Hello !

It's been a few months since the last release of Mobilizon, our tool to find, create and organize events. We (Framasoft, a small non-profit organization) are proud to present you our roadmap for the developments we have planned for Mobilizon in 2023.

It is important to note that we are dedicating only one part-time developer to Mobilizon (yes, only one!), Mobilizon being one of more than 50 projects led by our association.

March / April 2023

Akismet Anti-Spam

We had many spam problems, especially on the instance managed by Framasoft, https://mobilizon.fr. We intend to propose a feature (opt-in for admins) to verify accounts and content, using the Akismet service, offered by the company behind Wordpress. We also want to fix a bug that prevents the recording of the IP address of accounts that have never logged in.

Arbitrary addresses

Currently, Mobilizon uses an address search engine to find event locations when creating events. This does not allow arbitrary addresses to be entered if no address is found. This feature has been requested for a long time and should have been part of Mobilizon v3 released last year. Our delay with other things has deferred this feature for this year.

Authentication and authorization system

In order to improve the external uses of Mobilizon and to avoid the use of user passwords in unsecured places, Mobilizon will have an authentication and authorization system for external applications based on the OAuth2 standard. This functionality is especially necessary for the external event import functionality that we will discuss below.

Bug fixes and various improvements

The migration of the Mobilizon front-end code from Vue 2 to Vue 3 and the replacement of Buefy/Bulma by Tailwind has left behind some small bugs. We will try to fix them as well as make some minor improvements on the UI side. There is also a lot of feedback on our ticket management system that we haven't had time to address yet.

Later in 2023

Import of external events

This functionality was also planned for late 2022, but given the dependency on the third-party application system detailed above, this could not happen. We choose to create an external application instead of integrating this functionality into the Mobilizon application itself in order to avoid legal issues, and also to give the possibility to other software to connect to this external event import solution.

Private communications between event organizers and participants

This is an important limitation that is widely requested by Mobilizon users: the possibility for organizers to communicate information privately to participants. This can be updates or details about the event, or the private communication of information to participate in the event (postal address, videoconference link ...). We took this functionality off the table until now to think about the framework in which it fits, how much Mobilizon requires an internal messaging system, and what the user experience of such a feature would be.

And then...

Once this feature is implemented, we consider that we have covered the functional scope of the application for now. Framasoft's time on this project is limited, and while we will strive to keep the project alive and maintain it, we do not plan to fund the development of new features in 2024.

That being said, Mobilizon is free/libre software, and there are groups of users with specific needs. Expressing to the whole community its desires to see if it is possible to group availability and resources is the next step for Mobilizon.

We invite you to participate by expressing yourself on the subject in our forum here: https://framacolibri.org/t/mobilizon-2023-roadmap/17196.

Mobilizon v3 is now published 🎉. For this occasion, we have published a blog post summing up a year of hard work and improvements on the Mobilizon ecosystem. It presents the new features of Mobilizon v3 and Mobilizon Search Index, and also what we feel we might work on next year.

• Learn all about those empowering new features on our blog;
• Use Mobilizon Search Index;
• See the code of this v3 by yourself;
• Support Mobilizon by supporting Framasoft, and find out about all our actions.

We would like to thank every person who has contributed to the Mobilizon ecosystem throughout the year: y'all are amazing! Our special thanks also goes to NLnet, whose grant funded one part of our 2022 spendings, the remaining coming directly from our not-for-profit budget, that comes from grassroots donations (usually from our French audience) we get for all our actions.

If you want to help us fund our work in 2023 on Mobilizon and many other projects, please consider supporting Framasoft. And don't forget to share if you care! We hope you will enjoy Mobilizon v3, Framasoft

Hi everybody,

We've been working on it for a year now. We are pleased to announce this upcoming new version of Mobilizon! A new design for the homepage and the search results page, Mobilizon Search Index and many other changes... Let's look around and see what it brings us!

With almost 2 years of improvements, we hope Mobilizon will help you free your events and groups from the clutches of Facebook.

A global search engine to explore Mobilizon

As we know it was not always easy to find events or groups on Mobilizon, we are proud to present a new tool, that makes it easier to discover contents that are published in a federation that is growing every day.

🥁 Let us introduce you Mobilizon Search Index, now available at https://search.joinmobilizon.org.

This tool allows you to search and explore Mobilizon by different ways:

• if you are looking for a specific event or group, use the search bar
• if you want to discover events by subject, browse through categories cards
• if you want to find events nearby, geolocate yourself
• if you want to discover popular groups, there is a category for that!
• if you want to attend online events, we also highlight them

Display, filter and sort criteria

Whichever way you made your search request, you are then shown a results page. You can choose these results display mode (list or map) by clicking on the top-right button.

Then you can filter the results according to several criteria. Look at the left-hand column to see which filters are already active and change them if needed:

• type of content (events, groups or both)
• online events
• event date
• distance
• categories
• event status (confirme, tentative or cancelled)

You can also sort the results by using the top right button.

