[libreplanet-discuss] Free-software groupware strategies lab

[Jim Garrett]

Hi everyone,

For quite some time I've been interested in advocating for Free
Software tools in group organizing.  I don't mean just advocating for
the principle, but literally and operationally rolling out working
options for the groups we organize ourselves, or those we participate
in.

It seems like groups reflexively use Facebook for outreach and event
management, Google Drive for media storage, and Google Docs for
collective editing.  Tools for messaging and voice are more varied.
Fortunately, there are many Free alternatives.

I've been trying to roll out a competing Free ensemble for the groups I
work with, and I've run into a number of issues.  What is the
best deployment strategy? How do I become familiar with the details of
using the tool, so I can give my colleagues a mature, seamless
experience? If I don't really know the tool well myself and I'm
figuring it out as I go, it won't give a very good impression.

I'd like to ask this community's help and involvement, not just for my
own benefit but to create an online resource that would recommend to
people--including non-admins--clearly and directly how to roll out a
useful ensemble of tools.  By definition, it's hard to test groupware
by oneself!

I'm envisioning a group of people who collaborate to do groupware setup
and testing in order to recommend workable practices.  We would
document these choices on a wiki somewhere (somewhere in the LibrePlanet
universe of wikis?).  We would probably have online meetings from time
to time (if only to test out voice or video calls).

If you're interested, send me a note off-list.  Our first task will
be...to figure out the collaboration tools we'll use ourselves!

Thanks!

Jim Garrett
Boston area, USA