/ Community

comm-comm what?

Hi, all peer-to-peer enthusiasts!

“Dat community communication” is a mouthful, so we shortened it to comm-comm.

Comm-comm is open to everyone and you are super-welcome to join us!

This article quickly introduces you into the history and purpose of comm-comm and maybe it helps you understand this a little better.

Why comm-comm? #

Dat started out as a project by Code-for-Science-and-Society (another mouthful, shortened to CS&S). It has grown so much that most of the people using Dat probably don’t know about all the things happening. The Dat chat can be very noisy. You might have a hard time catching up actually.

Comm-comm was started by the independents Diego and Martin − without any guidance at all − as a means to connect people working on Dat and keep them on the same page. CS&S does put some effort into Dat but there are limits. To outgrow those limits of CS&S together, we felt the need for a place where the individuals could join world-wide.

“All the Dat development happens in timezone where I (in Japan) usually sleep. If joining the Dat community is really stressful to me, then it also must be for others. I want to support a place where we can merge our distributed thoughts.”
Martin Heidegger

“I feel like there is a lot of potential in decentralized apps also I believe Dat is a fundamental technology for that. Communication was the only aspect to be left behind in the evolving process of the fundamental blocks. For example, there are many cool modules & projects that you can use which are somehow hidden on GitHub. It would be very “healthy” for the community to have a place where we can effectively communicate.”
Diego Paez

Where does community happen? #

Until now people living Europe, North & South America, East Asia and Australia/New Zealand have participated in comm-comm. To organize the effort we need to work online.

Of course, we use the IRC and Gitter chat for light conversation. However, all our organization happens in github:dat-land/comm-comm. Any announcement, any improvement, any meeting, anything happening really is supposed to be added as an issue there. By ✔︎ Watching the repository you should be up-to-date.

Diego and Martin are also limited in their capacity. If you see something happening or want to contribute: please feel free to add an issue, highlighting something, send a PR or help us out in any other ways.

The biggest part of comm-comm are our online meetings.

What is a comm-comm meeting? #

You can announce any kind of community meeting using the issue template. It will be shown on our website and added to the subscribable calendar automatically.

When we talk about “comm-comm meetings”, we usually refer to our weekly ±1h online meetings. Diego & Martin are committed to take turns hosting those meetings at 18:00 and 9:00 GMT.

Since they are half a world apart after all, they don’t join each-other’s meeting. Consequently the hosting style is probably a bit different - which is okay: They take that hour and try to delve into each attendees’ current issue a little bit. Look at some code and most importantly try to figure out a common lingo around this distributed Dat-world and where this could go from here.

(Side-note: the use of words - nomenclature - is right now being discussed in github:datprotocol/DEPs#5! If there is a term that is hard for you to understand: We love to hear about it!)

In this hour we discuss and announce Dat oriented topics. We want to make this a good place for people who have made their first steps with the technology and want to share something or have some question about procedures. Though, don’t be surprised if we dive into the topic a bit deeper.

What can you expect from a comm-comm meeting? #

Various people from all over the world will join in a video chat and talk about Dat, p2p and anything else that helps getting to know each other and the issues they face. Diego and Martin will attempt to moderate but if one thinks to be better at it, we gladly pass on the moderation and focus on taking notes.

Also, during a Dat comm-comm meeting, it is okay to have a talk about corporate issues, showcase a product using Dat, share best practices or ask for some guidance on business ideas.

Well, actually comm-comm meetings are a community effort to create a new space where we can talk about Dat, share some updates, make an announcement and everything in between. In fact, thanks to one of the hosts, Martin Heidegger, it is now easier to make an announcement in the next comm-comm.

Whether you have been working on a project using Dat, or made some cool module that others can make use of too, share it with us! You can have some minutes to announce it or let us announce it for you. Talk about the benefits and challenges with other like-minded folks!

All of this is great for us. But we do have some limits. While criticism or voicing frustration is okay, please moderate yourself and attacking other people is not okay. Also, this space is made for talking about Dat. We might interrupt you if you try to advertise competing solutions (particularly closed-source solutions but also IPFS).

If you want to get a feeling for the meeting, please check out our meeting notes to see about what kind of topics we talked before.

What do we want to achieve with Dat comm-comm? #

We have the following goals:

  • Augment the conversation about Dat. Dat is becoming more stable, it is being used in more and more projects, and this place wants to follow that flow by creating a place where we can talk about Dat.
  • Help the Dat project move forward. At the current Dat project state the comm-comm group can help by collecting common requirements. Eg: if some individual or company joins a comm-comm meeting we can listen to how they are using Dat and the blockers they found and how they have solved them. Using this information we can suggest common pain points or areas of collective collaboration between companies and the Dat project core team.
  • Improve our communication. In the past one could say that talking about Dat was left to only a niche group of specialists. Now this is not true anymore but that does not mean that there is no room for improvement. It is well known that every healthy community needs super good documentation. Also, Dat comm-comm meetings are a great place to help outsiders keep track of recent changes, new modules, new projects built with Dat and everything in between. You just need to join into one of the weekly meetings!
  • We want to be friendly with non-tech people and with developers building things on top of Dat. We are aware of the different needs these two groups have but we hope you can consider Dat comm-comm meetings as good entry points where you can come and ask some questions, share your ideas, announce a new thing or just listen to the conversation; but, please! Say “hi”! ;-)

Interested yet? Come join us to widen and improve the Dat community! 🎉

Thanks!

Dat comm-comm team: Martin & Diego with the help of the CS&S staff.

📷 Cover photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

Fun facts:

  • The first comm-comm meeting was held between Martin and Diego on December 20, 2018, connecting Japan and Buenos Aires. 🏅
  • We follow two very different timezones so chances are the next comm-comm meeting will suit your schedule accordingly. 👍
  • Some of the Dat core developers join us and share some really cool insight of what they are doing or plan to. 😎