I'm sloooowly wrapping up work on the next version of the Chattanooga.Digital business plan, which will be reasonably complete but still very much an evolving work-in-progress. I'll share it soon. In the meantime, here's some basic info about how its being structured. We need your input and welcome any help you might provide with any of this! My next to-do is to assemble an informal advisory council and plan a "summit" with them. We'll have regular member meetings — probably evenings during the third or fourth weeks of the month... let me know your preference. Please, let me know of anyone you think would be a good advisor (anyone with connections to and insights about various areas or parts of our community, particularly non-technical folks) and invite any tech geeks you know to join as pilot members. Currently, we offer: * Community services: o Hubzilla (hub.chattanooga.digital, in the works) collaboration/communication space; look for invitations to join soon! o Mastodon (toot.chattanooga.digital) microblogging o Postorious/Mailman (list.chattanooga.digital) email distribution lists * Member services: o Bigcapital accounting o CiviCRM customer relationship management (for non-profits) o Cryptpad (in consideration) o Discourse forums o Drupal CMS websites o Linkstack (in the works) link sharing o Nextcloud file sharing, groupware, etc. What other services we offer are up to YOU! Ideas include audio streaming (Castopod), document management (Paperless-ngx), geospatial/mapping (various options), image management (Immich), search (SearXNG), and social networking (various options). Generally, the plan is to incorporate Chattanooga.Digital as a democratically controlled, member-owned cooperative (specifically, a 501(c)(12) LLC) later this year, with "customer" and "provider" members and four departments or functional areas: Administration, Operation, Outreach, and Support. * Administration handles finance, HR, legal, etc., initially using Bigcapital accounting, CiviCRM, Drupal CMS website, Mailman/Postorius for email lists (like this one), and Nextcloud — all of which we will offer to members as services — as well as Mailfence for email service. Administration "owns" practices, procedures, etc., but the other areas are responsible for defining them. All of these will live on Nextcloud. * Operation handles our core mission of deploying, maintaining, and providing tier 1 support using Hetzner hosting, Portainer container management, Traefik reverse proxy. We have a couple of immediate/short-term issues to resolve: o Identify and access management (IAM; Keycloak is the top prospect.) o Transactional email service * Outreach is responsible for growing membership and promoting FOSS, including developing technical capabilities and increasing general awareness and knowledge in our community. Currently, this consists of the Let's Learn Linux Study Group, which I'm hosting on second Wednesdays of the month. I'm also planning a series of visioning sessions to understand issues and needs in the community (rather than asking folks what tech they need/want... because most people wouldn't be able to answer that) and workshops on general and specific apps. Outreach is also responsible for identifying issues, needs, and opportunities in the community. * Support assists with core internal apps and services and acts as owner agent/project manager/shared open source program office for members. Our rule of thumb for customers' software is "hands off." C.D reps do not work on or with customer members apps or data. Instead, we help them contract with provider members to do that work. Projects require at least one member to act as a sponsor and help recruit other members with similar needs. Generally, any new apps/services we offer to members will be treated as a "project." Support also leads the process of evaluating FOSS options for members. o One general to-do for us is to establish a process for evaluating FOSS options, specifically for IAM. Eventually, these functional areas — particularly Administration and Operation — will be handled by one or more paid employees, supplemented by member volunteers who earn credits toward services for their work. More on all of this soon. Your thoughts, suggestions, or help with any of the above would be greatly appreciated in the meantime! -- Greg Laudeman, Ed.D., Instigator Chattanooga.Digital <https://chattanooga.digital/> greg@chattanooga.digital <mailto:greg.laudeman@chattanooga.digital> 706-271-5521