Considering it now looks likely there will be a new left wing political party, shall we do a reach out to them as CoTech to offer our services?
Their current site is on Squarespace:
And they’re using something called Second Street as a CRM
Obviously as we know, a lot of time/energy can be saved if a effective technology strategy is pursued early on in an organisation’s lifetime.
Good idea, Outlandish are probably best placed to do this @NatashaSPACE4 ?
I’m on it. I think there’s someone in SPACE4 who might be working on their tech. We’ve been chatting to him about Outlandish work as well. I’ll keep you posted 
In the apparent absence of any autonomous, UK hosted, open source, digital infrastructure being set up for Your Party to use for organising it appears that hundreds of local groups have been informally established across the UK mostly using WhatsApp and Facebook, so we now have the situation where a US tech billionaire has more access to detailed information regarding who is involved and who is communication with who than anyone who actually supports the project, at this point a cynic could observe that it might as well be called Meta’s Party… it seems that they own and control almost all the embryonic party’s digital infrastructure… 
Does anyone have the time, energy and enthusiasm to help establish a UK wide co-operators group to push for support for co-operation within it? We could do something like, register yourparty.coop and establish a Discourse forum at forum.yourparty.coop and invite all supporters who are co-operators to get involved? This might, or might not, necessitate the set up an unincorporated association as a co-op? I’m thinking we could try to set a better example for others…? 
@NatashaSPACE4 was there any updates from your side?
Hi! I think they’re already working with Jarrow Insights. The person who has an in with them in SPACE4 is already helping us to get work so I think if there was an opportunity he would have told us by now.
I think you make a very good point. Indeed some local groups would prefer to set up a “branch” on a geographic basis. There could likewise be a Co-op “Branch” (or “neural system”, to use a different metaphor), which could bring such independently forming groups into a closer working relationship and less dependent on the party “centre”.
I can’t stop thinking about this! Do you want to discuss sometime synchronously @chris ?
Sure, sometime next week should work for me.
Oh dear.
This morning, an unauthorised email was sent to all yourparty [EDITED BECAUSE I’M NOT ALLOWED TO POST LINKS] .uk supporters with details of a supposed membership portal hosted in a new domain name. Legal advice is being taken. That email should be ignored by all supporters. If any direct debits have been set up, they should be immediately cancelled.
I think someday books will be written about the in-fighting that is happening at the top of Your Party…
Honestly I think I preferred my initial interpretation that they’d been hacked.
Hi,
Two things I encounter regularly when suggesting that people should use alternatives to those platforms:
What would we suggest as the alternatives to
· facebook
· whatsapp
· squarepsace
· second street
… that we could agree upon?
Why use something else or move away from them?
The first is to make it simple for people who haven’t moved already or are completely unaware there’s an alternative.
The second is to give a good reason, in response to (or to pre-empt):
· ‘everybody uses whatsapp/facebook, including my bank. It must be okay.’
· ‘I don’t want to install yet another app’
· ‘None of my friends use that’
· ‘I’ve never heard of it’
· ‘Isn’t that used by terrorists/paedophiles/?’
· 'It’d be too difficult for me to move away from facebook/whatsapp etc.
I’m sure there are others too.
Perhaps collating those questions/objections and formulating responses would help to formulate a simple message that would have a chance of effectively persuading people to get behind using alternatives. That would help here but also contribute to shaping a more general narrative.
Please hold that thought / those thoughts. 