• If your results are events, you can sort by 6 different criteria:
  • best match (only relevant when using the search bar)
  • event date (from earliest to latest)
  • most recently published
  • least recently published
  • with the most participants
• If your results are groups, you can sort by 2 different criteria:
  • best match (only relevant when using the search bar)
  • number of members (from largest to smallest)

An a posteriori moderated search engine

Not all Mobilizon instances will be referenced on Mobilizon Search Index. This search engine will be based on the list of instances we maintain at https://instances.joinmobilizon.org. This list is aligned with the policy for all of the services we offer:

• compliance with French law
• compliance with our Terms and Conditions of Use
• respect of our moderation policy (FR only, for now)

Thus, if we are notified of an instance where contents explicitly condone terrorism or promote historical revisionism, we will remove it from the index (non-compliance with French laws, which we insist on in our TOS). Such removal will eliminate all events and groups hosted by that instance from the search results.

On the other hand, if one or more people come to abuse the time of our moderators with inappropriate and abusive reports, their words will be discredited and ignored (as indicated in our moderation policy (FR)).

A public indexing tool, reproducible and adaptable to your conditions

Mobilizon Search Index provides an API that other software (including Mobilizon instances) can use to retrieve events.

The source code, the "recipe" of each of these softwares, is transparent. We publish it on our software forge. Anyone who is able to read this code can do so, and determine if there are tools to cheat with the results display, or others to spy on your behavior.

This is why we made sure, legally and technically, that everyone is free to set and host their own instance list, indexing engine and search site, by copying and adapting what we have created. It is up to you to take the power (and responsibilities) by hosting your own Mobilizon search engine, set up and moderated according to your culture, your indexing policy and your values!

A new design for the homepage and the search results page

We wanted to be able to use on the Mobilizon software all the work put into the Mobilizon Search Index. That's why we have implemented new design for the homepage and the search results page on Mobilizon.

On this new homepage, in addition to a new background image, we have changed the order in which the different contents are displayed:

• the search bar is now more visible and you can precise a localization
• you have 3 categories cards displayed (we highlight those with the most events)
• 2 sections highlight events nearby and popular groups nearby your location (if you use the Geolocate me button or if you precise in your account's preferences a city or region)
• a new section is dedicated to upcoming online events
• a section for the last published events on your instance and its federation

When you use the homepage search bar, Mobilizon displays a new search results page using Mobilizon Search Index design on which you can find all the features detailed above (map/list vue, filter system, sorting sytem). You even have one more critera in the left-hand column: you can choose results in your instance's network or on the Fediverse.

If you are a Mobilizon instance's administrator, you can choose and set up which search engine you want to use by default.

And also

From now on, the section "These events may interest you", placed at the bottom of events, uses new criteria (categories, event language and distance if the event has a physical address) in addition to tags to recommend you more relevant events.

We have also modified many elements of Mobilizon in order not to build up technical debt (switch to VueJS 3, migration of the CSS framework from Bulma to Tailwind, etc.). Those changes will make it easier for us to offer you more features (e.g. a theme system) in the future.

Thanks to NLnet Foundation for supporting this project with their funding: https://nlnet.nl/project/Mobilizon/

Thanks to all the people who contributed to this version, through their work, their feedback, their exchanges, their support.

Mobilizon version 3.0 stable will be released in a few weeks and we will install it on https://mobilizon.fr in a near future.

If you can, please consider supporting Framasoft.

Freely and proudly,

Framasoft

Now matured like a good French wine ;).

We've been working on it for a year now. Today, we're releasing v2 of Mobilizon. You have many ways to find out about the new features:

• Find out about all the details of this v2 on our post on the Framablog ;
• Visit JoinMobilizon, the official Mobilizon website;
• Test this new version on an instance from our selection on Mobilizon.org (including Mobilizon.fr, our French-speaking instance) ;
• Watch Disappear - Under the Radar of Algorithms an ArteTV documentary (in French and German, English subtitles available) where Mobilizon plays an important role.

With over a year of improvements, we hope Mobilizon will help you free your events and groups from the clutches of Facebook.

Thanks to all the people who contributed to this version, through their work, their feedback, their exchanges, their support.

This v2 of Mobilizon has been financed on our 2021 budget, thanks to the donations that fund our not-for-profit.

If you can, please consider supporting Framasoft.

Freely and proudly,

Framasoft

A new version of Mobilizon has just been released. At Framasoft, we took advantage of summer months to make good progress in these new features' development. Here are some explanations on what this v.1.3 brings us.

More community-based management of events and posts on a group's public page

Until now, only the profile that created an event or a post for a group's public page could edit the information for that event or that post. Many of you told us that it could be great for other group members to edit those contents. So, we worked to ensure that Mobilizon now allows all group's administrator or moderator profiles to edit all events and posts created within that group.

For more information on the different roles within a group: https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/use/groups/roles-group/

In addition, all group's administrators or moderators can now approve and manage requests to participate in a group event, if this setting has been activated.

Metadata for events

Now, when you create an event, you have the possibility to add metadata. This allows you to specify information that will be more visible as it appears in the right hand column of the event (below the website field).

This metadata field is repeatable so that you can highlight different information. If you click in the empty field, Mobilizon suggests what information type you could indicate. For example, you can specify accessibility information about your event (whether the event is wheelchair accessible or whether the event is interpreted in sign language), or specify an account on the fediverse to follow for event updates, or even enter a live stream URL (PeerTube/YouTube/Twitch). Moreover, metadata for live video streams linked to PeerTube, YouTube and Twitch benefit from video player integration (iframe) under the event description.

And if the type of information you want to add does not appear in our suggestions, you can create it directly. To do this, simply click on the "Add new..." button. A window will appear in which you can indicate the title of the element you wish to add and its value (the information itself).

notice the 4 metadata fields on this event

And also:

This latest version of Mobilizon also allows instance's administrators to create profiles and groups directly from the command line and to configure their instance to block registrations for specific e-mail addresses or email providers.

