Hey, everybody! We're getting it done! Modest, small steps, making sure we're heading in the right direction, building community software infrastructure. At this point we have the basic platform for platforms, the online equivalent of a blank slate: * A single site app (Chattanooga Venturing <https://venturing.chattanooga.digital/> Discourse <https://www.discourse.org/> server) * A production Swarm managed by Portainer, behind a reverse proxy server (Traefik <https://traefik.io/traefik>) running multiple production apps: o Bigcapital <https://bigcapital.app/> accounting o CiviCRM <https://civicrm.org/> o Cloud/server monitoring o Drupal <https://new.drupal.org/> websites (including the coop website https://chattanooga.digital/), o GNU Mailman <https://list.org/>/Postorious listserv (https://list.chattanooga.digital/mailman3/lists/) o Hubzilla <https://hubzilla.org/page/info/home> (https://hub.chattanooga.digital/) o Mastodon <https://joinmastodon.org/> (https://toot.chattanooga.digital/public/) o A private Nextcloud <https://nextcloud.com/> and a shared Nextcloud for the coop (https://cloud.chattanooga.digital/) with a TURN server <https://webrtc.org/getting-started/turn-server> for Nextcloud Talk online conferencing. * A locally hosted (by RoushTech — thank you, William!) staging/test swarm that parallels the production set up, behind a VPN <https://www.wireguard.com/>, with Gancio community calendar demo <https://gancio.staging.chattanooga.digital/> and IAM test instances * Working on: o Identity and access management (IAM) software for members to transparently access their apps and data; evaluating four options all currently running on our staging server. This would basically go between the users and the coop, the entry ramp to our infrastructure. o Setting up back up for our data/systems. Beyond that we're looking at establishing our own cloud, email, and git code repository services! We have opportunities to partner with Civic.Social civic software <https://civic.social/> and Love Computing <https://computingwith.love/> for decentralized, hardware-based cloud... and we haven't even ramped up! The vision is for a portfolio of community apps everyone can use and private apps for customer members and their guests, behind a firewall for additional security. There are so many options it's a bit crazy! All of these apps represent collaborative networks, too. Our challenge is how to communicate effectively about the coop, the /why/ as well as the /how/. The list of cool stuff above means digital autonomy for personal, community, and business purposes. We also need to create on ramps folks who want to pursue tech career and stepping stones for those who just want to minimize their digital footprint. I'm working on getting data into administrative systems while thinking about how to do outreach and draft organizational documents. -- Greg Laudeman, Ed.D., Instigator Chattanooga.Digital <https://chattanooga.digital/> greg@chattanooga.digital <mailto:greg.laudeman@chattanooga.digital> 706-271-5521
