but it was relatively intuitive and did track a whole bunch of notes in a searchable way. There are open source and self hosted alternatives.

Another thing to look at might be a private Lemmy/Facebook/Reddit community (Lemmy would be self hosted). A dedicated forum with reactions and moderation is a pretty flexible format, and again very intuitive.

Matthew Conroy Oct 27, 2024

@drScott Thanks! Some good ideas to think about. Cheers!

Valerie Roney Nov 18, 2024

@matthewconroy I've been really ill, but had been working on a similar project that stalled. Building local (for myself) but also just trying to gather people and resources, to share templates of what people are trying, and a gathering place for ppl to find local connections for what they want to build.
Check out the #turtleBower tag and wave hello to
@BrambleBearGrrrauwling who has been doing some exploring recently.

Very Late Diag Nov 18, 2024

@matthewconroy Trello could work. Or maybe Evernote. I *think* they both still have free basic membership, but you would probably all need to sign up individually.

Bishop Whitewind Nov 18, 2024

@matthewconroy That is an extremely strange way to start a cult 😌

Vosskah Nov 18, 2024

@matthewconroy honestly sounds like you guys need something like a MS Teams or Slack for the communication piece. For the tasks to do, you could use the MS Planner tool integrated in Teams and keep updated SharePoint lists as a repository of ideas to be discussed.
Anyway, you need a chat, a repository of parked/actionable items and a scheduler with assignation and delivery dates piece to keep people accountable.

Alberto Cottica Nov 19, 2024

@matthewconroy hello Matthew, Alberto here. I am 3 years into a #cohousing project in Brussels. I can confirm that setting up a rational, lightweight system of communication is important for the group's wel-being, because building a cohousing is A LOT of work, and it implies a lot of interaction.

Our group has sworn off email in favour of a forum. We have generated (gulp) over 10,000 messages and 300K pageviews over these three years.

1/2

Alberto Cottica Nov 19, 2024

Our forum is a top-level category of a Discourse installation, kindly offered by @edgeryders

Here's an explainer: https://edgeryders.eu/t/understanding-the-reefs-digital-assets/16775. Everything we do is #opensource, so feel free to copy and spread. 🙂

Understanding The Reef's digital assets

At the time of writing, The Reef has five main digital assets. The second-level domain name and related email address A website A forum A workspace A chat 1. The domain name and email address We have registered the second-level domain thereef.brussels. We use it: For our website (see below) available at https://thereef.brussels. For our workspace (see below), available at https://workspace.thereef.brussels. For our shared email address, [email protected]. The email address should ...

Edgeryders

Matthew Conroy Nov 19, 2024

@alberto_cottica @edgeryders Thank you, Alberto. This is very interesting and useful information. Cheers!