Updated on November 11, 2019
Barcelona Hacking Collective
Last year winter we organized an Iberian Collective in the south of Spain to activate volunteers and boost the development of Trustroots. We realized that meeting physically and saving some dates is the best way for us (the volunteers behind the social network) to focus and dedicate time to the Trustroots project.
For this reason, we are calling for another collective, a physical meetup of Trustroots volunteers, developers, supporters and anyone with the will to help. The purposes are similar as last year: work on the codebase passionately, think on new features, meet and get together in person, welcome new volunteers and make strategic decisions. And, of course, we will organize some fun activities too!
This time the event will take place in Barcelona (the exact place is still to be confirmed) and will happen during the weekend of the 30th of November – 1st of December, although some people will stay around longer.
We are specially looking for JavaScript ninja coders. But people willing to do support, sysops, moderation, communication and design are welcome too.
Come and spread the word. We need more enthusiastic people on board!
If you have any question or want to confirm assistance, please reach out: akronix5@gmail.com
Updated on December 15, 2018
Meta Wiki Developers
Lots of good stuff in December, at the Collective.
mrkvon and banan arrived here a while ago and have been excellent at getting me deeper into the code base. This led to some cosmetic changes on the site, including edit buttons on some static pages such as the guide.
Related to that, we now have a wiki: wiki.trustroots.org – it’s actually not new, we simply hijacked Couchwiki, which is a wiki I was running since 2009 (when couchsurfing decided to take down the CouchSurfing Wiki – it took a couple more years to pull the final trigger).
And then we have a nicer developers.trustroots.org that can help with getting more people active.
akronix returned for a couple more days, and progressed with a text-based user search function. This will go live really soon. mrkvon and banan have done great work on
- moving to React
- moving forward some of the older pull requests
- adding translations (i18n) to the site – wanna help translate?
- work on implementing references – it would help a lot if you sign up for a test account at dev.trustroots.org and play with this
We now have a Discourse forum: meta.trustroots.org is a place to coordinate and discuss ideas and more.
And then I’m really happy triphopping Kenny (check his awesome podcast!) arrived here yesterday, he has some great insights how we can make Trustroots more awesome and grow Trustroots in the US.
Updated on October 24, 2018
What’s brewing at the Collective?
Hey folks!
Near one of the longest virgin beaches of Spain, the mixture of work, sun and sea brought this great energy into the community of Trustroots: lots of new people ready to team up and work online! Growing the roots!
Summer days, summer nights are goneSummer days and the summer nights are gone
I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on
Tech boost
Online activity on Slack and GitHub has increased massively. A large part of this flurry of activity is thanks to Hacktoberfest where we show up on the main page at times.
What’s next
Guaka picked up Akronix on the way, which led to some pair programming. Akronix has already left but will present Trustroots at the Hackmeeting in Malaga from 1st to 4th November.
Tech wise, the top priority this year is to add reference-type functionality to contacts between profiles. You can follow some of that on GitHub.
Spreading the word
Together with Lisanna we have been working on the interface and user experience. We also revived our instagram, joining other travellers on the globe. We want to get merchandise to travellers with blogs and social media following, through our shop.
Goals
These are the goals we set ourselves:
Reach out to (new) members
We gotta do more outreach. Got a travel blog, write about Trustroots! We also welcome guest posts on our own blog, if you like writing about anything related to Trustroots, travel, trust if you want to tell the world about your experience with Trustroots.
Wakey wakey support team
Helena started taking care of support queries. Let us know if you want to help with this.
Safety team
Wherever your journey brings you to, remain trustworthy yet aware. We’re so many on the go, to keep Trustroots safe and trusty we’re adding safety features. We are here for you, building a community. Wanna help?
Three’s a crowd (of coders)
There’s a lot of tech activity, definitely more than 3 active coders. Guess we can increase the goal to 10 active coders to work on these triple T features:
- Trust features: this is progressing nicely with work on references
- Tribe communication feature (but no forum pleaz!!!1!!!!!!1111)
- Tea-Geolocation: for peace of mind, free tea for everyone, always
Ca$h
Trustroots is a moneyless foundation. At this point. The collective is self-funded. To make this easier in the future we want to try and get your money, OK? Coz life’s a beach.
Patreon is the way! (or so we think) If you have experience with raising money on such platforms, welcome on board to help with text, video, all that jazz.
More seriously
On a serious note: we are very aware of some issues around hospitality exchange networks in the past and there’s a lot of that we don’t want:
- turn into a for profit corporation
- raise 20M$ VC money (and waste it all)
- a board or an executive team that’s detached from the community
- dictators and censorship (really, this happened)
- endless discussions
And this is what we do want:
- free software forever
- transparency around finance
- move forward together, with board, volunteers, hackers, community
- lots of awesome people on our network
- actions (speak louder than words)
Wanna join?
The Collective is promising and we wish to be expanding and developing more in the following months. The best is yet to come – and we need some yoga partners! Stay tuned, stay trusty!
Check this form if you want to join us.
