Berin Iwlew
@berin

I'm Berin Iwlew, and I'm the Project Lead of Networked.Community. I'm also an Evangelist for the Progressive Coders Network. I'm a Full Stack Software Engineer, Senior Solutions Architect, Bootstrap Startup Founder, and Societal Futurist.

Networked.Community's mission is help mitigate societal risks. It was born out of the need to collaborate with other members of my community to help with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Progressive Coder's Network (ProgCode) is a 501(c4) (501(c3) pending) with nearly 2000 tech and non-tech activists alike who's aim is to reduce the influence of big money in politics by building open-source tools for the grassroots.

When Networked.Community first started in March of 2020, it was dubbed the "Battle Creek Michigan Area Covid19 / Coronavirus Grassroots Resource Network". It is now available as an archive.

Someone local to me was using Google Spreadsheets to share community resources and service listings - as well as to build a list of volunteers and those seeking help, and I helped to put it together in to a simple CMS.

Our plan is to rebuild these pieces in to a more robust system that can be deployed by any community.

At this moment, we are currently setting up a suite of different open-source solutions:

-Real-time and secure end-to-end encrypted Chat/VoIP/Video using the Matrix protocol with the Element client

-Source code self-hosting and devops with Gitlab

-Non-invasive social networking with a Diaspora pod

-Video conferencing with a Jitsi video bridge

-Online document editing, collaboration and MUCH more with NextCloud

-Fundraising via OpenCollective

We also plan to develop our own open-source software to not only integrate these existing solutions, but for other planned features:

-Registration form with vetting

-Volunteer management

-Volunteer Timebank

-Single-sign on for all services with OAuth/OpenID

-Scripts and Releases to deploy this suite for yourself

My current endeavor is to help bridge ProgCode's Slack with our Matrix homeserver on Networked.Community so that we can keep full histories of our communications, and not be limited by the free plan.

Moving nearly 2000 members off of Slack, Google, and other services isn't easy, but I believe it is important for ProgCode to take back control over their own data, and to keep it away from highly intrusive data mining.

I'm asking for donations to work full time on ProgCode 2.0's digital transformation and the solutions that will be provided by Networked.Community, and thus, everyone else!

Thank you for your support!