We have made many other improvements and fixes in this new version. You can read the whole list on https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

Thanks to all Mobilizon contributors!

Framasoft

Almost 3 months without news… But don’t worry, it’s just because we’ve been busy developing this new version, building a partnership with Koena Connect and updating the roadmap for the coming months.

Here’s a quick tour of the latest news from the Mobilizon project…

Mobilizon 1.2 - Notifications to report activity in groups and events!

In version 1.1, we implemented a system to access the history of all actions / activities performed by group members. This first step towards a notification system has been greatly improved in this version 1.2.

Until now, when an event organiser cancelled or modified their event (outside the "About this event" field), attendees were notified by mail of these changes. But if the contents of the event description were modified, attendees were not informed about it. From now on, event organisers can add a public comment on the event and choose to notify the attendees. Depending on the user’s settings, they can get notified by email, through browser push notification, or both.

Moreover, the My Account / Notifications menu interface has been redesigned so that you can fully indicate your choices:

As you can notice, you can also be notified when new content is added, modified or deleted within the groups you subscribed to.

Mobilizon 1.2 - Improved interfaces!

These past few months, we have been working hard on the various aspects of contents that fill Mobilizon. Our objective: make these interfaces more pleasing to the eye, easier to understand and, above all, more accessible (by improving color contrasts, for example). But above all, we made sure that these interfaces are much more friendly in mobile version.

Thus, on "event" pages, we wanted to reduce the size of the block located at the top of the page. To do this, we reduced the banner height and the title size and moved the calendar icon a little higher. We also changed some element colours: for example, the words "Location", "Date and time", "Organised by" and "Website" are now in dark blue (because yellow on a white background didn’t give enough contrast). With each block differentiated, viewing an event page from your mobile is now much easier.

We also changed some colors in comments display, so it is easier to identify them. Previously, all comments were displayed the same way, whether they were written by organiser or attendees. Now, all event organiser comments are easily recognizable, thanks to the highlighted organiser name. More, organiser’s comments that notify attendees now appear with a light purple background and are pinned at the top of the comments list. Finally, it is possible to select a comment (by clicking on the time slot). It will thus appear on a dark purple background and displays its direct link in the url bar. Pretty handy for sharing a comment directly!

On groups pages, we centred the group avatar and reordered the informations. We also changed the colour of the different content blocks (Discussions / Resources / Events / Public page) so they display more contrast and therefore are more accessible.

Finally, we added two new choices in the action menu (button with the … label):

• share the group link ("Share")
• show the group as seen by non-members (choice "Public preview")

We also made some changes to the home page look: with a new calendar icon on event thumbnails and more compact titles.

Improving Mobilizon accessibility in partnership with Koena Connect

Last April, Koena, a company specialized in digital accessibility, asked the CHATONS collective to experiment its mediation project Koena Connect (in French). Our aim is to allow people who have encountered digital accessibility issues on a Mobilizon instance to share their experience with us in order to improve the software for all.

Therefore, we’ve added a "Contact accessibility" button on our mobilizon.fr instance (and the Keskonfai and Colibris Outils libres instances have done the same) which provides access to the Mobilizon mediation platform (in French). The Koena team clarifies difficulties encountered by exchanging with users and then provides summary feedback to the Mobilizon project.

For more information, please see this tutorial (in French):

An updated roadmap

In view of our progress in Mobilizon development and in order to provide maximum transparency on the direction we wish to take in the upcoming months, we have published a roadmap which helps you get an idea of the next developments.

We have made many other improvements in this new version. You can read the whole list in the Changelog.

Thanks to all Mobilizon contributors!

Framasoft

It’s been a while since we’ve given you some updates about Mobilizon! We have been very busy the last few months coding new features. But today we think we have progressed enough to release a new main version. So here are some explanations on what this v1.1 brings us.

A history to follow all your groups’ activities

As many of you requested, it is now possible to access the history of all the actions/activities carried out by the members of a group. It’s very simple: once on the group’s page, you just have to click on the Activity button. Then a page listing all the group’s activities classified by date appears, from the most recent to the oldest. Thanks to the buttons at the top of the page, you can now filter that information to display only a part of it.

Therefore you can only display:

• member changes
• group settings changes
• event creations and updates
• new posts
• new discussions and the interactions within them
• new resources
• your activities within the group
• the activities of other members within the group

Note: this feature is only available once you are a group member. This list of activities will only be accessible from the date you joined the group (no recovery of the activities prior to your group membership).

We hope that this feature, first step towards a notification system, will allow you to follow more easily the activities within your groups and therefore to get more involved.

Display events close to you on the homepage

A new block of event suggestions entitled "Close events" can now be displayed on a homepage. For that, all you have to do is indicate the city or region and the radius (in km) in the "Preferences" section of your account.

RSS feeds are now on Mobilizon!

This useful new feature will allow you to get RSS feeds and include them in your favourite aggregator. The RSS feed creation is now possible for:

• events you have created or joined
• groups’ activities (whether you are a member or not)

To access RSS feeds for your account, you just have to go on your account settings and click on the Notifications tab. At the bottom of the page, the Personal feeds section gives you access to the RSS feed URL of the events for which any of your profiles is a participant or creator. You just have to paste this feed URL into your favourite RSS feed aggregator.

