Collab: Smoke Signals & OpenMeet

[erlend.sh]

Continuing the discussion from Event Aggregator:

@tompscanlan

Did you have any specific collaboration in mind? I’m very open to collaboration, but I’m also not great at making or keeping connections. I’ll try to turn it on for a bit and check in with folks.

Appreciate you going out of your comfort zone to reach out

Finding the right connection point for collaboration is hard, but opening up for any such possibility is the essential first step, and that’s done!

What’s most striking to me is that OpenMeet already has a very complete app, UI included. There’s been talk of assembling common building blocks for design, but I wonder if that turned out to be too big of a lift as a place to start.

OpenMeet has a UI that already works, it’s just got a strong framework-feel to it still, since there’s no dedicated designer to help on that end.

There’s not a crystal clear way forward yet, but I hope you and @ngerakines can get on a call together and just talk through your mutual ambitions for this very similar thing you’re making and take it one step at a time from there.

In very simple terms, what I’m seeing is:

• Smoke Signals is the better name, since ‘OpenMeet’ doesn’t mean anything to non-nerds (“is it a dating app for people in open relationships?”)
• OpenMeet is the more mature application that’s usable by normies today.
• Both app-maintainers are backend-focused, making a designer a ‘contested resource’ as long as the projects are run separately.

[tompscanlan]

Good advice. It’s been maybe a year since Nick and I last spoke, and I’ve solidified quite a bit more what I’m building. Back then I was just considering adopting ATproto as an event source, and now it’s almost fully integrated into an opensource meetup.com -like alternative. I’ll make time to connect and see what shakes out.

[boris]

If you’re comfortable, could also be an open community call.

I know @knowtheory is interested for the SF Bay Area.

I do think the “event aggregator” use case is slightly different than event organizer is slightly different than aggregating RSVPs / public attendance / curated calendars.

The power here is at the very least having base level events Lexicon show up everywhere!

[tompscanlan]

I’m open to a community call, but also have an anxiety disorder Not sure I can lead it, but happy to talk it out with others if someone wants to organize.

Very happy that a common integration point has been set in the lexicon. I’m seeing OpenMeet and Smoke Signal events in both places, and excited to see them both improve.