Original post on cosocial.ca

If you’re looking for something Fedi to do in Edmonton today, our very own @dawn from #CoSocialCa will be on a panel with @chad to talk about the new book from @rwg “Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media”

Check it out here […]

Original post on cosocial.ca

Hey #CoSocialCa -

I'll host a TechOps gathering tomorrow evening.

Anyone who can make it is welcome to attend to discuss:

- Our #ElbowsUp plans to move to Canadian (or not-US) hosting
- Mastodon 4.5 upgrade planning
- Future plans
- Etc.

Details here: https://luma.com/idn9g2b9 […]

I don’t know if this is a #CoSocialCa server issue or an #IceCube issue but the trending feed has been bare of late. 5-6 stories and then nothing else loads.

Original post on cosocial.ca

In Canada, the CBC might be the kind of entity to help run / coordinate “public service social media”.

With interoperable standards and options for hosting, this could be a mix of shared infrastructure (& moderation) as well as individual orgs like @gandersocial.bsky.social and #CoSocialCa […]

@johannab this should be getting so much more funding but it is very hard to raise for lego: people have to see themselves in this.

I’ve put some money to do some self hosting experiments with.

I’d like to suggest that #CoSocialCa chip in, what do you think?

In Canada, the CBC might be the kind of entity to help run / coordinate “public service social media”.

With interoperable standards and options for hosting, this could be a mix of shared infrastructure (& moderation) as well as individual orgs like @gandersocial.bsky.social and #CoSocialCa

#CosocialCa #CoSocialAGM who else is wearing a costume for the AGM?

Interesting to see that bird.makeup now does quote posts. I look forward to quote post creation coming to #CoSocialCa and to @Tusky .

Original post on cosocial.ca

As we prepare for the #CoSocialCa AGM, the #CoSocialTechOps working group is meeting tomorrow evening (8:30-9:00 EST) to discuss our strategy for the coming year.

We’ll review the current state of our operations and our #ElbowsUp initiative - making plans to move our stack from Digital Ocean […]

Taking part in my first #cosocialca / #socialcoop reading group next week. We'll be reading Lifehouse by Adam Greenfield over 3 sessions. Excited to get to dive into it with other folks.

CoSocial Community Cooperative (@coop@cosocial.ca) Fedicon, a Canadian conference for decentralized social networks, is coming up in Vancouver Aug 1st & 2nd @fedicon@techhub.social Several members are speaking & attending, including from out of town. So we’re organizing a a member social / dinner after the conference to meet fellow members in person! Please RSVP to join us Aug 2nd, we’ll find a place to meet close to the conference based on attendance https://lu.ma/reg4appv

I’ll be attending and speaking at Fedicon, as well as being at the #CoSocialCa members meetup right after.

My working title is: Beyond Microblogging: AT Protocol for Building Unique Social Apps
https://cosocial.ca/@coop/114863337104268465

Original post on cosocial.ca

@coop I see that the #Bridgy system to share posts between the Fediverse and Bluesky now allows server admins to opt-in for their instance (I don't know if that would still let individuals opt-out).

https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-121/

Is this something we want to consider for […]

Boris open mouth wave selfie with JDD at Internet Archive Canada Permanent Library.

Met @jdd at @internetarchivecanada event. #CoSocialCa members in the wild.

So it posts to Swarm (API) -> OwnYourSwarm (MicroPub) -> MicroBlog, which then follows MicroBlog cross posting rules -> LinkedIn, Nostr, Tumblr, #CoSocialCa & Bluesky

Bluesky had stopped working (old school app passwords) so I removed this account and checkins will now post to @bmannconsulting.com

I am cursed so I will end up using 3 different accounting apps for the needs of 3 different orgs: Wave + Wave Payrolll for @z-space.ca, Quickbooks for #CoSocialCa, and Xero personally for multi-currency and actually being good.

bmannconsulting.com/notes/accoun...

Shared Hosting | Koumbit.org

Here’s our list of Canadian Tech Providers from #CoSocialCa #ElbowsUpTech members.cosocial.ca/t/canadian-t...