If you want to get the RSS feed for one of your profiles, you must access the profile edition page. The Profile feeds section, at the bottom of the page, allows you to access the RSS feed of this profile.

To access a group’s RSS feed, enabling to recover its events and public posts, you have to go on its page, then click on the button for more actions (the 3 small dots) and select RSS feed/Atom. Then click on Copy the link address and paste it into your favourite RSS feed aggregator.

If you are an instance administrator, you can even get the RSS feed of all the public activity of your instance. If the feature is enabled, you just have to add /feed/instance/atom behind your instance’s URL.

As you’ve probably noticed, you can use ICS/WebCal feeds as well to add to your schedules the events you have created or joined and those created by some groups.

And also

As you probably know that Mobilizon is one of the many fediverse softwares, you can follow your favourite Mobilizon groups via Mastodon or Pleroma. If you don’t know how to do it, read our short tutorial.

Managers of one group can now manually approve follow requests of their groups made via Mastodon or Pleroma. You just have to go on the group settings and click on Followers to see the list of people who have requested to follow your group on Mastodon or Pleroma. Therefore you can accept or reject these requests.

For those who want to try to install a Mobilizon instance, we offer a new installation mode that is much more pleasant since it is all pre-compiled. Server prerequisites in terms of performances are less important. There’s no need anymore for a war machine just to install the service!

We have made many other improvements in this new version. You can read the whole list on https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

Thanks to all Mobilizon contributors!

Framasoft

Hello!

A first update was released yesterday for Mobilizon. This one brings fixes, but also improvements made thanks to your feedback and also to your contributions!

The purpose of the first update after the release of a major version is to fix all the bugs you have reported to us. This version 1.0.2 (yes: there have been two updates at once :p!) has notably allowed to fix:

• the pagination of tables (in administration of groups or instances);
• detection of file mime types added to resources;
• the respect of the choice of language (reworked for the occasion);
• and many other bugs listed in the update log

This was very important to us: it is now possible to join groups directly in Mobilizon. To do so, the people who administrate the group have to decide if it is an open group (there will be a "Join group" button to join automatically), or an invitation-only group. Note that we plan to offer others ways to manage group membership in the future.

Thanks to your contributions, Mobilizon can now be installed through Docker. We have added this installation method in our documentation.

Similarly, contributions from multilingual people are also coming in, and Mobilizon is now available in 14 languages, the most recent of which are Esperanto, Basque, Hungarian, Kannada and Norwegian Nynorsk. To contribute to these translations, just join our weblate and go here for the Mobilizon software, here for the JoinMobilizon website and finally here for the Mobilizon.org website.

We take this opportunity to remind you that a Mobilizon application is available for Android :

• Here on the playstore from Google;
• Here on F-Droid (catalog of free android apps).

Thanks again to Tom79 for this contribution (to support him, go here).

We are very proud to see that this first update is the result of many contributions, either in translation, code or feedback from you. Please continue to come and discuss about Mobilizon on our forum, and to share the Mobilizon.org page to make people discover Mobilizon around you!

Freely,

Framasoft

Hello!

Thanks to a great contribution from Tom79, a Mobilizon app for Android is available on Google’s PlayStore and on the F-Droid FLOSS apps catalog.

At Framasoft, we prefer the good old web to application stores that limit our choices. Which is easy to say when you master digital tools.

However, for people who don’t know how to use the mobile web and whose smartphone is the only personal computer, the first reflex is to look for an application. And we didn’t want malicious people to use the name "Mobilizon" in a pernicious application. The only thing is: that we don’t have the skills nor the time to code such apps.

We asked Tom79 for help. He’s the FLOSS developer who created Fedilab (clients for Mastodon, Pleroma) and TubeLab (client for PeerTube) applications.

Between his experience and Mobilizon’s code (designed to evolve towards a Progressive Web App), Tom79 quickly knew how to code a very efficient application around a webview of Mobilizon.

You will find the Mobilizon application in the following pages:

• Here on the Google playstore;
• There on F-Droid (catalog of FLOSS android apps).

We count on you to thank Tom79! People who want and can support him with a donation can do so on his Liberapay page. You can also send him your thanks and a lot of datalove to the Fedilab Mastodon account.

Thanks to Tom79 for this great contribution,

Framasoft

Here we are!

After long months of work, we can finally present you the v1 of Mobilizon. We have prepared many tools :

• JoinMobilizon has a been upgraded to present Mobilizon;
• Mobilizon’s design and perspectives are presented on the Framablog ;
• Mobilizon.org, a site to help you find your instance and get started on Mobilizon;
• Our photo novel « Rȯse Mobilized » shows you an example of how Mobilizon can be used.

Once again, we want to thank all the people who contributed to the existence of this service, which we hope will help you free your events and groups from the clutches of Facebook.

Now it’s all in your hands!

Freely and feverishly,

Framasoft

Hello!

Today we are releasing a new beta version of Mobilizon, both to show the progress since development resumed, but also to start testing, especially with people who would know how to install it on their server.

The current pace of development reinforces our belief that we will be able to release the Mobilizon v1 in the fall of 2020.

The new features of this beta 3!

Here are the main features you can already discover on test.mobilizon.org.

Anonymous entry is an option that allows organizersto accept entries from people who do not have a Mobilizon account and do not want to be named as a participant. In order to avoid spam, an email address will be requested from the person who wants to participate anonymously, so that they can click on a confirmation link.

