A Scuttlebutt Propaganda Collective?

Secure #scuttlebutt is a combination of the technology we build and the people who use it. It's not driven by a central company or crypto currency foundation which throws money around to grow. Instead we've grown organically through people and their communities.

A lot of people have learned about scuttlebutt and started using it because they either heard about it at a conference, read an article about scuttlebutt, or attended an onboarding session. I'd like to grow our community and support that outreach.

Mozilla and other organizations have a fund to pay for travel and lodging for people who go around and talk about the open web and related projects that Mozilla supports. We've had a lot of scuttlebutt talks and on boarding sessions but it's been haphazard and hasn't had support. 

What I'm proposing is a fund set aside funds for two things.

• First, for folks to either travel to conferences to talk about a scuttlebutt related topic. Preferably these folks have some experience with scuttlebutt and what we're doing, and either experience giving talks or connection to community mentors who can help them become better speakers.
• Second, a fund to help support onboarding sessions. I was thinking we could provide a stipend for the organizer of an onboarding session, materials, and some kai (food) for participants.

Out of this work, we could develop some materials for workshops on this tech. It makes sense to have people who are near the communities they reach out to rather than some crew that flies around the world. Local matters.

One option is that this just be a planetary thing, we setup a program, and manage it. But it feels like making it an open collective and making decisions as a community might be a better path.

What do folks think?

I was a founding member of Mozilla Tech Speakers program, I know a ton about such programs and would be keen to contribute and share what we've learn.

We also trained people on how to do it. I'd be happy to run the same tech speaking workshops here.

I've been doing community onboarding sessions for years now, almost with every indigenous community I work with. Never have been successful in actually getting people to stay around, but slowly developing a better methodology to present and make a good case for SSB. Everytime it seems we're closer, but there's the "critical mass" problem which is a huge blocker.

As I stated during DWeb, I think having a small amount to give out to key groups could be a strategy to try. For example, I've been in touch now with Mídia India, which is a a indigenous organized media outlet. They have a very defined target audience (indigenous peoples and their allies) which could eventually understand the benefits of SSB tech as well as SSB network/community. I'm sure 100 USD per month could go a long way in having them promote their stuff on SSB, which might seem as empty to them at first, but could eventually make sense.

Anyway, excited for SSB promotion in any form, specially if we start sharing and organizing ways to do it better.

Also been learning a lot from #digital-democracy who does a great job of promoting itself on conferences as well as training communities on the ground. We have loads of materials other team members have created during the years to grab from and adapt in order to promote the organization or the tools we create/steward.

Would be great to have something similar for SSB.

So I just jumped in and made a new open collective for this: https://opencollective.com/scuttlebutt-propaganda

I hope folks don't mind me using the name propaganda, feels fun to play with the name. I've invited @mixmix, @SoapDog (Macbook Air M1), and @Luandro Pàtwy to be admin's on it with me. Who else wants to help?

I'm not sure how to add it to the scuttlebutt consortium.

I'd love to have us do some work supporting groups like Mídia India, your work getting folks online @Luandro Pàtwy, learning from Digital Democracy, writing up docs, getting an outline written for how to get support for ssb talks, etc... @SoapDog (Macbook Air M1) it'd be great to have your help coordinating workshops on speaking, and help us cultivate new speakers. Plus of course, speaking yourself.

Further validation to this - I just did a talk at Wizard Amigos 2022 camp (hosted by @serapath + @Nina). I was able to graph my FOSDEM2022 slides, and give a presentation that was ad-lib'd based on that experience, but also customised to their context + interests. I felt confident (and I hope clear) because I was standing on previous preparation (of resources, and thought)

They took a screen recording and will be publishing it later too :)

joined @Rabble

Are you open to a less name? I guess it is propaganda, but can we call it something more aspirational/ value aligned?
storytelling?

@LaPingvino & @decentral1se (manyverse) It's totally a loaded term.

Perhaps: Committee for the dissemination of the good word about scuttlebutt? Or the Scuttlebutt Public Information Committee...

Ok, honestly, i don't care... It could be "Go away, scuttlebutt's full" for all i care. I'm open to suggestions.

Rename it to ✨ The Order of The Travelling Hermies ✨

Folks,

Sorry, I had too much coffee today and couldn't resist.

hermies.travel was available.

was.

I got it.

The Society of Travelling Hermies has a nice right to it, better than order tbh, and it is far from the usual corporate speak that plagues tech evangelism.

@nanomonkey you might have just sniped me with that Z-Triton... omg, this video is amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpCEUSWt7Q

Did the OC disappear? Anyway yeah agree we need to get better at the propaganda again. I've been annoyed that planetary has been getting a lot of attention and manyverse nothing, but that's probably partly because we really do very little for marketing anymore. Not sure if an OC is the right format (more undefined governance uugh), let's discuss in #basel maybe?