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What I'm doing right now is trying to push a new meetup org (in person) past the initial "proof of social" phase. Some of you may know that I've been a board member of a meetup org for a while, so I have a little experience with this stuff. But that group has been making things too complicated. Grandious plans with a lot of work, all just to host something where people are really just there to network.
So I've started a new org. The plan is to keep things a little more grounded. But that initial proof of the social phase is hard. People are hesitant to hit the RSVP when they see two people have RSVP'd. But if I run it a few times, I'll start to build up an invite list.
But that's me. I want to hear about what you are working on.
We just had a WEFreedom birthday meetup on Sunday. Every single time Emma wonders if anyone will even come, because every time we ask folks to RSVP - and only two or three bother. They just don't. I always say it doesn't matter, as we're doing it anyway and whatever happens is fine. There have been a couple smaller with only 14 or 20, but usually more. At Christmas I stopped including the RSVP on the last minute invite and 60+ showed. When the Lions' Den space is ready we'll have proper meetings, classes, podcasts, newsletter writing, etc. (Was making shelves and painting there this aft/eve.)
What aspects are too complex?
What aspects are grounded?
If you don't do anything people just hang out and socialize. What do you do to lead, organize, or facilitate networking?
Thursday's Freedom meetings mostly have speakers with presentations lined up. Tomorrow the talk is about precious metals and 'real' money (yet again). Folks show up early and leave later to get some unstructured freeform socializing in.
This morn/aft I finished a couple weeks of cleaning up a termite basement. It's fixable, but a big job to repair the damaged structure above the concrete foundation of the house.
Last couple weeks I've also been conspiring on a pitch for a Canadian historical video (animated, live-action, A.I., or whatever it takes) across three generations in the 1800's. Can't say too much yet. We're seeking grants, researching museums, etc., etc., etc.
I may like to hire someone to help prep a few simple websites for my domains that currently redirect to Projex.Wiki - but that "freedom site" may frighten some folks off, so I now need to create simple stand-alone home pages - a few bio sites, Janglers.ca animation, and a few others. From about a dozen years ~2000+ I used DreamWeaver to make my WickedSunshine.com, which I let expire long ago, but would also like to resurrect but with .ca, though my Flash animation likely won't work. Plus I have some screenplays that can come off the shelf to develop and perhaps make into features with A.I. - and some of them have domains. For these sites I want to use something like DreamWeaver but open-source, not Adobe. Tasteful templates would be fine for bio, pitch, and/or development content, some with small audio and video clips.
Also, I've got a few ideas for our Goat Matrix community that I mean to put to a vote, assuming anyone is even interested in collaborating on anything.
Lastly, I'll soon share a dream Goat Matrix makeover evolving-plan that we can all participate in. A sort of wish in progress. Naturally x0x7 has the ultimate veto, but we can develop our ideal fantasy roadmap for improving the ergonomic GUI flow and UX, wished-for features and functions, flexible CSS, aesthetic design, etc. - all while thinking of how we can also develop branding, campaigns, outreach, media, and PR. All of this can be done by refining pre-vis examples towards something worth actually making real.
With so few RSVP'ing it might have helped you that you didn't include it. People see the 2-3 and think it is a dead event and write it off immediately.
I've realized in my case the platform I'm using, a lot of people don't have accounts. So they actually can't. At least not with more effort than they want to put in. And I guess the other worrysome thing is if they see there is an RSVP they may think they can't come unless they do it. And if you say, "hey, don't worry about the RSVP," then you miss out on the proof of social you need for others.
I may create a zero-friction RSVP system here. We could use it for the movie nights. I can't get any users from any of the sites I market it on to actually show up, despite huge positive feedback on every platform I put it on. Everyone loves it. Until it's the actual event. Then Nada. I think there is a proof of social issue there too. I thought it was only the room being empty when I do last minute invites. But I've gotten people to help out with that (thank you guys). But I think also the initial announcement has a proof of social problem where the event sounds cool and people like the idea. But people don't know if people actually show up for it so there is a chance it is a nothing event (in their mind). So as their mind bounces around the problems of the week guess what gets compressed out of memory? That thing they saw that who knows if it's a real event or not.
So if I can get a simple guest book like feature as a Matrixdown element that I can add to events that will help me everywhere.
You asked what aspects are too complex with my other meetup org? Brainstorming sessions where no idea is bad or too big. And what it turns into is, we can get x0 to code an application using this one technology that he doesn't know so we can show case it and talk about it for an hour. So they want to impress people by showcasing code. But instead of showing off code we already have the idea is to sidetrack someone off of their own jobs and projects to make a throw away demo. And do the people who come up with these ideas intend to code it? Nope.