Manual validation of entries is an option that allows the event organizer to manually filter entries. People who want to participate in the event will have to fill out a form and motivate their application before it can be validated by the organizers.

Participation through the federation allows a person who has created his account on the Mobiliz-Here instance to register for an event created on the There-Mobilized instance: with the federated id, there is no need for the instances to be linked together to interact on it.

The event reminder allows you to be notified, on your Mobilizon account and/or by email, of upcoming events for which you have registered. It is possible to set reminders the same morning, X time before the event, as well as get a summary of upcoming events in the week.

The graphical interface of the instance administration now has basic configuration options (to set the name of the instance, allow account creation, etc.), as well as rudimentary moderation options (with a list of userss, and the possibility to block external accounts -and thus comments-).

Not to mention practical improvements such as:

• Improvements on the event page (addition of the right column)
• Improving security in federation processes
• Creating a unified menu for settings
• Possibility to duplicate an event (thanks to the Keskonfai.fr team for this contribution!)

What remains to be done for the v1

The main point to be completed by v1 this fall is the group features: group creation, presentation and management, internal messaging tools, and displaying the group’s external digital tools (links to resources, shared documents, etc.).

Many of these features are already under development, sometimes advanced, but we didn’t consider them mature enough to be released now. All the more so as federating these notions raises a whole set of questions that will also have to be tested and refined.

Also, the moderation tools in this beta 3 are not yet complete, and we plan to improve them by the time v1 is released.

We will not hesitate to release new versions (as well as update test.mobilizon.org) for public testing as soon as we feel it is relevant.

If you want to help us improve Mobilizon

For the moment, contributing to the testing of this beta 3 will require strong technical knowledge. Indeed, we mainly need people who test the installation of Mobilizon, install it on different systems, and give us feedback on the documentation.

However, without too much technical knowledge, you can try to create an account and dummy events, to see if it federates correctly between different instances. We remind you that test.mobilizon.org can be used for your tests, and we recommend that you do not use it for real use (it is a demonstration tool).

Whatever feedback you have to give, you can share with the Mobilizon community that is currently forming here on our forum.

Let’s go to v1!

We still have a whole summer to complete, test and finalize the latest Mobilizon features. Thank you in advance to all the people who will help us during this final sprint. See you in the fall for the publication of a v1 which, we hope, will lay the foundations of a major tool to serve those who want to Gather, Organize and Mobilize... and thus change the world.

Yours freely,

Framasoft

Hello!

We’re sorry to announce that the development of Mobilizon is behind schedule.

Indeed, Framasoft is a small association with 35 members including 9 employees, and only one of those employees is dedicating most of his work time to the development of Mobilizon (with help from other people for design, strategy, communication and so on).

In his remaining time, he contributes to administrating our systems and maintaining the many services that we offer for free to the majority. The global pandemic we are going through has resulted in the quarantine of the French population from march 17 onwards.

From then on, very many people have started looking for online remote collaboration services. We were hit by a real tidal wave, and every member of our association had to stop their ongoing activities in order to answer this increase in workload and this massive demand we have to deal with.

We believe it was our duty as citizens to do our (small) part in the efforts against this health crisis and to make it easier to communicate, organize and exchange for those who need it, despite the quarantine.

If development of this software (like all of our other ongoing projects) has been put on hold for a few weeks, we believe that Mobilizon will be more important than ever in "the world after", and we have gotten back to work with renewed enthusiasm. It seems essential to us that citizens should regain their independence over the tools that let them mobilize, organize and gather around common, concrete actions.

As such, we intend to publish, in june, a new beta version that will include all the features planned in last year’s crowdfunding (events, pages, and groups). Afterwards, throughout all of summer, we will work on improving the code depending on federation testers’ feedback (testers will host their own Mobilizon instance).

Indeed, as Mobilizon is exploring entire parts of the ActivityPub protocol (the shared language that the instances use to synchronize and share information), it seems important to us that we should offer, test, question, discuss, modify and improve until we reach a stable consensus.

If you want to participate in those tests by hosting a Mobilizon instance, you will be able to do so from june onwards, when we will be ready (we will announce it here).

From there onwards, we want to take three to four months to test Mobilizon with voluntary hosters, improve its compatibility and the way it federates information, in order to release a first stable version in fall.

We hope you will understand the reasons for this delay and this new calendar.

Yours freely,

Framasoft

Hello!

We’ve just released a new Mobilizon beta integrating federation features!

Please read the Framablog post (in English) to learn about all the new features, including the comment system.

Our demo website is always up-to-date, so you can test Mobilizon’s new beta by going to test.mobilizon.org! As it is a demonstration website, please keep in mind that all data there (events, accounts, etc.) are made up, for testing purposes.

If you have any feedback, comments, bugs reports… you can share them with us on the dedicated space of our forum (we can’t promise that we will answer to everyone, but we will read each message!).

We hope you will enjoy this new milestone.

Best regards,

Framasoft

Hello,

We are very pleased to announce the release of Mobilizon’s first beta! Please read the Framablog post (in English) for all the details.

Among other things, we announce that:

• it’s only a (beautiful) beginning;
• we will update often, with new features;
• the federation aspect is not there (yet), it’s a work in progress;
• we’ll post a new progress report in December, which will focus on the federation;
• we are still confident about the public release of a version 1 in the first half of 2020.

Best of all, you can try Mobilizon by going to test.mobilizon.org! Be careful, though: it is a demonstration website, where all data (accounts, events, etc.) will be deleted every 48 hours.

