# Minutes DWebYVR 2025 Planning Meeting No. 1 IRL @ Z-Space 505 Hamilton St Wed, Feb 5, 2025 5pm - 7:30pm PST - Attending: - Danny - Emily - Boris - Ivar - Colin - Gord - David - Kenneth - Chad - Ragrets: - Dawn - Anish - Regards with kombucha: - Jasmine - Wes # Decisions - Planning meetings will be held on the 2nd Wednesday of each month # Action Items - Boris to move the Code of Conduct from MediaWiki to Ghost site. Share it in Signal chat, invite input on CommonsComputer Outline. - Create Event Promotion Framework doc to assist with folks convening events / systematizing this across DWebYVR events. David x Emily volunteer to produce. - Event Planning and Hosting algorithm/tasklists for streamlining / optimizing / making it a lighter lift. Kenneth volunteers to seed this document / create an outline. - Create an Event Hosting Inventory List (e.g. the silent disco headsets at the coFood garden). Emily to do. - David is going to plan another Synth night at ZSpace. - Emily will map out the dates for her-hosted coFood garden snack and chats. - Emily invite Seattle and Portland to subscribe to our Ghost / specifically invite them to follow our work. - Boris and David will plan a call to coordinate upcoming hack days and extend the invitation to the group. - Boris will send an invitation to join Commons Computer for everyone who participated in this meeting; and folks have the option (no pressure) to participate. - Folks who are already participating in Commons Computer are welcomed/invited to continue chipping away at building out the Outline Wiki and ideating on how the CC can serve as a DWebYVR project. - Boris and Chad are continuing with building infrastructure for Polyglot next. Once the Open Collective is set up for Polyglot Next, we can set up a CommonsComputer project under that. # Carry-forward Concepts - A volunteer board where we can articulate needs/tasks for the community to step up and help with organizing - Make a list of people who are interested in shadowing events. - An easy way for folks in the dwebyvr community to bring forward assets they want to provide to facilitate events (e.g. outdoor venues!) - Think through the tradeoffs / pros & cons of coworking events. Create a Ghost post or page about coworking, elucidating the learnings, suggestions and recommendations for hosting future events. - Activate the subscriber-pay function in Ghost. # Agenda 1. Check ins - anything to set aside to be present today; how's the year going so far? 2. Review / refine meeting objectives: - Debrief recent events - Map 2025 events & activities - Discuss goals / identity / infrastructure as a DWeb Node - *Anything else?* 3. LofiwkndYVR debrief - what worked well, what to improve on? Plan a v2? - Recap post: https://dwebyvr.org/dweb-local-first-weekend-roundup-2/ - General event promotion framework? 4. Goals/identity/infrastructure as a DWeb Node - What are DWebYVR's individual & shared goals for 2025? Beyond? - Infrastructure - Commons Computer (active) - Open Collective (potential/upcoming) - Governance / decision-making (what's working, what needs improvement, what could be more explicit, are there questions from community to answer?) 5. 2025 Recurring events - Garden snacks & chats - dates (Emily) - Coworking? Recurring @ Z-Space? - Cascadia mycelium-building calls (See [Thaumazo](https://medium.com/thaumazo/my-mycelial-adventure-the-metacrisis-day-3-%C2%B9-fbfae37f0ae2)) - Synth Night (quarterly) - Hack Days (monthly?) 6. Projects (past and planning) - Stolon mesh update (Emily) - Cohousing - do a tour? - DWeb Hike - DWebcamp Cascadia - https://dweb.camp/vancouver - https://dweb.camp/monasheeridge - US Cloud exit initiative? 8. May - WebSummit plans - Date? Lead? Content? Venue? - BM: I had a catchup with Mai - The Permanent is going to do hosting all week long led by Internet Archive Canada. They've offered one evening -- either Wed or Thurs -- from 6:30pm -> onwards for an event (some other time during mid day, happy hour 3 - 6:30pm) - Mai might come up and help convene - Need to decide who wants to get involved and what we want to do - start messaging to see who is coming to town? - loop in DWeb Cascadia to see who wants to jam 10. Other going-ons - DWeb Brasil (November) - Emily planning to go 11. Next meeting # Notes ## Emergent: Things, ideas, links from today: * [The Internet Archive](https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2019-09-11/in-an-old-church-the-internet-archive-stores-our-digital-history): in SF, church building * [Good first issue](https://goodfirstissue.dev): intro to OSS