GOSH Newsletter, Open Hours & Community Coordinator Weekly Hours

briannaljohns · March 26, 2021, 4:08pm

Hi everybody!

I wanted to share a couple of opportunities with you all below

Newsletter

I wanted to start a thread here on the forum about starting a “GOSH newsletter” for the community! I have seen some past discussions on Gitlab regarding the idea of starting a newsletter (Issue #28 and Issue #166). I am definitely interested in this, and if you are as well please feel free to respond to this thread or add your name to the following spreadsheet so that we can start thinking about how to organize scheduled newsletters. A few community members noted on Gitlab Issue #166 that a newsletter would be a great way to do outreach and connect with a wider audience who may not be as familiar with GOSH, but would like to know more!

Open Hours

The topic of a newsletter also had some of us wondering about other ways we can engage with each other as a global, (and for now) virtual community (this was also another discussion had on Gitlab Issue #166). I think having a couple of “open hours” a month (which would be small, not-highly-facilitated events) would be a great way to spend time with each other meaningfully while avoiding Zoom fatigue. As community coordinator, I have no problem organizing these events for us :).

I am going to pilot this model of open hours next month by offering the following dates/times where I will be hosting an open meeting for community members to join if they’d like:

Thursday, April 8th from 15:30 - 16:30 UTC

Wednesday, April 14th from 23:00 - 24:00 UTC

Wednesday, April 21st from 11:00 -12:00 UTC

What would we be doing during these open hours? Think of it as a time to connect with one another, whether that is learning about exciting projects we are all doing, or just talking about some of our interests. These would be different from community calls (as community calls have a designated goal or outcome for each call) in that they are more easygoing.

These hours have been added to the GOSH calendar, where you will be able to access the Zoom link.

Community Coordinator Weekly Hours

I also wanted to share that you can schedule a meeting with me using Calendly. I have set aside a few hours each week where I am available for one-on-one meetings with community members. You can use this time to ask me questions you may have, share exciting projects and opportunities you have for the community, or just get to know me better!

briannaljohns · May 6, 2021, 6:25pm

Hi again everyone! I will be continuing open hours throughout May, with the following dates/times:

Tuesday, May 18th from 11:00 -12:00 UTC+0

Monday, May 24th from 23:00 - 24:00 UTC+0

Thursday, May 27th from 15:30 -16:30 UTC+0

For these open hours, I am going to try out Gather rather than Zoom, to make things a little more fun! I made a community space here that comes with a couple of group games we can play. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions about open hours this month!

These hours have been added to the GOSH calendar, where you will be able to access the Gather link.

julianstirling · May 6, 2021, 7:57pm

Hi @briannaljohns

Sorry I missed the last set of events, failed to enter them into my calendar :(. Hopefully will be able to make the 27th.

I am sure I should know this, but where can I find the GOSH calendar? We have the “upcoming event” thing in the forum, but I don’t think that every worked too well.

briannaljohns · May 7, 2021, 12:22am

Hey @julianstirling! Here is a URL to the GOSH calendar. I’ll add it to the original post as well

dusjagr · May 17, 2021, 12:41pm

Hoi zäme,

i also think there are much more fun hang.out tools than zoom…

I had some deep experiences in designing maps for workadventu.re which is kinda similar to gather town, but fully open source. and currently it’s hosted for free by many hackerspaces in the ccc network.

check out our island!
http://island.hackteria.org/

i would be ready to design a map for us too! or we can use the existing ones that i already made.

greets,
marc

hpy · May 17, 2021, 8:50pm

Hi @briannaljohns. I’m afraid I’m also sorry for missing the previous gatherings, especially having previously expressed interest in dropping in!

I think it’s great that options other than Zoom are being explored for these meetings, and thank you for discovering Gather! I’ve never experience it before and would make a point of attending at least one of the sessions this month.

In the spirit of finding non-Zoom options, I believe that we can try some fully free (as in freedom, not necessarily free-of-charge) solutions that are 100% open source. This is a topic that’s came up before, and given the more relaxed/informal nature of these meetings it would be a good opportunity to test those options, because even if we encounter technical problems the stakes won’t be so high.

For example, I second @dusjagr’s suggestion above by trying tools like workadventu.re or their “island”. We could also try a good ol’ Jitsi room to evaluate whether its performance has improved since we last discussed this. None of this has to be for the meetings this month (I’d like to try Gather!), but maybe for future meetings we could explore a variety of 100% open source solutions?

