Kia ora koutou, I’ve been thinking for a while about how useful it would be for NZOSS to network more formally with similar orgs in other countries around the Asia-Pacific. It occurred to me today that maybe we could try to use the Murmurations protocol to facilitate that?
The Murmurations project has been in development for about 5 years. The protocol they’ve developed in similar in principle to the old FOAF, but because it uses JSON rather than RDF, it’s much simpler to use. Because it’s aimed at organisations, not individuals, it’s getting a lot more use AFAICT.
It was originally developed for movement mapping. Things like, for example, a directory of software freedom organisations in the Asia-Pacific, or a directory of digital policy groups in Aotearoa. The idea being that NZOSS could add a Murmurations file to our website, and accurate information about us would automatically appear in both of those directories, and potentially others. Then whenever that file is updated on the NZOSS website (eg we change our name), our entry would automatically update in any directory we appear in. Without the need for any coordination with the people running the directory projects.
It’s a very cool concept, automating a lot of the work of making movement projects more discoverable to each other, and facilitating networking and collaboration. The Murmurations developers recently added Offers & Wants tooling to take it to the next level. Automating another aspect of networking, by facilitating collaboration between groups who want to do something for their allies, and those who need that thing done.
