Proposal
I’d like to suggest the creation of a public, online library, where everyone can add their own items.
In this library you could add links to websites, news items, YouTube videos, scientific articles, online presentations, etc.
Furthermore everyone is allowed to help with the categorization or the annotation of the sources.
This would be a voluntary effort as a community.
In return interested people, advocates and researchers get an easy possibility to use the library for reference and gaining structured knowledge.
Advocates and researchers usually want to rely on existing cite-able sources instead of solely relying on their own materials.
Proposed solution
A good solution for such a thing would be using a public group on Zotero.org
I already created a group on Zotero.org for this. https://www.zotero.org/groups/2222509/humanetech
If you’re interested in contributing, you just have to create an account and join the group here (no membership restriction as of now)
I have started to add some references from other Zotero projects I’ve been working on, but haven’t been categorizing or annotated them that well yet.
What is Zotero?
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials. In theory it could be run on any server, but most are using the instance by the main development team on Zotero.org. More details can be found on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero
Zotero is a cool project, open-source, non-profit and seems to align well with humane tech guidelines (proper privacy policy, licensing, zero trackers, good transparency, etc.). It is also a service especially designed for the purpose of collecting sources for professional (scientific) purposes.
This is all good, but on the other hand I also have some hesitations to have Zotero be the official CHT information source:
Too complicated: “it includes a lot of advanced functionality that can be intimidating at first”
Not entirely web-based: “Zotero is primarily a program that runs on your own computer” (win/mac/linux only)
Accessibility: Apart from having to install an application, you have to create a separate account on Zotero to be able to edit/extend the library.
Audience: Seems mostly suitable for a scientific audience. While this may be okay, this makes it less usable for the wider public
Fragmentation: The CHT is already quite fragmented. We have the website, the forum, the wiki, the github, the facebook, the slack, the meetup groups, and probably more I don’t know of - all with separate accounts for access or editing
Branding (for lack of a better word): CHT ideally should become an authority that attracts all kinds of people from all around the world. With its fragmentation, and different UI’s it has no presence. It’s website remains static, hardly updated. It cannot fulfill its strategic goal of raising awareness. Positioning, branding and, yes, marketing, are needed to become an authority.
I think minimizing fragmentation and improved branding are very important aspects for the future of the CHT. Frankly until now (and IMHO) the CHT has not taken flight as it should have. This forum has seen some good discussions (though less active now), the FB group is lively (but of lower quality overall), and the CHT core team has had great success lobbying the influencers and regulators (but leaving no time to steer the community).
There are strategic plans to evolve the CHT along the 4 pillars of Cultural awakening, Political pressure, Engaging employees and Applying humane technology, as well as to reconnect the grassroots community with the high-level organization again. But this will take time and effort.
Wrt tools and presence my ideal setup would be to have:
A lively website, with real content, that is worth bookmarking and visiting frequently
A website that emanates the presence of the CHT, and is an umbrella of all its initiatives and ongoing projects
A github organization, where all project development takes place in the open, crowdsourced and transparent
End-products are mostly static site sections, and one technology stack (static site generator) can be used to create checklists, cheat sheets, libraries, documentation (formerly wiki), blog, etc. with ease
This forum for general discussion, and first staging ground to evaluate ideas for projects and followed-up on github
A branded Meetup organization as the parent of all the different meetup groups (21 or so) that currently exist
Accessible from the website (maybe no Meetup organization, but direct on-site Meetup listing + event agenda)
Then other places where CHT is active, like the FB group, only serve to attract people to the website and to become active community members (forum users).