If we want our community to grow sustainably, and for our future to be properly solarpunk, this is what I feel we should do:
- Recognize the wound in us, caused by a highly technological world we no longer understand and are actively discouraged from understanding.
- Understand that most of our "non-dev" friends carry this wound, though they may not articulate it.
- Feed a culture where new people are encouraged to be collaborators, not consumers, no matter the background they are coming from.
- Choose to grow organically, using methods that are radically different from the modern web strategy of “grow like a hockey stick then bounce off the tip!”. This likely means growing slowly, but intentionally.
- When building or writing for the verse, choose the path that empowers and enlightens, which may not be the slickest or simplest path.
- When the most empowering path requires technical skill, offer the resources for any scuttler to learn these skills. It is always better to articulate than obscure.
- Check the language of any of our technical docs, to make sure it is inviting and empowering, and not filled with the closed-off culture of the larger tech world. Be conscious that any readme can be an invitation to our incredible coded world.
- Keep being awesome.
In other words:
To build Scuttlebutt for everyone, we must expect and empower the best from anyone.The penultimate point, of writing inviting technical docs, requires a bit more context, but this particular essay was already straining with context.
I don't want to just say “we should be more inviting” without showing what I'd mean, and so I'll cover the practical side of how this could look in the thrilling conclusion of “Our Future Will be Technical” coming soon.