Koumbit is a Montreal based co-op that has email + web hosting bundled for $10CAD/month www.koumbit.org/en/content/s...

1RG (@1rg@cosocial.ca) 20 Posts, 24 Following, 32 Followers ·

As it turns out, I've been surrounded by #CoSocialCa members this whole Toronto trip!

@myles is one, who also hangs out at @1rg with @serena & @mveytsman

That's 4 members in one post!

(There are probably more!)

Original post on cosocial.ca

What I learned is that editing one track audio from a Zoom recording is painful!

We’re on a trial of Riverside FM, which does multi track recording, so we’ll try another one recorded “properly”.

Also still have to upload the transcript and show notes, since we were also learning using the […]

Happy 2nd Birthday, CoSocial! Two years ago today, CoSocial opened its virtual doors. This was after action was taken from the original vision. A lot has happened in the last two years, and we wanted to share some of that with you: * We grew from ten members to nearly two hundred members. * We upgraded our core Mastodon service multiple times through growth, launched a Lemmy instance (which was later sunset), launched a Castopod instance (at podcasts.cosocial.ca), and are continuing to explore Pixelfed. * We have committed ourselves to not only requiring Canadian data residency for our services as we have from the beginning, but we are moving to Canadian-owned service providers. * We have expanded our support for related organizations through donations to IFTAS and participation in the Fediverse Governance research. Our financial situation is solid and we continue to be a small but steady presence in the Canadian social media landscape. We are actively recruiting a system administrator, and are discussing the best ways to responsibly expand access to CoSocial across to Canadians of all means. As we collectively explore what we can offer Canadians in terms of Canadian-owned cooperative social media, members of CoSocial have been participating in reading groups on the Federated Governance report (reading group summary) and on Governable Spaces (just started) so that we can understand how to better provide governance to CoSocial and assist other Canadian organizations who want to host their own federated social media services. We can always use your help in building the future of social media in Canada, so join us and make it happen! ## Notes from the TechOps Working Group In the last year, the TechOps working group added two new volunteers @john and @swart, bringing the number of volunteers in the working group to twelve. Our ambitions still exceed our current capacity, but what we have done in the last twelve months is nothing short of amazing. CoSocial’s main service continues to be our Mastodon instance, requiring constant care and feeding. @mick, @john, and @johannab performed 6 minor upgrades over the course of the year, as well as one major one (to Mastodon version 4.3) which required significant effort and planning to pull of successfully. Our database continues to grow and is our single largest technical expense. We started the year on a 60 GB PostgreSQL cluster and are just about to run out of space on the 100 GB cluster we’re running today. ##### By the Numbers CoSocial’s Mastodon instance: * 176 active accounts (+48 this year) * Members posted 100,216 times * 18,686 new posts * 50,522 reposts * 31,008 replies * Members favourited 141,304 posts * Others liked our posts 122,673 times ### Looking Ahead: Moving on from Digital Ocean We’ve been happy with Digital Ocean as our hosting provider since the first one-click install Droplet was spun up by @boris and we opened the doors to members two years ago. As a Canadian co-op, we’ve always made a point of keeping our data in Canadian data centres, but in light of recent hostile behaviour towards Canada from the United States, we feel that in order to preserve the rights of our members to express themselves on the Fediverse and to support Canadian businesses, the time has come to find a new, Canadian-owned and operated provider to host our services. This move to a new hosting provider will be a significant effort, but it offers us an opportunity to re-consider and possibly dramatically alter the architecture of our services to improve their manageability and (possibly) even reduce their cost of operation. The work to find a suitable new home for our services has begun, and we’ll have more updates on our progress as it is made in the coming weeks. If you would like to be involved in this critical effort, please reach out! ### Hiring some help For the past two years, the operation of our servers and services have been a successful volunteer effort. I am proud to say that we have not had any unplanned downtime in the past year, and our volunteers have been able to keep our systems secure and reliable. In order to ensure the stability and long-term viability of our services, we’re looking to pay someone with the skills necessary to help keep the lights on, keep things up to date, and keep our technology moving forward. As a member-run co-op, we will always be driven by the participation of our members, but the reliability of our services can’t be entirely dependent on volunteer efforts. If you or someone you know is looking for a small amount of side work as a sysadmin, please see our post here and reach out. ### More Services, More Growth When the major work of relocation is behind us, and with some extra hands on deck to help keep things sailing smoothly, I’m looking forward to building additional member-run Fediverse services for our members to take advantage of, as well as streamlining the operations of the co-op to position us for long term growth. The next year is shaping up to be one of tremendous change, and the need for safe and reliable places for Canadians to raise their voice and connect with one another has never been more crucial. I am glad to have had the opportunity to support our operations and growth this year, and I am excited to take on the challenges ahead together with you all.