So I have seen meetups work that required zero work by the organizer. So what is the Ferengi 2nd rule of aquisition? "Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to." So the fact that a good meetup can be put together with zero effort sets the budget for a meetup. It's zero prep. You have to do initial marketting for a new group, but that's it. Marketting will be the only work I ever do for a meetup that is shy of 100 people. Anything shy of a conference isn't worth putting real work into.
You've got to introduce people to gold backed crypto. Crypto is giving itself a bad name by not being backed by something when it can be. Sadly even the solution to these problems is likely being maligned by the very problems it solves. I bet if you mention this stuff you'll get people saying pfff, did you see what happened to crypto and dismiss the solution with all the rest of crypto.
Yikes. I assume at minimum all of the subflooring will need to be replaced? Worse if you have to start replacing external walls.
Ideas are good. I can tell you what I'm working on. I'm working on parties. It will help me market this site to a broader audience. I'm trying to prevent this site being pidgen holed into whatever else someone else's vision is for it. And they aren't wrong to have their vision. What other vision can they have? You can try to sell other people on it, but you'd have to sell everyone. And many people will have momentum for their own visions, and maybe we shouldn't fault them for that. So parties allow us to utilize people's own visions in a non-destrutive way. These things don't always have to compete.
So what it is, is multiple community managed lenses to curate things. It's opt in censorship. But who censors? You can opt into that as well. So this is what https://submatrix.net is. It is the hyper-censored version that is meant to be a broadly paletable to the tamest of general tech-workers.
I've almost got the UI in for making your own parties.
As far as CSS goes. My gosh, AI is finally good at it. None of us should be hand crafting CSS. This parties UI I was talking about. The controls alone are going to make the rest of this site look like trash. I just need to process the rest of the site through the same context, and we'll be looking like substack or better. https://goatmatrix.net/z/partyui.html
Finally saw/rediscovered the About page.
Looks great! Overwhelming.
Gonna read it when I get home.
Already late to working on my studio within limited hours.
Catching up...
That self-evidently sounds unproductive. Without examples I can't guess what the point is or comment further. Have you explained this to them in these clear terms?
I used to put a lot of effort into prepping for Freedom meeting/parties. Now we do the minimum: clean the place up for guests. When we have the meeting space done I'll likely do the same - overproduce at first then fall into the minimalist routine. The best way to be minimal is to have other stuff demanding your attention.
A good policy that I should employ.
At Thursday's meeting featuring a couple gold traders, I brought up your fantastic great PAXG and XAUT post - as well as 7K Metals with their private network akin to e-transfers, goldbacks, etc.
Folks there are justifiably skeptical and don't trust systems they don't control. Gold in hand or not at all. They seem to fail to understand we also need alternative currencies.
It's been a few years, but I had a few hundred in BTC. I'm wondering if it's time to cash out and move to PAXG, XAUT or buy gold or useful cash - or wait for it to go back up. I don't want to download 100gb+ just to make my wallet work unless I'm going to close out. I don't want to use Coinbase because of all the registration bullshit. I don't even have a drivers license at the moment. Not sure what to do, if anything.
Most of the joists are fine. The mudsill between the foundation wall and joists is fucked all the way around, some completely, some not so bad. Some of the corner floorboards are bad - the really liked the corners. Haven't explored the studs behind the plastered walls on the main floor. May have to remove bricks outside to get in to work. Got a licensed contractor and an engineer will inspect and come up with a plan. Hopefully, I'll get work from it after my couple weeks of charity work.
Sounds great! I like this idea a whole lot so far.
Not sure "Party Management" is the best term. I think of birthdays, politics, orgies, etc. Cèilidh is too obscure. Groups is unclear, bland, and used on Facebook. Group Management is okay but sounds corporate. GOAT Parties sounds like Satanic rituals. Gathering at the Third place (not Third space) sounds like hippie gibberish. My FOEPATCHISM may not apply to some managers, but maybe you could come up with another acronym or term.
Rather than "censorship", I might consider it "filtration" - an issue I endlessly raised at SaidIt. Filter, rather than censor. Some connotations remain, but much less so. Also, as much as I hate tribalism and sportsballs, "teams" is still a good term for projects and organizations. Filter-teams or team-filters seems okay to me.