contributions * [Hardware Unconference](https://tonyaajjackson.com/Portfolio/Hardware-Unconference): happened in Vancouver last Fall * [Library and Archives Canada (LAC)](https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng) * [FOSDEM](https://fosdem.org) and [OFFDEM](https://offdem.net): OSS conferences where the former is corporate, latter less so * [DWebCamp](https://dwebcamp.org): is not happening this year(?); instead DWeb is looking to its nodes to host events * [Verge interview of Bookshop.com creator](https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/605013/bookshop-org-andy-hunter-amazon-ebooks-monopoly-books) ## **Introductions** * Boris - co-founded dwebyvr 2 years ago. A do-aholic. Most of his doing is outside work. * Daniel - likes coordinating events * Ivar - aligned, want to see more about getting involved * Emily - Internet Archive, node gaining momentum * David - attending since the beginning of dwebyvr. Facilitating hackdays, most recently the LoFi (localfirst) weekend * Chad - * Gord - how collaborative he is is an indicator of how good the project will go; and he's looking to improve his collaboration instinct. * Colin - newish to dwebyvr. Has a goal of exiting capitalism. Wants to create a place where he can make things, and people can use them. How can he contribute to something? * Kenneth - UX designer working on becoming a physicist ## **Review & refine meeting objectives:** * DWeb Principles Reflection / Integration * Debrief recent events * Map 2025 events & activities * Discuss goals / identity / infrastructure as a DWeb Node ## **Reflection/Integration on DWeb Principles** Reference: https://getdweb.net/principles/ *What are they? Plus discussion notes on each.* 1. **Technology for Human Agency** 2. If the software is for human in chains, it's not the right software 3. It's the first principle for a reason 3. **Distributed Benefits** 4. Especially the 'high concentration of organizational control' is relevant and curious in terms of how we approach hosting events. 5. Even if it's hard to distribute labour, the KIND of work (or TYPE of events) can be distributed. e.g. we could make a list of event potentials, and survey the community on which we want to go ahead with. 6. Groups that are primarily convening events tend to have burnout on a few people's plates. Event coordination is minutiae, and the people doing the event are often too busy to document what needs to be done. 7. CONCEPT: Have a 'call to action' page where we can offer possibilities to contribute. "Good first issue" / "bounty board" / "volunteer board" 5. **Mutual Respect** 6. *Synthesis:* clear codes of conduct, respectful behaviour and accountability, open and transparent organizational practices 7. TO DO: Move the code of conduct from the over-spammed wiki to the Ghost Site. Share for comments in the Signal chat. Boris volunteered to do this. 7. **Humanity** 8. Sidenote: empowerment is a great English word (David) 9. Strategy: Include accessibility statements/details for events we host, both online and offline. 10. There's a distinction between technology that is designed to be antithetical to human rights, versus just being misused for being antithetical. 11. The statement being made here is - the technology is neutral, but we put our foot down on how it should eb used. We are not going to help people use distributed technology in ways that are antitethetical to human rights. 9. **Ecological Awareness** 10. The language of 'aim' and 'work towards' are non-aggressive, forward-looking, broad/forgiving ways to frame it. 11. Some ways that DWebYVR's existing identified interest areas intersect with this include; cohousing, gardening / ubran food production, mycelium 12. What are the enabling policies that would help put these in place? e.g. the right to repair movement. Dweb-aligned people are working to push this forward. 13. Strategy: We could host a list of distributed tools/tech that specifically address ecological conservation/protection/regeneration imperatives. 14. Supply chains, buy local are movements that could be relevant as well. How can buy local be used around software? Who makes your software - for real? There is even a valid business argument for why to move your infrastructure to somewhere more local. *Do those present in this meeting buy into these principles? They are inherently political. Did anything stick out as not of interest, challenging?* Opinions: * This is not a purity-test checklist. It is a framework for reflection. * 'Lean in and learn' vs. 