I blogged about the #CoSocialCA 2nd anniversary, and so did the team: blog.cosocial.ca/blog/happy-2nd-birthday-...

The Cosocial logo, a flat graphic rendition of three people rowing a canoe, in red against a grey background.

Today is the second anniversary of the launch of our member-owned co-op Mastodon instance, #CoSocialCa. My contributions to it are the most satisfying work I’ve done in years. Here’s a blog essay that goes further and argues that the future of social media looks […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]

The CoSocialist Future

What he said!

#CoSocialCa #fediverse #Canada

www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/0...

I posted a link to #CoSocialCa research on Canadian Tech Providers members.cosocial.ca/t/canadian-t...

Listed there is Fullhost fullhost.com

Also OVH, a French company, has bare metal servers in Quebec www.ovhcloud.com/en-ca/

I’m also pricing out some rack space in Vancouver

Tech Co-Ops List https://tech-coops.xyz A list of tech coops and resources concerning tech coops and worker owned cooperatives in general. Tech cooperatives are worker-owned cooperatives that operate in the infor...

There is a list of Tech Co-ops which I found as part of research for #CoSocialCa members.cosocial.ca/t/tech-co-op...

And yeah there could be many more co-op focused tech services

We did this research as part of #CoSocialCa members.cosocial.ca/t/canadian-t...

Webnames @webnames.ca or Hover @hover.com are the two recommendations. #ElbowsUpTech

Yes, I know, I'm one of the directors of the #CoSocialCa co-operative. And @ap.brid.gy connects the two protocols.

AT Protocol's "big world" is important for country wide discussions, and needs infrastructure in Canada. Follow #MapleSky for more on that.

Original post on cosocial.ca

It has been said that the Fediverse in general is a progressive bubble and I think that assertion is fair-ish. Certainly true of me and I think somewhat true of our coop-owned #CoSocialCa instance.

So, let me introduce our own @mpjgregoire , an actual Canadian Conservative on CoSocial who […]

Wanted: System Administrator - CoSocial Community Cooperative CoSocial is looking for a System Administrator to work on maintaining our open social media services. This is a small contract with an initial 3 month term.

The #CoSocialCa co-op that I’m part of that runs open social services in Canada is hiring for a very small ongoing contract to do sysadmin work.

This is part of moving from all volunteer member labour model to having sustainable paid staff.

Appropriate for enthusiasts & students. Details ->

Original post on cosocial.ca

Note: #CoSocialCa folks who have joined recently, you might be coming into the members forum for the first time for #elbowsuptech

You can sign in with your Mastodon account, and then an admin has to add you to the co-op group to give you full member permissions to see members-only content […]

Operation Elbows Up: Canadian-owned Tech Services The co-op board has made a motion to empower the Tech Ops Working Group to move services to fully Canadian owned businesses. We’re going to collect research and share other progress in public here ...

Here’s a kick off post about #ElbowsUpTech - a move to switch to Canadian owned tech services that #CoSocialCa is under going.

Anyone can join the forum and helps us find and recommend tech services in #Canada, come help out.

members.cosocial.ca/t/operation-...

Original post on cosocial.ca

The #CoSocialCa board made an “elbows up” motion to support and direct our Tech Ops Working Group lead by @mick to migrate our services to Canadian owned businesses.

We’re going to research & document options and we’d like your help, from co-op members to anyone in Canada who is doing the same […]