No answers, only opinions

On Social Working Groups

Hello all—

I'm an avid internet user and indie developer. I'm former Netflix, current volunteer with the Internet Archive, collaborator on the https://braid.org wg, and a clown comic in the san francisco bay area. I'm active on activity pub and interested in collaborating on the future of the medium.

I am not optimistic the future of our protocol will lay in the hands of any one working group or even subset of the network given a large portion will not federate with organizations that threaten their sovereignty, regardless of the sticker on the label.

Being realistic, what is the hashtag that can be representative of the voice of the people that people like me will listen to?

As someone that has been loud on the Network starting in 2020, I've been able to identify OG WG collaborators on the Open Side. I've tried Threads Side, but so far I have no idea how using the app will help me interoperate with the creators, but more importantly, my friends.

The challenge I'm facing as someone attempting to collaborate in public as openly as possible ( https://archive.org/details/amphi_day1_1730_a_taste_of_tomorrow_today )— I am hitting invisble walls, just like in video games. In practice, my real world, real life friends and family are all on Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram— the meta verse, right?

The challenge I'm facing is that I just want to send them a message from my computer, https://sillyz.computer, where I am logged in to my Network Open Side Account (e.g. Mastodon) and able to reach them through the Threads Side.

Regardless of the stance of federation by collectives, we still need options for individuals to securely connect on sidebar channels, which is the main point I'm getting at.

Over the holidays this year, my grandmother was trying reach out to her brother— she's in her 80s. I'm clearly the tech guru of the family so she came to me and we did not find him. That's no one's fault, but needing to look through all of her chat apps to find which contact he was associated under is a failure of the premise for which she owns a phone.

Food for thought. But please consider my direct question:

What hashtag are we aligning on across protocol for people looking to actively engage in collaborative architecture of the Network, Open or otherwise?

For now, I propose: #swicg as that's the name of this list, is already partially in use on the Open Network Side, and entirely unoccupied on the Threads Side— maybe that's some honest middle ground to start with?

p.s. please consider remixing my still alpha, 9p inspired MIT licensed computing platform: https://github.com/tylerchilds/plan98 and toss any social feedback my way— currently focused on couch co-op style lan and not the interplantary stuff just yet. in band collaborative editing coming 2024.