'swear allegiance' * There is a need to go beyond the license you use for a software. * To make these more accessible for reflection, it would benefit to have examples. * Mentorship might be a missing sub-principle, which is very important and inherent in this work. *Loose discussion points - How do we integrate them?* * Incorporate the principles in how we define this project. When someone asks 'What is DWeb Vancouver'? We can answer - "oh, it's 'technology for human agency' * As we review our events/activities for 2025, can we ask do they align? support? advance these principles? * Have the same style of discussion we just had, on an at-least annual basis. * We can invite people presenting their projects to include a comment on how this aligns with the dweb principles * can we provide a template for a fun, visual way they can show what they check off? ## **LofiwkndYVR debrief - what worked well, what to improve on? Plan a V2?** **Context**: David led the 1st ever LofiWknd, with considerable support from Boris and Chad. Held in ZSpace over 2 days. Designed as a small hackathon with presentations. *Learnings* * Be patient with attendance / content with more intimate events. * Don't squeeze in presenting a talk if you're also hosting! It's a lot to fit in. *What worked well?* * It was a good start for the year * having folks come from out of town! * The talks were awesome * the demos were great * It's such a potent, interesting, rare topic that it draws out the right kind of nerds. * The coining of the term 'mid-ender', for folks typically in the back or front-end only who got to engage in localfirst code with immediate implementation * The BlueSky feed was an interesting initiative. *What can we improve on?* * Agenda-wise, have some more gaps between the talks, to have more 'hallway track' (i.e. informal socializing between attendees) * Distribute responsibilities / tasks. Open-source tasks in advance to a pool of volunteers who have qualifications. We should consider recruiting for EACH event 1 to 2 volunteers who don't need to take a planning role, but a facilitation role day-of. * Marketing/promotion * Promote well in advance. * Opportunity: Put together an event promotion framework that is easy for anyone to use * Cultivating post-event networking opportunities * Send out notices regarding bigger events via our Ghost newsletter/subscription list. *Shall we do it again? i.e. another local-first focus hack weekend/day.* * Yes! *Any next steps?* - Event Promotion Framework doc to assist with folks convening events / systematizing this across DWebYVR events. David x Emily volunteer to produce. - Event Planning and Hosting algorithm/tasklists for streamlining / optimizing / making it a lighter lift. Kenneth volunteers to seed this document / create an outline. ## **2025 Events** #### **Garden Snacks & Chats (recurring)** Context: Emily is part-owner and co-steward of the Cofood Collaborative Garden. This is a fairly central Discussion notes: * the garden events are a valuable way to host more informal styles of events, it's a hangout around dinnertime, it doesn't need to be more. * we want to bring more food and food community into * This is a Principle 5 thing as well! * Boris is interested in jamming on food-related stuff. This a purposefully broad statement. Next steps: - Create an Event Hosting Inventory List (e.g. the silent disco headsets at the coFood garden). Emily to do. #### **Synth Night** Context: David hosted a synth music jam at ZSpace in the fall, and it was a big success. Several people came together with their cool tech, including modular synths, and it was very supportive for newbies. Next step * David is going to plan another Synth night at ZSpace. #### **Coworking** Context: With code and coffee, it was nice to have weekly, repeating coworking space where you don't have to show up. The Permanent-hosted coworking followed by social nights were way too much effort. Discussion notes/considerations: * They are valuable for providing some psychological separation from home and workplace. * Could a regular coworking time be booked in the ZSpace calendar? * The HOSTS barely get any working done when there's a social coworking overlap. * We could have more targeted coworking focused on fleshing out action items from this meeting, other projects/initiatives around dwebyvr. * Other groups locally have existing structures for coworking. * This allows us to cultivate a shared 'third space'. * Possible to purchase / invest in a shared DWebYVR membership for ZSpace. * Timing of coworking event is sensitive. Attendees normally have calls