Our work consists of two parts:
Community work
We are not reinventing the wheel. Rather, we are working on enriching the Fediverse with events. The Fediverse is an decentralized network which has grown considerably recently through applications such as Mastodon.
A view into the Fediverse
It is built-in upon the web standard ActivityPub, which allows for having decentralized social media features across the web. This standard has deliberately kept certain definitions vague so that the actual applications have the necessary flexibility. However, this freedom also comes with the risk of a lack of interoperability. We are pushing for a common vocabulary for the necessary ActivityPub extensions for events to achieve maximum compatibility.
WordPress Plugin: ActivityPub Event Extensions
An ActivityPub plugin already exists for WordPress, but it was not designed to manage events at the beginning. Since we want to have a lasting impact with our work, we are not interested in writing a new ActivityPub plugin, but rather contribute to the existing one and offer a separate plugin that includes extensions essential for proper event support.
The project goal is to realistically depict typical use cases of event organizers and emphasize their continuity in workflows on WordPress websites. Through pre-study interviews and offline testing workshops with event organizers, the plugin is developed closely to their interests and usability and thus, allows this rather non-technical group of users to actively shape the development along their needs and interests.
This emphasis on a lean-driven coding process is reflected in the project’s budget plan which has allocated a considerable amount of the budget for users’ experience and feedback.
Project plan
You can find an overview of our project plan and see our progress and what we are currently working on here.
Funding
Thanks to NLnet foundations NGI0 Entrust fund we can invest a significant amount of our time in the project.