Collabathon ‘23
Welcome collaborative technologists, to the first Collaborative Technology Alliance Collabathon!
The Collabathon is a multi-week, asynchronous hackathon, intended to catalyze and fund new or existing projects focused on activating cross platform interoperability and collaboration, hosted by the CTA.
Over the last year we’ve built wonderful community, shared our projects with one another, and initiated a number of collaborations of various sizes and scopes. We’ve launched a new website, agreed on a set of CTA principles and gathered signatures on our CTA pledge. And yet, it’s been hard to activate and sustain longer, deeper cross-organization collaborations over time. So we have decided to take the rest of our CTA seed funding, around $30k (and we hope to raise more from sponsors) and use it to incubate and activate projects that we believe will contribute to the long term goals of the alliance.
We are asking:
How can we catalyze more collaboration among social technologists who align with the CTA principles, across projects/organizations? What does it take to break down the barriers of collaboration and interoperability?
This convening will stretch across several months, with the following goals:
Fund important projects related to the CTA’s purpose and principles
Experiment with a participatory community process to decide what we want to fund
See what it feels like to collaborate more deeply across our organizations/projects
Bring the CTA vision and principles out into the world more
Build even more community among CTA members
Projects areas we want to fund:
Technical interoperability & data portability across social platforms. e.g.
Agreeing on shared data schemas, to make it easy to export/import data
Working on API integrations, or experimenting with adopting standard protocols
Sovereign identity (e.g. adopting DID-based login)
Social platform ethics and accountability, e.g.
Creating shared Terms of Service, data use agreements and privacy policies
Nutrition labels for social platforms
Exploring Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the collaborative tech space
Platform coops and data commons. e.g.
Sharing legal support to find aligned org structures and business models
Designing cross-alliance governance of shared resources
Social interoperability. e.g.
Facilitated explorations of what gets in the way of people working together
Mapping the collaborative tech ecosystem in useful ways
Other projects that align with the purpose of the CTA or would support CTA member platforms
The plan and timeline (dates may shift a little)
1/24: Kickoff event. We will host multiple sessions to launch the Collabathon and answer questions.
First session @ 1800 GMT / 1300 EST / 1000 PST / 0500 AEDT
Second session @ 2200 GMT / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEDT
1/26: Office hours @ 2200 UTC / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEST (+1 day), We are holding weekly office hours as a place to connect with others who are participating, get updates on the process and flow of the gathering, talk about the project proposals, and perhaps even join forces! After this week these will happen every Thursday at 1900 UTC / 1400 EST / 1100 PST / 0600 AEST.
2/7: Project presentation event. Project leads share information about their ideas and team formation begins.
First session @ 1800 GMT / 1300 EST / 1000 PST / 0500 AEDT
Second session @ 2200 GMT / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEDT
2/7 - 2/21: Discussion of projects on Hylo. Team formation continues. Projects that don’t meet our criteria are filtered out.
2/21: Build kickoff event: Highlight projects and teams that are moving forward into the build phase. Teams can still shift and grow after this.
First session @ 1800 GMT / 1300 EST / 1000 PST / 0500 AEDT
Second session @ 2200 GMT / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEDT
TBD: Workshops or sessions to support project teams (?)
3/7: Check-point event: teams can present their work so far and get feedback from the community if they want. Could involve input and support from experts too.
First session @ 1800 GMT / 1300 EST / 1000 PST / 0500 AEDT
Second session @ 2200 GMT / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEDT
TBD: In person gathering(s)?
3/21: Final presentations. We will kickoff a participatory process for deciding how much money to allocate to each project. This is still being designed.
First session @ 1800 GMT / 1300 EST / 1000 PST / 0500 AEDT
Second session @ 2200 GMT / 1700 EST / 1400 PST / 0900 AEDT
Projects continue forward with funding!
How to get involved
Spread the word: Share this page with collaborative technologists who might want to participate.
Partner: Broadcast this event to your network and get listed as a partner organization on the Collabathon website. Also, you could offer a workshop or session of some kind alongside the collabathon to bring supportive information or helpful tools to project leads and contributors
Participate: Submit a project proposal or join a project team. Remember to sign the CTA pledge first.
Sponsor (You can donate directly on our Open Collective page):
🌱 Seedling - $20+: Contribute as a Collabathon participant or supporter.
🍎 Fruit – $1,000: Help cover costs for the organizing team of Tibet, Keala, Jenn & Vincent. Get public recognition (name and logo on our website and materials).
🌳 Tree – $2,500: Fund a small collaborative project. Get public recognition (name and logo on our website and materials).
⛰️Mountain – $10,000: Fund a medium to large sized collaborative project. Get featured public recognition (name and logo on our website and materials).
To get involved email stewards@collaborative.tech
Let’s kick off 2023 by weaving our work together, so we can overgrow the extractive, attention economy with a new tech ecosystem based on solidarity and cooperation!
~ Your CTA Collabathon team: Jenn, Keala, Madelynn, Tibet, Vincent ~
