Better connections (Draft)

This is an idea that I'm really passionate about. I'm in the process of moving away from google for as many thing as possible, but the calendar is one of the big hang-ups. Specifically, co-ordinating international meetings sucks so bad. At the moment I have to use at least 2 tools and it's pain every time (worldtime buddy / doodle + google cal).

There's a unique opportunity we have in the scuttleverse where because we're running a commons database, we have interoperability for free. Here's the idea:

1. Post a poll for (just appropriate Doodle's excellent designs)
2. When the poll closes, click the button which says "start gathering"
3. You can see the gathering in your /calendar

Notes:

• work on scuttle-poll means getting the database side of making a doodle poll will take only days
• gatherings already exist
  • I want to loop back to them and build schemas + helper moduels for them
  • while there, add private gatherings (e.g. use scuttlebutt to record family appointments, so I can ditch google)
• the calendar view already exists
  • I build this recently, but I want to extend it further

The ask

Is this of itnerest to you?
Got thoughts?

I have a feeling this is in the class of "Oh that's kinda boring" but if you pause and think about it, this is probably the single greatest pain point for you being able to coordinate Better connections with people at a distance.

i love this proposal because it could be one of those ssb usecases that is just a hundred times better than any existing alternative (see also: catching up on your social media fix while offline)

@mix I like this and would use it, but feel that to really take off it would require being able to make private gatherings.

That's a great questions @noffle.

I intend to build it in Patchbay first, because it's an excellent prototyping space. I want to build it following the scuttle-pattern - as in helper modules which can be used anywhere, providing async methods and pull-streams.
If you've not seen my recent work with this pattern, I don't assume patchcore at all, and have been writing html components likewise (as in if a template needs to render avatars, you're expected to pass a fn in that does that)

I would love to see this accessible in all clients, but feel like gaurenteeing doodle-gatherings-routings total integration would take a lot of work across 3 clients. The good news is that each part of this is useful and renderable as a piece of that flow. e.g. if you can already see gatherings in your client, that part is done already.
One path could be to offer dedicated support (i.e. pairing, reviews) to core devs of any client interested in having this complete flow, along with some atomic components which can be forked and easily reworked.

having been through this pain recently of having 15 mins of meeting time figuring out the timing of the next meeting i am 100% in favor of this. time is one of our most precious resources.

mix gets shit done, also and seems to have laid some great groundwork with well scoped features.

Love this idea @zach - I remember you saying the iCal format is open, so I imagine this wouldn't be too hard (famous last words)

Agreed I think this is a great project to work on @mix, I'd personally find really useful for #mmt stuff.

I've been mulling on @noffle's question about where I might deliver this and it's helper me resolve a clearer plan

Deliverables

1. scuttle-poll
   • add capability to do multi-choice time based polls
   • add private polls (for max 7 people)
2. view componentsa
   • can be used / stolen for different clients
   • time picker, calendar view
3. standalone client
   • covers the whole flow: poll > gathering > calendar
   • does this workflow excellently, and allows viewing of all gatherings with calendar
   • installers for all platforms

The aim of this is to hit the best of all worlds, in that everyone gets access to this workflow AND, if individual clients want to fold these components in, they will have the substrates they need, and my bow axe support.
It's also a good excuse to lean into scuttle-shell (I imagine this event / cal app is one that will likely be a secondary app which people might open occassionally)

Stretch goals

\4. strengthen gatherings

• make some schemas for gatherings - ssb-gathering-schema
• extract helper methods for creating and reading gatherings - scuttle-gathering
  \5. iCal exports
• tbh this sounds like a fun art-hack exercise, and I'd love to have a go at it generally (or support someone else to)

To clarify - the full client will be very minimal.
i.e. no facility for editing your profile, joining pubs, etc

It might be a very minmal fork of patchbay. The good news it the patchcore and-scuttle-helper work make building apps really quick (especially given I know the neighbourhood)

Good question about documenting. I'd make simple readmes. I honestly think the scuttle-pattern is designed to be easy to consume. This still needs testing.

The amount to deliver might indeed be ambitious. Estimating a months work is quite challenging. This is something I would want to work on in my spare time if possible, but being offered money to help would mean I wouldn't need to be doing other work while trying to do it and could build much quicker and higher quality.

Thanks for the thoughts / questions @elavoie. They've drawn my attention to things that will make my planning stronger

@alanna is doing some skills-share with a massage therapist - she just arrived at our place, and her Calendar has just shat itself, and she's lost all of her client data.

If we build calendars socially (here), losing your data like this is practically impossible...

If we build calendars socially (here), losing your data like this is practically impossible...

This goes for most things here... the data replication is this really quiet workhorse in the background which is actually EPIC if you think about it. Like, really.

@austin yes. any message can be encrypted, the indexes still get it, so all the queries work. As long as it's allowed in the clients and they indicate it's privacy level correctly, and importantly, make replies to the private resource also private!. unfortunately there is not currently any clients that implement this yet though.

@austin I'm planning to loop back to make private appointments once I've got an end to end public process launched

my feeling exactly @austin ... I do more and more of my organising and "work" here. If I have time (or help) I'll make some cal export / import features to help

thanks @niKDo. If you're interested in helping, I'd love to be connected with people or groups who would like to fund more feature development. I think those are some great suggestions you make, I just need to be able to afford the time (to build things myself and lay patterns and resources and support to support others to build)

no worries, @niKDo thanks for the gesture, it's meaningful just to know people care sometimes. I've wrapped up this block of grant work. I'll likely to bits and pieces more in the future to meet my and my communities needs.
You can check out the end of the dev diary : %WO7WjRF... to see my reflection and where I got to