Have a way for local IPFS communities to organize

[daviddias]

We need a clear way for IPFS community to organize, or at least some guidelines, so that people that want to host an IPFS meetup or be part of one can find it and be informed of when it is happening.

We've looked into attending.io and meetup.com, both have pros and cons, but none lets us create a succinct and clean experience.

@RichardLitt you have been developing a lot of the materials, calendars and resources for the IPFS community, would you be able to make this happen? I feel that a guideline plus a community map (#39) added on ipfs.io could be something really good.

[daviddias]

(new idea) we could have meetup folder here and then meetup/lisbon, meetup/portland, etc and then have a README with orgs, location and other links + one markdown file per meetup with resources of that meetup (presentations, photos, etc)

[jbenet]

👍 on a meetup folder here as a first step.

[RichardLitt]

We could have a meetup folder here with assets used universally, and suggest that each chapter build their own MeetUp group. We can sync their meetups to the IPFS community calendar, and anyone who wants to can be pointed there. The issue with this is that meetup is a separate, siloed service, and it's common for assets to be used or not use, and for a community to break down if the person leading it leads.

I think we should do something similar to nodeschool or Papers-We-Love. I opened an issue on PapersWeLove here and helped them switch to the NodeSchool model; a lot of what I said there applies here, so I'll copy it over (replace Papers We Love with IPFS, and imagine that we already have a few chapters up and running):

What

I'm suggesting we adopt a NodeSchool like chapter system, where each chapter gets their own repository in order to help organizers coordinate efforts and cut down on time and resources spent figuring out management.

Why

Help Organizers coordinate

I'm currently looking into how to host a Papers We Love in Boston. It's not difficult to do - find a speaker, find a space, let people know it exists, set up a MeetUp group. However, as I'm working with a coorganizer, we have to figure out a way to talk to each other outside of Twitter direct messages. I'd like to be able to use a GitHub repository to use issues for discussion of how to do this, largely because that would allow a way for community members to vote on papers closer to the source, because it's what I'm used to doing with NodeSchool and other organizations, and because it doesn't use Meetups rather poor tools for discussion.

Cross-pollinate ideas about how to coordinate

It would be good to have a standard way of communicating with coorganizers so that chapters can learn from each other how to better organize, too.

People are already doing this

Some chapters already have their own GitHub repositories, or organizations: papers-we-love-rtp, Munich, Bangalore, Hyderabad. Some individuals set up issues for their talks, too, like these in Chicago, and London. I think keeping this in the PapersWeLove organization would be more useful.

Chapter histories could be maintained

Finally, Boston's PapersWeLove chapter used to exist, and now it doesn't. Without some sort of history - which would have happened if there were closed issues on the GitHub repo, instead of just a deleted Meetup group - I don't know why it failed to continue, what caused the chapter to fall apart, and how those issues might be alleviated (or indeed, not. Maybe Boston isn't a good place for Papers We Love.).

How

Set up a repo to help organizers, like this nodeschool one. Create a team called chapter-organizers, and give members access to edit their new chapter repo, e.g. https://github.com/paperswelove/boston.

I think this approach works particularly well for NodeSchool, and would work very well for IPFS, especially with our github-issues-all-the-things mindset. I'm happy to write up a README about proper protocol for this.

Also 👍 for the map.

[jbenet]

@RichardLitt im all for that. do we want this in a separate org? or the same? i know people like separate orgs.

it's also nice to be able to say:

ipfs/nyc
ipfs/boston
ipfs/pdx
ipfs/paris
ipfs/lx
ipfs/london

which we could get on the same ipfs org. otherwise:

ipfs-meetups/nyc
ipfs-meetups/boston
ipfs-meetups/pdx
ipfs-meetups/paris
ipfs-meetups/lx
ipfs-meetups/london

or something...

[jbenet]

(i.e. id prefer same org, but others may kill me if that goes on too long)

[RichardLitt]

I think the same org. There's really no cost, at this point, to having more repos. The only issue is that we need to be very clear about teams for people who can contribute to repos - someone deleted all of NodeSchool the other month, which was super awkward.

[jbenet]

someone deleted all of NodeSchool the other month, which was super awkward.

yeah this is why i want to hand out permissions granularly. oh trust!

[daviddias]

@skylarnorris have you stumbled upon this issue before?

[skylarnorris]

@diasdavid had not as I am not subscribed to this repo but @RichardLitt is handling most Meetup stuff now.

[RichardLitt]

@kumavis would it have been easier to organize your meetup with a separate organization, or with a separate ipfs/seattle repo?

[RichardLitt]

I am going to veto making a new organization or repositories for meetups, for now. What we have seems to be working. We can revisit this later. For now, communities can open an issue, read the guide in meetups/, and talk to me if they need help with anything. I'll keep an eye on how people organize in the future, and may come back to this repo, but I think what we currently have is working well enough to not add the overhead of a dozen repos or another org.