Basel Punk Social

Basel punk social is a participatory project and finds its home at https://basel.social, the main domain of this site. The core of this project is the social platform basel.social. People will be invited to create an account here. So, if your name is Robin and you like Basel in a punk way, you may register the user handle @robin@basel.social. With your account you can do all things social in the global Fediverse - liking Mastodon posts, following PeerTube channels, replying to federated blogposts, connecting to people on other platforms. What is special, is the very local community that will be brought together here, so you meet on the platform the people you know in real life.

Why punk? Link to heading

This really just started as a little wordplay¹ with the address basel.social. However, this platform is actually quite punk.

First, the broad definition of punk fits the Fediverse very well. The Fediverse is anti-autharitarian, anti-corporate, and anti-consumerist in nature. Like punk, the Fediverse is an environment encouraging non-conformist do-it-yourself ethics.

Second, this basel.social platform is aimed to be local, very local. Although everyone is welcome at basel.social, we aim to onboard one specific community in particular: alternative musicians and live music fans in Basel - let’s say, punks. Onboarding such a local group of people has a big advantage: people will very quickly find people they know on the platform, and content they are interested in, even if there are still relatively few people. With this approach, we hope to tackle one of the main obstacles for emerging alternative social platforms: the “network effect”, where value is limited by the number of users of a service.

The main initiator of this project, Gilles, lives in Basel, and plays in multiple bands in the Basel alternative music scene, offering a natural network and goodwill needed to build momentum around the basel.social platform. With an active advertisement campaign involving a number of very local “influencers” we aim to build some momentum in a short time span, so that the actual value of being on basel.social grows rapidly.

Why Basel? Link to heading

To set up this project in Basel is obvious, not only because it is Gilles’ home city. Equally important is the fact that Basel, and its music scene are just small enough that you know some people at every concert you visit. At the same time, the scene is big enought to be vibrant, internationally connected, and a commnity of open-minded, freedom-loving people, boosting the potential of network-effects driving this project to success.

What will this look like? Link to heading

basel.social will be launched looking like a pretty familiar social platform. People can build their profile page, follow friends, and view their posts in a feed.

We will, however, already add some community-related widgets to basel.social, like a concert calendar. We probably start with a version of Bonfire Social, a platform software developed by bonfire networks, who are supporting this project. This software allows us to add and adjust the functionalities of the platform, based on user feedback.

This means: we do not know what basel.social will look like, only how it starts.

How this project helps the Fediverse thrive Link to heading

A platform shaped by its members Link to heading

People who just want to do their social network stuff on basel.social are very welcome to do just that. However, every user is invited to join shaping the platform by answering some questions in regular feedback rounds. Popular requests will be implemented as much as feasibele. For example, the community may wish to have a possibility for bands to have their live stream running on the platform home page. We will then try to implement this.

We anticipate that over a number of feedback rounds, an ever more fun and really social platform will emerge, where the community feels empowered to shape their online world.

A source of knowledge Link to heading

In the process, we learn what platform members dislike and like, and get inspired by new features they come up with, and learn what works and what doesn’t. Such knowledge is of great value for Fediverse platform developers.

Additionally, we will document the process of platform development in a way that allows us to inspire future projects take a similar approach. Certainly, this journey is documented on this website, but if we get the resources, we’ll make mini-documentary about it.

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