If you have any feedback, comments, bugs reports... you can share them with us on the dedicated space of our forum ((we can’t promise that we will answer to everyone, but we will read each message!).

We hope you will enjoy this first result.

Best regards,

Framasoft

Hello to each and every one,

Once again, we want to thank you for contributing to our campaign. We took advantage of the summer to move forward on the development of a number of features that you will mostly find in the first beta version of Mobilizon, which we want to release in little over a month.

We have developed "multi-identities", which make it possible for a person to compartmentalize their groups and activities as they wish, for example if they don’t want their family to know about their cultural or activist activities. Thus, the registration and management of several minimum individual profiles are now integrated into Mobilizon’s code. These profiles can be used to change identity when performing an action, for example when creating a new event or announcing participation in an event.

We also worked a lot on the different ways to display the event creation form. The challenge is to make it powerful, but also easy and quick to fill ?, depending on the case. Once your event is published, it is then possible for people who wish to join the event. The author of an event can edit it and delete it (it may seem obvious to you, but it happened very recently in the code!).

Here is an overview of a functional model of the form for creating and editing an event (in French, sorry about that)

Keep in mind that’s only a wireframe, a graphical skeleton that allows us to discuss on the interface. This is therefore not a screenshot representing the finished product.

The moderation features are partly present and will arrive with the first beta version. They will allow users to report content and admins to process these reports.

We also need to integrate the display of Mobilizon’s home page when you are logged into your account. We first show upcoming events, but it will also display the events you have marked as favorites, the events of your groups and a few suggested events.

Here is an overview of a functional model of the home page. Not all the modules present will be available when the first beta version is released (again, note that this is a wireframe, a graphical skeleton)

Finally, the possibility of creating an event and participating in it as anonymous (if the rules of the instance allow it) is still to be developed. This feature is expected to be available in October as well.

We are redoubling our efforts to be able to show you a nice first beta version in October. We thank you again for allowing us to create this beautiful tool.

Cheers   Framasoft

Photo by Jon Tyson

Thanks to each of you, the fundraising counter for Mobilizon reached 58,689€, which is 8,689€ more than the third milestone! We would like to thank you all warmly for your support for this ambitious project. :-)

It is now up to us to keep our commitment to deliver the beta release of Mobilizon by mid-October 2019, with the features announced! And since you have supported us beyond our expectations (117%), we are committed to continuing the development of Mobilizon to offer you a v1 in the first half of 2020 which will consider your feedback and remarks in order to bring new features.

Here is a brief summary of these features:

• registration by email/password or via another account on the fediverse (Mastodon, PeerTube, Plume, etc.)
• creation / modification / deletion of profile accounts allowing the creation of several identities
• creation / modification / deletion of groups
• creation / modification / deletion of events from profile or group accounts
• groups allowing the creation of several discussion channels (like a forum), simple surveys, task lists and a document repository (collections of stored resources)
• multi-identity management: each identity will include a username, an avatar and a small description
• possibility for Internet users to create an event without having an account (anonymous event) according to the administrator’s conditions
• possibility for Internet users to register for an event without having an account (anonymous participation) according to the conditions of the administrator and the creator of the event instance
• administration tools for instances (accounts management, setting up relationships with other instances)
• necessary moderation tools: management of reports on accounts and contents
• integration with the fediverse (ActivityPub): inter-connection of instances between them

It seems to be a lot, but we believe that we could do it! The entire #MobilizonTeam is mobilized throughout the summer to progress on the development of these features. You’ll be regularly informed of the progress of Mobilizon, the software of which you are the heroes and heroines!

Marie-Cécile Godwin Paccard is an independent designer and UX researcher. She supports individuals and organizations in defining their fundamental values and objectives by providing a systemic perspective. Her aim is to gather a deep understanding of people’s usages and to develop usable, ethical and inclusive tools.

**Hello Marie-Cécile! You have helped the Mobilizon project team understanding
the needs and uses of the people who will use it. Can you explain why it is
particularly important for this project to consider the needs and expectations
of future users?**

Hello to the whole team! Studying needs and uses is essential if you want
to design a software, a service or even an object to make it usable. Mobilizon’s
purpose is to empower people to organize and gather together, and enable
them to do it freely and with tools that respect their privacy. Therefore,
it is instrumental to start talking about "uses" and "usage" at the very
beginning of the thought process! The whole team wishes that existing communities
take ownership of Mobilizon and that new communities are created. If we
want this to succeed, we have to make the effort of reaching out to people
in order to understand their needs, which problems they face every day and
how they managed to overcome them so far, if they did.

When designing things which are meant to be used by people, you have to
fight the urge to rely on your own assumptions, beliefs or fixed ideas.
You have a duty to open your mind to the perception and experience of others.
A quick "usage research" phase can give fast and valuable results and allow
you to put a finger very early on problems and objectives you had not overseen
yet. It helps questioning your first assumptions and take better decisions
at a crucial stage of the project’s definition.

What was your approach to collect voices of these users and communities?

First, the team and I spent some precious time reflecting on the project’s purpose and ambitions, but also its political implications (because everything is political, especially in design and free softwares) as well as how Mobilizon would fit into Framasoft’s strategy. We reviewed the existing event organizing platforms and how they prevent people from organizing easily and freely. From there, I suggested a usage research plan to the team, to clearly define what we were going to focus on in the research phase. We launched a first online survey, which received nearly 300 responses. In this survey, we asked people about how they generally organize and gather using digital platforms, either as guests or as organizers. We collected valuable information on the problems they usually face, and which tools they would use or not, and why.

