I made some plans for comprehensive testing of AP federated events just before I left China at the end of 2019, but … global events intervened. These tests are still part of a huge backlog I’ve been slowly working my way through ever since. Consequently my knowledge of the state of event federation is at potentially a few years out-of-date.
Today I started drafting an email to a community engagement worker at a local body organisation, encouraging them to consider using Mobilizon to promote community events. But there’s a bunch of things I started to say in it that I’m not 100% sure about. It would be good to run some tests to make sure my advocacy is accurate. Plus any feedback on potentially confusing language would be really helpful.
Tēnā koe,
For more than a year now, I have been receiving the regular community events emails you send out. I got onto your mailing list thanks to a friend forwarding me a copy of one of the emails. But if it wasn’t for that, I may never have learned about the valuable community service you are providing.
I’d like to suggest a way that the events you are promoting with these emails could reach a larger and more diverse range of people. This involves entering the details of the events into a website, which can then share those event details with a whole network of events websites, which people can integrate with their calendar software of choice. Let me explain in a bit more detail.
In 2020, a French not-for-profit called Framasoft released Free Code software called Mobilizon;
Because WordPress is Free Code, anyone can use WordPress to run their own blog or website. Similarly, anyone can use Mobilizon to run their own events website. More information about how it works and what features it has here;
Here are two examples of Mobilizon events websites based in Aotearoa, set up as demos by people associated with the Open Source Society of NZ;
The beauty of Mobilizon is that it uses an open web standard called ActivityPub, which can allow events published on one of those websites to be be seen and interacted with by someone using the other one. Because this events “federation” uses an open standard, it’s not confined to Mobilizon either. In theory a Mobilizon website can share event details with any events website that uses AP to federate its events.
This is such a new idea that it hasn’t had a lot of use in Aotearoa yet. The your community team could be pioneers in this space. There are a couple of ways this could work in practice. But as I’m sure you know well, when doing experimental community development, it’s best to start with the simplest thing that could possibly work.
That would probably be setting up new Mobilizon site specifically for community events in Kirikiriroa, whether that’s an official local body project, or an independent community project. As shorthand, let’s called it events.TheTron.nz. The community groups whose events you promote in your emails could each set up their own group page on the events.TheTron.nz, where they could enter details about events they want to announce.
Once event information has been added to events.TheTron.nz, there are various ways that people interested in community events could access it. As with any website, they could browse the site as a guest, and it could be indexed by search engines. People could also set up an account on the website, allowing them to subscribe to groups whose events they are interested in, and RSVP to events. This would also allow them to set up pages for groups they’re involved with and announce their own events.
There are various ways Mobilizon can export event data into the calendar services and software people are already using, allowing them to use those to see event details from groups sharing events on events.TheTron.nz. Plus of course, people could get event details from the site indirectly, through people like yourself who run community events guides browsing event announcements from events.TheTron.nz and copying them into your email newsletters, etc. There may even be ways to automate some of this.
But where it gets really interesting, is that people could also access event information on events.TheTron.nz using an account on another Mobilizon site, or another events site in the fediverse (note: this does requires a manual approval site admins for each site that wants to federate, to prevent abuse). What this means is that over time, some groups could establish their own Mobilizon site for use by their own community. While still sharing event details with events.TheTron.nz just as easily as if their community page was on that site.
As an example, let’s imagine the Chinese community in Kirikiriroa enjoyed using events.TheTron.nz to announce their events to the public. But they also wanted to have a public events calendar integrated with their existing community news website, where people could find Chinese community events happening anywhere in Waikato. So they decided it was worth setting up their own Mobilizon site at events.ChineseInWaikato.nz.
The admins of the community events guide at events.TheTron.nz could ask the admins of events.ChineseInWaikato.nz to federate with them. That would allow them any public events posted to Kirikiriroa pages on events.ChineseInWaikato.nz to also appear on events.TheTron.nz. Similarly, if there were events announced on events.TheTron.nz by groups that a lot of people in the local Chinese community were interested in, those could be made available as they were announced on events.ChineseInWaikato.nz.
Another way this could work is if there are community groups who prefer to organise their online presence with their national association, but still want to share information about their public events with the local community where they’re happening. For example, imagine a Mobilizon site called events.crafts.nz, set up by a network of people across Aotearoa who are passionate about knitting, sewing, and other crafting activities.
Let’s say that a number of local crafting groups in Kirikiriroa have set up their own pages on events.crafts.nz to announce their events. The admins of the community events guide at events.TheTron.nz could ask the admins of events.crafts.nz to federate with them. That would allow them any public events posted to Kirikiriroa groups on events.crafts.nz to also appear on events.TheTron.nz. But say there was a group who announced their events on events.TheTron.nz, whose events were of interest to the crafting community - say a Maker fair organised by 3D printing buffs - those events could be followed and RSVPs sent from events.crafts.nz.
Note that so far I’m talking only about public events. But Mobilizon also allows community pages to confine invites to their community members. So the same events site can also be used to announce private events within community groups. While it is possible to share private events between Mobilizon sites too, as communities become more aware of the implications of digital sovereignty, they may prefer to do this on sites controlled by their own community. But the federation between sites still allows public event announcements to be shared widely, with minimal staff or volunteer effort compared to manually copying the details into each site where you want them to appear.
Finally, there’s a cool bonus of Mobilizon using the AP standard to federate between sites. Which is that event announcements can even be shared into websites that have nothing to do with events. Any website in “the fediverse” made up of all the websites using AP software like Mastodon or PixelFed can potentially follow events pages on Mobilizon sites and get announcements about events in their social media feeds.
If there’s anything I can clarify, or I can help if any way to get a pilot project set up, please feel free to contact me.
Ngā mih nui,
Stypey
