hive mind group

[guitarplayer]

Hi all, so in the face of the fact that there is currently no MMG taking in people and I have been diagnosed by DW with untapped extroversion, I am trying to come up with some social structure that will facilitate talking about interesting stuff that is ERE adjacent. I have intentionally named this thread hive mind group rather than master mind group, because the way I envisage it is more as a free exchange of ideas rather than a group led by one person that has as its aim progressing towards goals of particular members.

Definitely more on the socialiser side with some explorer inevitably weaved in because I am an explorer, but not an achiever side, so no keeping each others to account on progress, achievements etc.

So the vibe of this would be a sort of catch up with friends over your favourite beverage to chill out a bit.

I think for this to work, people need to be on board with quite some stuff from the forum, to be similar in this respect which would unlock enjoying the company of each other.

I know many people are uncomfortable with no overt goal, so we could set up some provisional goals to use as a pretext to meet, a bit like what I think was the purpose of learning knots in another MMG (not diminishing the value of learning knots nonetheless).

I note from my journal @loutfard, @NewBlood and @basuragomi are potentially up for it. I will refer to this thread in my journal so they can get a bit of a feel for my idea to see if they'd be up for this sort of thing. Which it might not be what you are looking for and that's fine !

And any other people keen to participate in something like this, just write down below.

[Jean]

I'de like to be in.

[sky]

I'm interested

[basuragomi]

I'm still interested! I think most MMGs have been using Slack or Discord so those might be useful for running the meetings.

[loutfard]

I'd be interested. Two things:
- Feedback here. Should anything more widely useful come out of our chit chat, I'd appreciate it would find its way back here. I guess I can help make sure this happens.
- I am difficult when it comes to media. I prefer free, open, federated platforms I can access from the client of my preference. I will tolerate ones I can only use from a recent Firefox browser, with no phone verification.

[AxelHeyst]

@loutfard what platforms do you recommend that meet your tolerance? For the record the MMG I'm in uses Signal and Google Hangouts/Meet/whatever it's called, purely out of familiarity and ease, so I'm curious what platforms would work. Also I'd just add FWIW that when thinking about a platform, a consideration I had is "the platform does not lend itself to broad wandering asynchronous text threads", purely as a constraint to not inadvertently venn-overlap the function of the forum and splinter members into the darknet. For this reason I dis-prefer slack/discord style platforms.

[Jean]

We have a mumble server with friends. I think we could use it.

[jacob]

It's possible to PM and "reply all" to multiple people on the forum, so technically there's no need for extra software to organize zoom/googlemeets.

[AxelHeyst]

Well, it is valuable to have a dark space to have text conversations on topics that are verboten / dysfunctional on the forum. Imo it’s an overall good for the community to be able to have conversations on these topics with other ERE people but not publicly/in a small, trusted, non anonymous group. So the function of the text platform is more than just coordinating video calls (ime… not trying to tell you guys how you ought to run your thing, I’ll shut up now, etc).

[ffj]

Can you refresh all of us on how this all works? Would it be something akin to a zoom call with cameras? Everybody in the group logs on at a certain time? Talks about whatever topic agreed upon?

I am embarrassed to never have fully understood the whole MMG setup. Explain it to me as if I am a child. Ha!

[loutfard]

@loutfard what platforms do you recommend that meet your tolerance?
For the record the MMG I'm in uses Signal and Google Hangouts/Meet/whatever it's called, purely out of familiarity and ease, so I'm curious what platforms would work.

Matrix, mattermost (example deployment), jitsi meet (example deployment) are some examples.

Also I'd just add FWIW that when thinking about a platform, a consideration I had is "the platform does not lend itself to broad wandering asynchronous text threads", purely as a constraint to not inadvertently venn-overlap the function of the forum and splinter members into the darknet. For this reason I dis-prefer slack/discord style platforms.

Good suggestion.

[NewBlood]

I'm still interested!

[basuragomi]

Pushing this forward, it seems like group PMs to organize meetings plus Jitsi would have the greatest compatibility.

@ffj: As far as I understand, MMGs are basically ERE-themed videoconference show-and-tells/status update meetings that devolve into casual chatting. This one would skip the show-and-tell bit.

[guitarplayer]

@ffj I would say something similar to what @basuragomi says.

I tried jitsi with my wife and it worked fine. We have a bunch of interested people

guitarplayer
Jean
sky
basuragomi
lourfard
NewBlood

ffj are you interested given the definition above?

I can craft a dm to all interested. For the meetup itself, I won’t manage in April I don’t think, but we can talk about dates etc in messages.

Writing what I just did right there above, one way to think of it is a virtual ere meet-up.

[ffj]

My life is extremely busy at the moment so I may opt for a later event. Thanks all for the clarification.

[philipreal]

If it's not too late, I'd also be interested

[guitarplayer]

yeah no worries it is not too late yet.

I just tried sending a message to all interested but got info that I tried to send a message to 'too many members'. I will try to find out if there is something I don't know about group messaging.

Meanwhile, one practicality we will need to figure out is hour that suits everyone.

I am currently at UCT+1, and you?

[jacob]

I just tried sending a message to all interested but got info that I tried to send a message to 'too many members'. I will try to find out if there is something I don't know about group messaging.

The maximum number of recipients allowed is 15. The exact number is arbitrary but the intention is to prevent spam in case a spammer gets in the door.

[guitarplayer]

looks like for me the max no of recipients is 5.

[jacob]

Should be fixed now. Try again.