In a second step, we defined which kind of communities we wanted to interview. Once more, it was essential to start from "usage" and not socio-economic groups. Among others, we decided to seek out to some large, multi-layered communities who run public gatherings such as climate marches, specific communities who run events that are more niche or themed, and organizations for who privacy is very important, both for themselves and their event participants. I then started looking for people matching these usecases and asked them questions about how they organized themselves before, during and after an event. At this point, we are not talking about software, code or graphics yet: we are still focusing on the uses, the reality of organizing events and the real problems faced by the people who set them up.

```

How does this data contribute to the thought process to design Mobilizon’s functionalities?

Once the research phase is completed, we can draw conclusions from the collected data. We have a more precise vision of the reality of people’s uses and we can take informed decision about how to design a software that will fit them. The data will be a framework for decisions all along the design and coding process.

Some elements speak for themselves right away: if a specific problem pops up through practically all the interviews, it means that I have to keep it in mind throughout the design and development process and find the best way to solve it. Of course, there are human problems that Mobilizon will not be able to solve, for example the phenomenon of "no-show": people who say they will come to an event but do not show up in the end. Even if it is hard to tackle this behavioral issue with software, understanding why it bothers organizers will allow us us to take better decisions later on.

Mobilizon is not meant to be a "one size fits all" software. Priority will be given to functionalities that seem essential to small communities for whom Mobilizon could be a game changer, both means and cost wise. But it will definitely not be able to replace Mattermost or WhatsApp and will never have the same firepower as Facebook. But Mobilizon will provide essential features so that the communities most vulnerable to surveillance capitalism can migrate out of the big platforms. Some organisations might still need hundreds of nested pads or Discord’s easy multi-user voice conversations!

Now that the research phase is mostly done,I am designing Mobilizon’s back office structure as well as the whole set of tools that will make it possible to create an event, a group or invite people in these groups to collaborate prior to an event. I am also working on how the concept of "identities" will be articulated. This functionality will make it possible for users to create different "facets" of their identity so they can compartmentalize some aspects of their social life. Last but not least, the moderation system is on my design list too!

The team and I still have a lot of questions to answer, for instance how Mobilizon will support people in the understanding of federation / instance concepts. We want to make sure that people get all the data they need to make the best informed decision for them and their community, be it if they choose to create an account on a specific instance or if they choose to have their own. This shall be applied on many facets of the software design, for instance during the on-boarding phase, or how the principles of instances and federation will translate in the interface.

Amazing ! We have just reached the 3rd milestone of Mobilizon’s fundraising and it’s thanks to you! We don’t know how to thank you for your support! This will give us the means to make the Mobilizon of our dreams come true!

Thus, the beta version of Mobilizon, which will be released in the fall of 2019, will enable the creation of groups, with messaging and exchange tools between members.

Mobilizon will also organize, display and manage the external tools the group already uses (for example: to write documents together). Finally, each person with an account can create several identities, in order to not display the same identity on each sports events, family meetings and activist actions.

It’s not over yet!

With this €50,000, we have the means to realize the best software we can make. If we get more money, we will neither do more, nor faster, but we can go further. Thus, every penny above this €50,000 level will be used to continue to make Mobilizon the alternative we all dream of.

Between the fall of 2019 and the v1 we want to publish in the first half of 2020, we will take notes of your feedbacks and comments in order to provide new features to Mobilizon. We have until Monday, July 10, midnight, Paris time (i.e. 22:00 GMT) to continue to finance Mobilizon so that the v1 can be as you expect. We are relying on you to talk about Mobilizon around you and on your favorite social media.

For activists from all over the world

The Mobilizon v1 is financed in its ideal version: let’s proclaim this great news to the people for whom we are developing it! Framasoft is a small French non profit organization: it is really hard for us to communicate outside our borders -_-…

That’s why you can help us! Share this page with your alters activists friends and with all people who are changing the world in their own language. This is a unique opportunity to tell them: "I’m not asking you to finance this project, it’s already done. I’m just asking you to keep an eye on this solution, to remember the name "Mobilizon", because one day it may help you to free your community from Facebook events."

We’re relying on you!

Amazing! We’ve almost reached the second milestone of this fundraising! And that’s thanks to you!!! We really appreciate your encouragements! We hope to reach the 2<sup>nd</sup> milestone of €35 000 very soon. If we succeed, we commit to do everything we can to provide you with a fully federated Mobilizon around fall 2019.

What does a federated software mean?

It’s not easy to explain the principles of federation, but we’re going to try to keep it simple. The main interest of federation is to be decentralized, which means that the power isn’t centralized in the hands of only one person.

Contrary to GAFAM’s services, federated services don’t offer a big platform centralizing the whole world’s contents. Big Tech’s platforms concentrate millions of users on their servers. That gives them the dangerous powers to control information and to hoard users’ private data, using it for commercial profit (and who knows what other purposes). The Federation is a network of many small hosting providers connected to each others. When a provider install Mobilizon on his server, they create an instance, like a website where you can sign up, create and publish events.

Giving power to instances

We wish for Mobilizon to ease the instance’s administration. For example, we imagine a tool that will incite server administrators to explain their different choices: terms and conditions, code of conduct, moderation policy, federation policy, audience or subjects they promote, etc.

