Choosing a digital platform for Community Tech
This week we launched the new online space for the Community Tech Community of Practice. After a careful research and testing process, we landed on Discord.
The process started at the end of 2022 when we hired Lynne Davis and Kate Swade to research the many options on the market and survey the community to find out what was needed.
The purpose for the platform is to provide an online landing place for engagements and interactions, to share opportunities, make connections and to seek and offer support. Through their research, Lynne and Kate found that the community’s requirements included;
- private and public spaces
- chat for personal and real-time comms
- forums for structured and searchable comms
- mobile friendly
- email functions
- frictionless engagement
- open source or community tech
On top of this we needed it to be affordable long-term, easy to set up and maintain and easy to moderate. We were also exploring forum Vs chat platforms.
After a thorough review process for both forum and chat-based platforms, we were recommended Discourse for meeting pretty much all these requirements.
So, we set to work to design and set up the space and test it out with some of the community. Whilst on paper it ticked the boxes, we struggled with the usability of the platform and found it too feature-heavy to enable quick and frictionless engagement if you aren’t already familiar with the platform. We needed something it was easy to dip in and out of, rather than needing in-depth knowledge. After a few weeks of testing, we realised it wasn’t going to function how we needed so we went back to the research findings and explored alternatives.
We now realised that the selection criteria didn’t all hold equal weighting and frictionless engagement rose to the top of the list. At this point we had to wrestle with the possibility of setting up a platform for Community Tech that was privately owned and not ‘community tech’ and whether this was the ‘right’ decision or not. We have been having similar discussions about online meeting spaces, namely zoom Vs a community tech alternative.
For now, we have settled on Discord, while it doesn’t tick the ‘community tech’ box, it does enable relatively frictionless engagement and offers familiarity to those who have used similar platforms (such as Slack). We tested it out with some of the community and got good engagement. Now we are opening it up to the wider community of practice and inviting everyone who makes, wants to make, or is interested in community tech to join.
We’re not finished, this is very much a learning journey. We will continue to test and share what we learn and make changes (big or small) as needed. We are stewarding the community of practice and this platform; we don’t own it. Please join in and help to make it a useful, enjoyable, and informative place to me. We have an onboarding process and a Care Charter to guide you in how to use the space carefully and responsibly.
Read more about how to join the community of practice and you can sign up to our Discord.