Convener: Johannes Ernst (https://j12t.org)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Damon (@damon@social.wedistribute.org)
• Saskia Welch (@saskia@newsmast.social)
• Samir Al-Battran (@samir@m.fedica.com)
• Gilles Dutilh (@depemig@social.coop)
• Jesse Karmani (@jesseplusplus@mastodon.social)
• Mark Corbett Wilson (@mcorbettwilson@mastodon.social)
• Anthony Zone (@ozoned@social.ozoned.net, @firesidefedi@social.firesidefedi.live)
• Scott Jenson (@scottjenson@social.coop)
• Seth Goldstein (@phillycodehound@indieweb.social)
• narF ….. (@narF@mstdn.ca)
• Hannah Aubry (@haubles@hachyderm.io)
• William Maggos (@wjmaggos@liberal.city)
• Freddie Johnson (@FreddieJ@newsmast.social)

Some context-setting slides: We have a community. Now how do we grow?

Notes

• Do people need to know they are joining the fediverse?
  • Just focus on creating a great experience and the further explorations will come (Damon)
  • We’ll never be able to compete on UX. Those companies are spending at least 1000 times more on UX. (narF)
  • I disagree. Those companies have the disadvantage of being more rigid as major shifts can come at a cost (Damon)
• Un-Humbly summarizing my (gilles’) point here:
  • As Ben Werdmüller said in his keynote, you need to ask: is there a group of people whom we offer a solution they can only get from us. I would translate this as: for “the fediverse” to be a success, you need an application/service/platform that exploit the unique value-features of the fediverse:
    • Localilty (Build your little community…)
    • Agency and control (… using your own server, with your own rules, own version of the software)
    • Inter-operability (allow people to connect to other communities, and, importantly, move)
  • Mastodon has the value of inter-operability> I believe this is not a direct value for most people.
  • If we want to grow the fediverse, we may need to focus more on projects that actually exploit the unique fedi value-features.
• Welcoming a diversity of communities
• (Unattributed) Groups. Until we have Groups as a first-class citizen, we cannot truly help people connect with “their people”. People form groups. It’s what we do.
  • (narF) For non-profits in Quebec, there’s https://passerelles.encommun.io but it’s not federated. (yet?)
• (narF) the importance of one-to-one reach. My girlfriend managed to switch everyone around her to Signal, by going to each one. “hey, i’m uncomfortable on Messenger/Whatsapp. Could we switch to Signal?”
  • Do we really need 10x growth? Maybe we need one-to-one growth?
  • (Johannes) But then how can we build a task force of people going one-to-one? Educate people on how to invite their friends efficiently.
  • MLM multi-level marketing?
• (Mark) Can news and government feeds be added to the fediverse?
  • No need to wait for their autorization: we can use a bot to import their RSS/Atom feed (assuming they have one)
• (narF) Maybe we need a session on “How to host an install party” ? So that we have more and more people organizing install parties.
  • Our best allies are small non-profits and affinity groups
  • Co-Savoirs: https://cdeacf.ca/ They host event on tech litteracy and social network alternatives for their members (mostly women and marginalized folks)
  • FACIL https://facil.services/ (free hosting for small orgs)
  • Koumbit https://www.koumbit.org (worker co-op)
  • https://mtl-atc.org/ (anarchist tech conference in Montreal)
  • CHATONS (Framasoft) https://www.chatons.org/
• (Mark) Fediforum and the Fediverse could create marketing methds and content for early adopters/influencers to help ‘onboard’ new users.
• One suggestion was to have a Fediforum on a focused topic, e.g. get governments/agencies on the fedi
  • Mastodon is talking to government agencies and their FIRST request was to have “non account” access, e.g. have people give their email so they just get email updates of their posts. This allows people to “get the good stuff” without ever even BEING on a fedi client.