during the day / middle of the week. Can't travel to event. Are more available on Fridays. Next Step: - Create a Ghost post or page about coworking, elucidating the learnings, suggestions and recommendations for hosting future events. - Track this as a carry-forward topic. #### **Cascadia calls** Context: DWeb central hosted a 'Cascadia Node Activation' call for folks near Portland, and in Seattle. There was a DWebYVR caravan that attended a Seattle DWeb event. Question: Does DWebYVR (i.e. individuals within DWebYVR) want to set intentions for cross-pollinating with our regional nodes? Discussion notes: * Some of this energy might be better spent on being part of DWeb HQ fabric * The BEST bang for our effort is to DOCUMENT and OPEN SOURCE and SHARE our work. Get our house in order, do it in public, work with the garage door open. * Chad uploaded the videos from LofiWknd Next steps: - Incorporate reaching out to Seattle and Portland as part of our Event Promotion. - Emily invite Seattle and Portland to subscribe to our Ghost / specifically invite them to follow our work. #### **Hack days** Context: David and Boris have hosted hack days which were fun and successful, as well as effort-full, in 2024. There's a desire to do these in 2025. Discussion notes: * Borsi and David both want to do more hack days * David has lots of ideas for hack days * Intention: plan the next three hack days. * Kenneth wants to shadow this. Next steps: - Boris and David will plan a call to coordinate upcoming hack days and extend the invitation to the group. #### **DWeb Hike** Context: Ivar put one forward in 2024, there's an energy towards planning others. Discussion notes: * How can we make these accessible? * There is also a SnowCave Cabaret (for the rave inclined) Ask Ivar! Next steps: - Individuals (i.e. Ivar and David) to go ahead and plan events like this, and invite people! ### **DWebCamp Cascadia** Context: Boris is the lead developer of the DWebCamp Cascadia concept. This event has been ideated over the last couple of months, and some initial thinking collected in a HedgeDoc. Next steps: - Boris will plan a call and invite folks to participate in planning this / ideating on the potential for this. - Boris will create a Rallly scheduler to figure out a date for this camping trip. ### **WebSummit in May** Context: WebSummit is run by a company in Ireland, they've been doing it for 10 years. It's a big, capitalist start-up/VC fest. All 3 levels of gobernment have pooled 14M dollars to have WebSummit here in Vancouver for the next 3 years. This is the first year. Previously COLLISION in Toronto; and was huge, with 20 to 30,000 people. It's now being re-branded as WebSummit North America. WebSummit Europe is in Portugal and WebSummit Asia doesn't have a permanent home. There will be 20-30k people coming to town. ZSpace has lightweight plans - oh, interesting people coming to towon? We should make sure they're coming here to meet interesting people. IA Canada is going to host things at The Permanent for a week, and have offered DWebHQ one evening to do something. Mai checked in with Boris on what to do. We have a space that fits 150 people and a wine bar. We could do a larger event. There will be a Minimum Viable Demos that weekend also. **Discussion notes:** * Who is available to help with this? Does anyone have ideas / want to help organize things? * A good next step is to create a blog post * There is a branding consideration around this; how do we frame this? Given that it's in contrast to the very conventional format of WebSummit. * We had an effective strategy around IETF last year. **Next steps:** - Kenneth/Danny/Chad collaborate on a blog post on the DWebYVR site that is a 'Call for Interest/Collaborators - Who's Coming to Town?' for participation in WebSummit in Vancouver. We can create a newsletter tag in WebSummit to capture their emails. - When the post is created, we will host a planning call ## DWebYVR Infrastructure ### *Commons Computer* **Context:** There is an initiative led by Boris towards shared hosting for DWebYVR collaborators. He is interested in making this a more formal DWeb Vancouver "Project". * The *Borisism* "Self-hosting is selfish" - has resonated. Often, a tech-centric person self-hosts; the uplevel on this is to host as a group. * Boris has a Cloudron server called CommonsComputer.com. It has shared software running on it, and he has onboarded several folks to using the shared infrastructure. * This is in the process of being more transparent about the amount of effort it takes to keep it going. It's