Once set up, each instance can voluntarily decide whether or not to connect with others instances. This choice is based on its own choices, rules and internal policies. We want to include administration tools that give maximum control in the way you ask or agree to federate one instance to another, directly in the v1 release.

Making life easier for people

Let’s imagine that I am registered on my university instance called MobilizeDatCollege. For example, if this instance federates with the EcoMobilized instance, I could find, consult and register for a "Climate Walk" event from my MobilizeDatCollege account even if this event is created on EcoMobilized instance!

Federation doesn’t only allow you not to "put all your data in the same basket". It’s also the possibility of creating different doors into the Mobilizon federation, each instance offering its own conditions, identity, culture or interactions policies… Thus, I can pick the instance that corresponds to my expectations, which is always better than a centralized platform with "one-size-fits-all terms and conditions".

Speaking a common language

The ActivityPub protocol (which is the federation protocol chosen for Mobilizon) also allows you to interact with other softwares that speak the same "language". That is how PeerTube (alternative to YouTube) and Mastodon (alternative to Twitter) are linked: it’s possible to "follow" a PeerTube user from Mastodon, or even to comment on a video hosted on a PeerTube instance directly from a Mastodon account.

Integrating ActivityPub protocol in Mobilizon allows it to enter the Fediverse (contraction of federation and universe), which provides possibilities of interactions that we can’t imagine now! However this integration requires many hours of development and design…

Thanks to your donations and sharing, the good news is that we are very close to being able to afford it! Share and forward this news to inform your family and friends… because we’re counting on you!

Honestly, we couldn’t imagine that we would reach this first step so quickly! In less than a week, you already supported the Mobilizon project up to €20,000.

This is an important step for us. First, because this money allows us to cover the sums already invested in Mobilizon’s conception and design. But, most importantly, we now know that we’ll have enough financial resources to create a version of Mobilizon, at the very least a free and basic one.

The question we are asking you with this fundraising is "should we create this alternative?" Your answer seems to be an enthousiastic "yes" and it warms our hearts!

However, this is not the time to stop! It is now, as this first step has been completed, it is now that we get to the serious part. Mobilizon will only make real sense if it becomes a federated free software. And integrating ActivityPub protocol represents several hours of coding.

Now the ball is in your court, for it is now that we can make the difference between a just free/libre project and a decentralized project which will offer more autonomy and independence to communities!

It’s up to you to spread the word and to convince your communities that this project matters.

Thank you! 2 days after launching our fundraising campaign, we have almost reached the 1<sup>st</sup> milestone! We just achieved €15,000 and hope to reach the 1<sup>st</sup> milestone of €20,000 during the weekend. Such a crazy surge of donations gives us a lot of hope: not only hope of reaching the €20,000 milestone, but also hope of reaching our overall goal!

And now, it’s up to you!

We are a small French non-governmental organisation that knows how to reach out to the French FLOSS community. But it is more difficult for us to communicate about Mobilizon to a larger audience. We need you to help us reach alternative communities (activists, freedom fighters, environmental campaigners, etc.). So please go ahead and:

• Share the information on your favourite social networks (even those we don’t really like!) using #JoinMobilizon!
• Share the https://joinmobilizon.org website with your activist friends who also want to change the world!
• Forward this information to the communities you are a part of. You can find inspiration and more info in our blog post!
• Send the info to every person who dreams of a more ethical and free tool to gather, organize and mobilize.

Our only form of advertisement is the best we know: you!

We believe in the need to create user-friendly software that allows people to organize their events away from Facebook or Meetup (and others).

We believe in it so deeply that we have invested time, work and money to imagine its design.

Since our association is financed only by donations, we set up this crowdfunding to ask you how far you want us to take the development of Mobilizon.

Level 1 - Free & basic version

This amount will cover our prototype expenses.

We will thus recover the sums fronted to design and promote the software, pay for the development time of its functionality as well as the work of the designers who contributed to its design.

The code will be returned to the community in a state that can be taken back by anyone.

Level 2 - Federated version

We will be able to implement an essential protocol to make Mobilizon a success: the ActivityPub federation. Thanks to the federation, any community will be able to install Mobilizon on its own servers, and connect each instance to the rest of the network.

This makes it possible to multiply the number of entry points and decentralise the data, and to connect to the fediverse which already includes Mastodon (an alternative to Twitter) and PeerTube (an alternative to YouTube).

We will also open a demo instance of this beta version, so that everyone can go and see for themselves what the software will look like.

Level 3 - Ideal version

This will give us the means to make the Mobilizon of our dreams come true!

Thus, Mobilizon will allow the creation of groups, with messaging tools and exchange between members. Mobilizon will also make it possible to display, organize and manage the external tools that your group already uses to create documents together or set the next meeting date, for example.

Lastly, each account holder will be able to create several identities, in order, for example, to display a different identity for sporting events, family reunions and activism marches.

And beyond – to version 1

We did the math: with €50,000, we will have the means to make the best software we can. If we receive more money, we won’t do more, or faster, but we can go further.

In the fall of 2019, we will release a beta version. From then on, with the feedback and comments we will receive, we will work toward a first complete release, a v1, which we aim to be ready in the first half of 2020.

But there’s a lot of work to do until we get there. We dream of setting up a mapping server to facilitate the localisation of events, of creating a Mobilizon app for smartphones, and much more…