Nerdy question for @dusjagr: I managed to find the Git repository for workadventu.re, really cool that there are ways to set up your own stack! However, I don’t see a LICENSE for the repository → What’s the license for workadventu.re? I’d be happy to send you a Pull Request with a LICENSE if that helps?

jarancio · May 18, 2021, 12:24am

Less fun, more accessible for not-so-great internet connections: https://spatial.chat/

Edit: compared to things like gather town, which are beautiful but crash my computer (haven’t tried work adventure)

briannaljohns · May 18, 2021, 1:23am

Hi @jarancio @hpy @dusjagr, thank you for sharing all of this!

I think I’ll stick with gather town for the next open hour (since it is soon) - but I am happy to try out some open source solutions for upcoming meetings. I agree with @hpy that the informal nature of these meetings makes it a great opportunity to test these things out.

@dusjagr I just checked out your island - it’s super cool! I also really like the idea of designing a GOSH map

-Bri

dusjagr · May 18, 2021, 12:23pm

aaaahhh i missed the open hours…

briannaljohns · May 18, 2021, 12:34pm

@dusjagr No worries, we still have two more this month (May 24th from 23:00 - 24:00 UTC and May 27th from 15:30 -16:30 UTC).

If anyone is unfamiliar with how to use gather, here are two quick tutorials I found on Youtube:

Thanks!
Bri

briannaljohns · July 1, 2021, 4:32pm

Hi all!

I will be hosting more open hours throughout July, at the following dates/times:

Monday, July 5th from 12:00 -13:00 UTC

Monday, July 19th from 23:00 - 24:00 UTC

Wednesday, July 21st from 15:00 -16:00 UTC

I plan on using this Jitsi meeting for the open hours, although as a community we are still deciding on how to create a virtual hangout space which you can follow via this thread.

These hours have been added to the GOSH calendar, where you can access the Jitsi link as well.

Thanks, everybody!
-Bri

briannaljohns · August 3, 2021, 11:26pm

Hello again everybody! I’ll be hosting two open hours in August, at the following times:

Wednesday, August 11th from 20:00 - 21:00 UTC
Wednesday, August 18th from 10:00 - 11:00 UTC

The open hours will be held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar .

If you can’t make the open hours, but would like to find a time to chat with me, feel free to schedule a meeting with me here

briannaljohns · September 2, 2021, 4:57am

Hi everybody! I am sharing the open hours for this month below.

2021-09-09T13:00:00Z
2021-09-21T20:30:00Z

The open hours will be held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar .

There is now a webpage with more information on the open hours, as well as a schedule of the open hours for 2021.

briannaljohns · September 20, 2021, 12:32am

Hi everyone! A reminder that the next open hours will be this upcoming Tuesday at 20:30 UTC.

Open hours are a great place for new and existing GOSH community members to find out more about what is going on in the community - or to hang out in a more relaxed and casual environment.

The open hours will be held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar .

dusjagr · September 20, 2021, 3:18pm

I’ll be there!

We’d be happy to share some recent experiments with CO2 sensing for soil monitoring aswell as an outlook into the coming residencies and research for UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware, happening these weeks coming, and beyond into the months to follow!

I wonder also what other regional / topical events are in the pipeline!

briannaljohns · October 1, 2021, 10:10am

Hi everybody! I am sharing the open hours for October below:

2021-10-07T12:00:00Z
2021-10-19T21:00:00Z

The open hours will be held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar .

Check out this webpage for more information on the open hours, as well as a schedule of the open hours for 2021.

briannaljohns · October 18, 2021, 12:09am

Hi again everybody, just a reminder that the next GOSH open hour will be this Tuesday, October 19th, at 21:00 UTC. It would be great to hear what some of you are up to, so feel free to stop by and say hello!

The open hours will be held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar . You can find out more about the open hours here.

briannaljohns · November 1, 2021, 6:05am

Here are the rest of the GOSH Open Hours for 2021!

November

Wednesday 10 November from 20:00-21:00 UTC
Tuesday 23 November from 11:00-12:00 UTC

December

Wednesday 1 December from 19:00-20:00 UTC
Thursday 9 December from 11:00-12:00 UTC

Open hours are held via this Jitsi link and have been added to the GOSH calendar . You can find out more about the open hours here. I look forward to seeing some of you there!

briannaljohns · November 10, 2021, 10:03am

Hey everyone! Just a quick reminder that I will be hanging out in the GOSH Open Hours today from 20:00-21:00 UTC. Feel free to join if you are looking for some informal social time, or are curious to learn more about GOSH!

hpy · November 17, 2021, 8:58pm

Just read the latest November 2021 newsletter, it looks great thanks @briannaljohns!

Quick suggestion: I think we can eat our own dog food by publishing the newsletter under an open source license. Since it’s not code nor a hardware design, the CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 licenses would be appropriate. The only thing to keep in mind is to make sure that outside material used in the newsletter - like images - are compatible with those licenses.