roughly $45/month to host. * It's where the DWeb Ghost and Wiki are hosted. There is the Outline Wiki, a private wiki set up with groups and permissions which is the next-closest 'internal' membrane. **Discussion notes:** * This ticks off boxes as a shared project that anyone in DWebYVR can opt in to contributing to. * A goal in 2025 to create an avenue to invite financial contributions towards our venues that have been provided in-kind by stewards/members of those spaces, like ZSpace and the coFood garden. * It would be great to have a 'community software in a box', listing interoperable minimum viable structure. * Right now Boris is subsidizing Commons Computer (CC), and there's no streamlined way for folks on CC to contribute. **Next steps:** - Boris will send an invitation to join Commons Computer for everyone who participated in this meeting; and folks have the option (no pressure) to participate. - Folks who are already participating in Commons Computer are welcomed/invited to continue chipping away at building out the Outline Wiki and ideating on how the CC can serve as a DWebYVR project. ### Open Collective Reference: https://opencollective.com *"Open Collective is a legal and financial toolbox for groups. It's a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community."* **Context:** We don't currently have a way to easily receive and manage financial contributinos for all the currently in-kind costs incurred by event organizers. Boris' stripe account Boris founded PolyGlot Next, a somewhat dormant non-profit which is . He and Chad are stepping up as leadership in this initiative, setting up an Open Collective (OC) for this non-profit. There is a proposal for the PolyGlot Next OC for DWebYVR to nest under. PolyGlot Next has other resources, like a Google for Nonprofits with 100 free accounts. **Discussion notes:** * There are still many steps ahead for setting up the Open Collective. * We're upping the infrastructure because there is more interest, and there are more assets flowing. * Can DwebYVR as an organization make sure that it pays its part towards our shared expenses? Whether those are venues, or Commons Computer, etc. * The example of Bookshop.org, they have a nice model for how they distribute financial contributions to the departments / sectors / participants in the ecosystem. * Also, IA has a $1000 contribution for DWeb nodes to reimburse receipts. It's onerous for individuals to set themselves up for these payments. **Next steps:** - Boris and Chad are continuing with building infrastructure for Polyglot next. Once the Open Collective is set up for Polyglot Next, we can set up a CommonsComputer project under that. - (In future / carry forward) activate the subscriber-pay function in Ghost. ## Emergent: Documenting our events/ open-sourcing and being transparent * Chad uploaded the talks recorded from the LofiWknd * Chad notified DWeb Central who manually tracks all the DWeb events * A good initiative: maintaining a list of events around DWeb that are happening, globally # Scratchpad (add any individual notes before the meeting here) #### Emily Goals... individual - successfully transition away from busy-juggling-too-many-jobs, without re-filling the plate - prebook season of garden DWeb gatherings as an 'org' - share vibes and energy with the other Cascadia nodes - experiment with minimum viable structures (MVS) for organizing, share intel back with DWeb HQ and other nodes - continue contemplating a work-away/residential stay DWebCamp Cascadia event #### Chad Goals... individual - lose 7kgs - move into my new house - keep meditating as an 'org' - do more consciousness raising. Get people together and get them more on the same page about what we are doing. (What _are_ we doing? I DWeb basically a Gen-X/Millenial Rotary Club?) - DWeb is much bigger than the web. Are there other "commoning" groups we could tap into? (eg Usufruct) - find a project for _after_ Commons Computer - +1 to Emily's idea of a camp. Can we do a DWeb Camp Mini? Just nearby up Sunshine Coast or something? A retreat with just 20-30 people? Bowen Island? 