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Services

Introduction​

Technology is most often encountered as a service — something that spans all layers of the stack invisibly, across devices and contexts. Listening to music via Spotify, for example, involves the app on your phone, the firmware talking to your headphones, and a data centre streaming the song over internet infrastructure. The service is one experience, but the stack underneath it is deep.

These services play an ever-increasing role in society and raise new questions about how the technology stack can best be designed to serve citizens — and avoid unwanted dependencies on the vendors who control them.

Good examples​

Self-hosting is the answer: instead of delegating to a vendor, you run the service yourself. The stack stays visible, modifiable, and accountable.

For us, that means:

  • Knowledge base — documentation, meeting notes, and institutional memory (Outline)
  • Shared drive — files, contacts, and calendars (Nextcloud)

What's imaginable​

The same infrastructure can grow to support more services over time:

  • Video calling — Jitsi Meet for hosted video conferencing without depending on Zoom or Google Meet
  • Web hosting — WordPress for managed sites, static site generators for simpler ones, and other web presences running on shared infrastructure
  • Communication — Matrix for encrypted, decentralised messaging and chat
  • Social media — Lemmy or Mastodon for federated community spaces, independent of commercial platforms

Opportunities​

Documenting concrete needs grounds the work in reality and makes it easier to prioritise:

  1. Member portal and knowledge base (Outline) — the need: members can't find information or resources without emailing someone. A place where they can find it themselves, access resources, or stay informed.
  2. Workspace and tooling (Nextcloud) — the need: file storage, calendars, and collaboration currently run through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Replace it with something we control.
  3. Communication infrastructure — the need: members and organisers need channels to reach each other that aren't run on a platform's terms. Email, Signal, Matrix, social media.
  4. An AI toolchain — the need: AI-assisted work that's sustainable, with proper memory and context instead of starting from zero every session, and grounded in European search like Staan rather than a closed vendor's index.
  5. Reporting and analysis — the need: casework and organising grounded in data, not guesswork. More data-driven projects, like building a database to analyse a domain and speed up casework (e.g., a database of landlords and buildings to support housing organising).
  6. Union infrastructure — the need: commercial SaaS runs core organisational work. Replace it with self-hosted equivalents: a CMS for the website, a CRM for member management, a newsletter tool.