Welcome on board!

[Björn Balazs]

Moin Claire,

thanks a lot for your introduction and for being curious.

I guess the basic question you have drives quite a few people here: 

  How can I contribute if I cannot code?

First, I cannot code myself. You might be surprised, but I expect this first 
phase not to be about coding at all. Before we can start coding we need a 
decent concept of what needs to be done. Something we believe is worth putting 
our free time in, something we believe can fly at some point.

When we are at a point where coding is needed again, we will hopefully have 
enough money to be able to pay developers (and others) for the work.

Right now, we need to discuss and specify the ideas we have. We will create a 
project plan of work that needs to be done. Part of this work is coding, but 
there is much more. We need to organize ourselves and communicate to attract 
more people to our community, we need to find allies that will help us to 
achieve our goals, we have to establish legal entities - just to name a few 
things.

As you can see, coding hopefully is one of our smaller problems. We will of 
course need a small team that closely looks at the existing code and specifies 
what work needs to be done to get to our envisioned solution. But most needed 
right now is research, coordination, discussions, creativity - and a good 
portion of human sense. 

We will all be users of the final solution, so we can as well all contribute 
to the solution.

And thanks a lot for your offer of the event space. Right now we will start 
virtually. But of course I would like to have an in person meeting at some 
point, because it would mean that we actually took off with this initiative.

But that doesn't come naturally. To get there we will need many helping hands 
and heads. And of course we are open for everyone who wants to make de-
centralized personal data storage become the new normal. Spread the word.

Welcome,
Björn

Am Dienstag, 11. Juli 2023, 08:26:32 CEST schrieb Claire Coles:
> Hi Björn, hello everyone!
> 
> thanks so much for your updates. I became a supporter of Polypoly about a
> year ago because an old friend told me about you and I became very
> interested in the Polypoly mission. I would like to join the online meetup
> but am not sure if I am the kind of person you would like to join/ need. I
> am not a programmer/ coder/ tech person. I work at an ad tech company in
> the Office Management department. I am good at managing and organizing
> projects, very good at running events, but not a Scrum Master or anything
> fancy like that. Maybe one interesting thing I can offer is an event space
> (we have a full setup for speakers (projector, screen, microphones,
> seating, drinks) and can fit up to 100 guests. If you ever wanted to have a
> meet up I can help organize that and offer a venue near Hauptbahnhof. The
> only condition would be that it would have to be open to people who work at
> my company too. (Remerge GmbH, we do app-retargeting and UA, so privacy and
> all the concerns are something we deal with from the other side, every day.)
> 
> Can I still join or would you rather keep the "noise" level low and only
> have people on board who can offer more help and wisdom?
> 
> Looking forward to hearing from you, won't be offended if you don't need me.
> 
> Best wishes to you and all my respect for the mission!
> Claire
> 
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2023 at 18:11, Björn Balazs <b at lazs.de> wrote:
> > So, everyone is a bit shy. No problem :)
> > 
> > This is just a reminder to please fill the nuudel:
> >   https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/spIv9zZjTT2aj4EH
> > 
> > I would like to have the first online meeting still this week (currently
> > Friday afternoon looks promising). If the time slots offered du not fit,
> > but
> > are interested, please also fill the nuudel. I will keep adding new time
> > slots.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Björn
> > 
> > Am Samstag, 8. Juli 2023, 14:28:09 CEST schrieb Björn Balazs:
> > > A warm welcome to everyone!
> > > 
> > > I am super happy you are interested in a future where de-centralized
> > > personal data storage has become real and joined our initiative here.
> > > 
> > > This initiative is not an official polypoly thing. I am "just" a private
> > > person looking for ways to finish what polypoly started. Fortunately
> > > most
> > > software polypoly produced is Free Software. So even though polypoly is
> > 
> > in
> > 
> > > insolvency, all software is available for us and we can continue working
> > 
> > on
> > 
> > > and with it.
> > > 
> > > But getting this to work is so much more than just producing software.
> > 
> > So I
> > 
> > > am also super happy that in the past weeks several people from the
> > > former
> > > polypoly universe indicated their will to support our new initiative
> > > with
> > > their knowledge, network and experience. This will allow us to learn
> > > from
> > > the past, challenge our ideas and properly plan what we still have to
> > > do.
> > > 
> > > Last but not least, we have support from other free software projects. A
> > > very special thank you to our friends at KDE for providing this mailing
> > > list to us. We are guests here, so please be friendly and respect their
> > > code of conduct [1].
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So, what is the plan now?
> > > 
> > > As a first thing, we have to agree on something like a basic concept of
> > 
> > how
> > 
> > > we can get from today to a privacy respecting future. You might want to
> > > call it a vision or a mission.
> > > 
> > > And then we have to count if we are enough active people to actually
> > 
> > start
> > 
> > > moving.
> > > 
> > > I think the best way to start is to discuss in direct (online) meetings.
> > 
> > I
> > 
> > > try to organize these, so please indicate your availability on:
> > >   https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/spIv9zZjTT2aj4EH
> > > 
> > > As we are too many people to find a single time slot for this, I will
> > > organize as many of these meetings as needed. Please keep your entry in
> > 
> > the
> > 
> > > nuudel updated to support this process. I will keep adding time slots to
> > > the nuudel.
> > > 
> > > In these meetings I will present a more concrete idea, which I believe
> > 
> > has
> > 
> > > at least a good chance to materialize. But: I want to ask you to bring
> > > in
> > > your own ideas. My expectation is not, that we will work on "my" idea.
> > > Instead, let us now find the best idea / concept we all believe in.
> > > 
> > > Just a reminder: Any concept should not only cover software, but needs
> > > to
> > > explain the long term situation and contain a plan how to get from now
> > > to
> > > then.
> > > 
> > > This mail is getting long. I hope sticking to English is ok for
> > 
> > everyone, I
> > 
> > > guess it is the most inclusive solution.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So, next please:
> > > - Update your availability on
> > > 
> > >   https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/spIv9zZjTT2aj4EH
> > > 
> > > - Say "Hello" on the list
> > > - Invite interested people to join us. We are open for everyone. You
> > 
> > might
> > 
> > > even want to use social media for that ;)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > This is going to be a wild ride. I am super happy you are here - we will
> > > need many hands and heads. But together we can do the impossible and fix
> > > digital privacy.
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Björn
> > > 
> > > [1] https://kde.org/code-of-conduct/
> > 
> > --
> > Privacy-reloaded mailing list
> > Privacy-reloaded at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/privacy-reloaded

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