Setting up a Degrowth Summer School UK website

Thanks Oxana for keeping me in the loop. Please take all the time you need.

As I am always curious about online collaboration practices, could you share with us some details about how your group organises internally, in terms of software tools and communication channels used?

We’re using pretty common tools - a whatsapp group, a mailing list and a bunch of open source pads and google docs. But weekly calls have been most productive so far in terms of decision making. If there are any other tools you’ve found particularly useful for online collaboration, please let me know!

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Thanks for the insight. Did you also know, that we are publishing commons alternatives to the commercial infrastructures you mention at degrowth.net?

There is

the two flagships

  • cloud.degrowth.net for collaborative file, contacts and calendar sharing, plus editing text and spreadsheet documents
  • agora.degrowth.net for structured conversation, mapping, event publication and Markdown formatted writing

and smaller utilities

Would you like to try out some of those?

Great, thanks for the info! I’ll share with the team.

We should have a chat this friday about the website plans, hopefully will be able to decide something - will let you know then. Many thanks for your help!

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Hey Jon!
We created a little working group to deal with the website and other digital tasks, and scheduled our first call for 14 Jan 6 pm London time. Let me know if you’d like to join the chat.
Best wishes for the new year!
Oxana

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Hi @Oxana, that would be a pleasure.

Then we could boild down your actual needs, and decide upon items for direct implementation. Good luck with all your prospects, too!

Jon

Awesome and thanks! I’ll send you the link closer to the date.

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Hi Jon! Here’s the link https://meet.jit.si/Degrowthsummerschool-DIGITAL. The call will be at 6 pm London time. Hope you can make it and looking forward to chatting with you!

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Hey Jon, could you please double-check the invitation to the ‘Summer School UK’ folder on the cloud you sent to me earlier? I can’t see it in my account. My user name is oxa. Maybe you created another profile when invited me? Thanks!

Hey Jon! Sorry for disturbing you again. The cloud is working perfectly now. The only problem is that it keeps sending email notifications every half an hour or so, I’ve already received about 100 emails from it with mostly the same notification. Is there any way to adjust the number of notifications? Thanks!

Also, I’m not sure if Emidio informed you, but he dropped out. We’re trying to find another person to set up the website. Thanks for your patience and support!

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Hi @yala. I’ll be doing the setup of the UK summer school website. I’ve built some sites on Wordpress in the past, so it would be great to use that again. Do you have a Wordpress hosting service that we could also use?

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Best people, sorry for being absent the last week. And thanks for tuning in @jbusch.

@Oxana I suspect the cloud notifications continue to arrive? We have a similar incident reported from another instance of the Software.

@jbusch Yes, we maintain WordPress farms and independent sites, depending on the needs. We might want to refurbish a farm for you, or launch a new independent instance.

For now we were talking to start collecting the content and its structure in a ghost.org blog, so writing can start before actually building a design.

Would you also feel comfortable in templating with Handlebars and JavaScript for a Ghost theme, instead of a PHP design for WordPress?

@Oxana Please excuse I had abruptly quit the conversation without the voluntary delivery. Please find a login screen for the blog inviting you to register at

https://uksummerschool.degrowth.net/ghost/

I hope the environment it offers is as self-explaining as possible. Please give notice, in case you have questions.

One might also take examples from my previous theme research for arts.degrowth.net at help needed for "arts for degrowth" blog (#33) · Issues · degrowth / degrowth.net · GitLab

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Thank you very much Jon!
The notifications stopped arriving after a couple of days.

Hi @Oxana Did you know that there is a UK degrowth network and website: https://degrowthuk.org Might be useful for publicising your summer school.
Mark

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Hi @mark.burton! Thank you, it would be great to share info about the summer school on the website once we’re ready to go public :slight_smile:
Do you manage the website, or, if not, maybe you know who we could get in touch with about this?
Thanks,
Oxana

Yes @Oxana, it’s managed by me and Joe Herbert (Newcastle). So yes, just let me know. And do join the email list.
Mark

Hi @Oxana I am finding that the registration screen has disappeared and someone reclaimed that blog for themselves. Was it maybe you?

I’m especially interested, if email transmission is working from the system. If you need any assistance in setting up the content, please create an account for ecobytes and status@ecobytes.net. We can then request a new password, if necessary.

Hi @jbusch are you decided on WordPress, or would you like to give Ghost templating a try?

Theming with Handlebars, SCSS and JavaScript is really a breeze, in comparison to WordPress themes with PHP.

Hi Jon! Thanks for the message and following up with us.
Indeed, the screen has disappeared, I didn’t register and don’t think anyone else has, but trying to find out to be certain. Is there any chance that it could expire?
We should have another call sometime soon, likely this week, and will try to make some decisions about the website then. Again, you’re welcome to join us if you’d like! In any case, we’ll keep you posted :slight_smile:

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That’s great! Thank you @mark.burton! We’re actually planning on starting promoting the summer school relatively soon to fuel interest before the launch of the call. We’ll be in touch then.

I think many people in our group have already joined the email list, and it probably can be another channel to spread the word.

Thanks,
Oxana