You could have whole iconic meta-tropes of pool boys cleaning pool filters - or car filters, coffee filters, HVAC filters, lighting gobos, Photoshop tools, or whatever. Each according to their topic.
Fantastic name!!! Doesn't have goat stigmas, pros and cons. Subs is what it's all about, in a matrix/network of them. (The variety of sub definitions may be fun to work with, graphically or metaphorically.)
So will SubMatrix.net just mirror GoatMatrix.net but through a bland filter of curation removing conspiracy, control, and controversial content? Or will it be the foundation on which all the parties will stand? At present it seems like it's just a GM mirror.
How about having topically curated themes?:
Would it be possible for folks to point their domains at these? (ie. LeverMind.net could actually be LeverMind.SubMatrix.net)
A unique (to me) product with great potential - this is extremely exciting.
Glad to hear I shouldn't be hand-coding CSS. I guess I have to learn A.I. I'm hoping your code is mostly standardized?
I've had a few dreams for CSS for years.
One fancy dream that might be beyond CSS is a layout selection, and each layout would have it's own default CSS that could change. By layout + CSS I mean that for example, the same content could be displayed like old-Reddit, new-Reddit, Lemmy, Facebook, phpBB, Twitter, etc. In this way new users would not be overwhelmed by a new GUI. Old folks are especially stuck in their ways. Besides the hard work to set this up, I honestly don't know why sites have never offered this.
Another fancy dream is to have an A/B/C mode for Advanced, Basic, and Custom GUI. The default would be basic, for phones. Advanced would show more non-critical info for PCs. Custom would save all user display options and preferences, possibly with extra Expert options. The default Advanced/Basic modes would adjust size of icons and text, until other size-preferences were set by users without triggering Custom mode, like Day/Night preferences.
My last fancy dream is to have a CSS dashboard panel with custom sliders, for rounding corners (ie. 0 to 50), border thickness, margin/padding/other spacing, fonts, colours, alternating striping (on/off), etc., etc., etc. Along with named and saved themes that can be shared.
Looks very sharp, modern, professional - and consistent.
If you can apply that to GoatMatrix.net I won't have much to improve. Adding additional character, colour, and flourishes will be easy.
I have some functional layout and ergonomic UX ideas - the critical foundations before aesthetics.
And we should still develop branding - logo(s), style-guide, campaigns, media and promos, merch, public relations, and strategies to deal with the inevitable influx of the good, the bad, and the meh folks.
Exceptionally unlikely. There are no registered RSVP lists. The invites are web-flyers sent by email or posted in Facebook Messenger group chats. People might call or email back to the origin (tall Bruno handles all the emails well) and occasionally a drama queen or two will make a stupid respond-all stink about something or other. Most of these folks are older, have no email etiquette, and aren't even that politically savvy other than it's all rigged and muh freedoms.
Perhaps you can make it so anon folks can drop something in a field, ideally their own name. Of course abuses might occur with larger or troll groups.
It's generally been my experience that the more polished and professional the web-flyer invite is, the more folks attend, though there have been a couple exceptions - because it was the birthday of someone specific folks wanted to attend. Spending/wasting time on a good flyer is a gamble.
I like the idea of skydiving. I haven't the funds, or time, or motivation, or opportunity, or social network to make it happen.
Movie night is a great idea. If you've already seen it then it's less great. If you're busy with other stuff, it's only playing at 1x, not having bathroom breaks, watching programmed content like TV is a thing of the past, immediate interactive chat is no big deal, multitasking is hard, or any number of cons/excuses - then folks easily drop off. I make the effort because I care and I can - and it's fun to me.
More later, off to work.
That's basically the idea. And then you have a going: list. If they are signed in here it is a button and uses thier username. If they are not signed in there is a text field and they can put in a name.
We used to network with User Groups for Microsoft, Linux, SQL Server, etc in libraries and movie theatres. Back in the 1980s we used user groups to swap pirated floppy disks.
I've collected almost 1000 General Mills cereal 'boxtops for education', and my favorite grade school is about to get a nice $100 donation for the 1000 collected boxtops. I've been eating a lot of Lucky Charms, Chex, Reese's Puffs, Cookie Crisps, and Cocoa Puffs. My dentist has been very happy with the new cavity fillings. The school tells me they'll spend the $100 on bullet-proof vests for the kids.
That's a lot of cereal. With all of that, you probably got to a single gram of protein.
Makes you think maybe the Lucky Charms is better than the rest. The collagen in the marshmellows is at least something.