😉 #### Wesley Goals... individual - know enough chinese to converse about life and the world - spend lots of days in nature - build something with my hands (typing on a keyboard doesn't count!) - host regular meetups (bridging perspectives discussion group, language learning enthusiasts, tft jam sessions) as an 'org' - more collaborative events with local orgs working on aligned missions - road trip event #### Kenneth Goals... individual - ship an app - make secondary income potentially as a machine learning and data science tutor for individuals who want these skills, but are otherwise not data scientists - security and privacy harden all of my digital devices with a reusable and distributable NixOS configuration that can be deployed easily for others - replace my phone with mono-tasking offline-first or offline-only devices and objects to manage my attention better (e.g. Lightphone and MP3 player and GPS, remarkable tablet/daylight computer with no browser) - get to 12-15% body fat at current weight - apply to more research programmes and hackathons and generally shoot more shots - practice and master a blog and notetaking flow that matches the hype of these systems - pick the emphasis of my career (data privacy for whom? how? or just do natural science) as an 'org' - DeepSeek R1 + Commons Computer = Co-op Foundation Model!?!?!?! - Decentralizing the Archival Commons - https://annas-archive.org/blog/critical-window.html - 1000TB is only 100 x 10TB - seedbox construction and distribution a la FreedomBox, seeding pledges or figuring out reward structures for seeding - FileCoin but for BitTorrent/Magnet Links - Comparative reading group of communalist and commons-focused thinkers (Bookchin, Kropotkin, Ostrom, Steiner), alongside ecological/agricultural and Summer of Protocol material, aligning and grounding theories within existing practices hobbies and interests of DWeb community members. - Outreach to hobbyist communities with skills aligned with the resilience space, to host workshops for other communities within the DWeb sphere and build the influence of DWeb without relying solely on its memes or ideology - Leadership and teaching training workshops, to produce more autonomy and initiative in members of the DWeb community that believe that they are underskilled, underqualified, or otherwise unable to make contributions of any size to the whole without external guidance, prepping them to skill share and create more organizational initiatives to distribute community management load. - Keep bees #### David Goals... individual - Work towards sustainability for open source and local-first tech - Take more notes, write more - Hike at least 400km and cycle 1000km as an 'org' - Keep hosting hack and synth nights - Collaborate on a big DWebYVR event #### Dawn Not able to attend but throwing some into the mix: Goals... individual - read 100 books - spend time outside, on the water, running - be more active in my tenant union, join a committee - be a good leader / member for cosocial and see it grow this year: more services, more members, beyond current volunteers - collaborative research project with SEIZE on tech worker coops - I have a NABU and want to do something fun with that - make a local first game and scavenger hunt about liminal spaces + New Westminster as an 'org' - Have it (still) be a place to meet others and talk about the above - Be a place to deepen relationships and have fun together - Go as a group to other local events and show up for local orgs #### Gord Goals... individual - get my ideas about the economics of collaboration out of my head - get a software engineering job I don't hate as an 'org' - I dunno man I just got here #### Ivar Goals... individual - ship mvp garden task software - 15 second freestanding handstand by summer as an 'org' - work towards viable community transceiver software - turnkey community infrastructure - support / collaborate with other communities - eg. freeskool #### Colin Goals... individual - use experience from within career/work to build things outside of it - journal and hosting stack (write; search; generate websites, anki deck, scrape bookmarks) - journalling/writing; strategies to share information as an 'org' - MVP open source robotics full stack? + Zero-config IDE for designing (training walkers, manipulators) + Literate programming algorithm library - Wizards or how-to guides + reuse and reduce + personal privacy and security + working off the grid; alternatives to cloud - Blueprints: building communes; starting businesses; setting up a workshop - Fact finding guides + map of common ecosystems of local production and consumption; what feeds into what? + technology map showing a DAG of the technological dependencies #### Boris Goals... individual - balance local impact - what can we do in Vancouver - connecting to things happening elsewhere - local hosting as an 'org' - fiscal hosting - support more people in using it as a platform - spread the word about DWeb principles #### Template Goals... individual - ... as an 'org' - ...