Offline is a community space in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Neukölln in Berlin, Germany. As the name suggests, the space does not have an internet connection or even reliable mobile data reception, and in-person community building, usually over a hot meal, is prioritized. Still, offline needs digital resources for communication and administration. Enter Community Computing, a group who used open-source and distributed tools to create a prototype of an Events tool for offline.
While our Events tool ultimately did not meet the needs of our community during testing (and is therefore not currently in use), creating the prototype was a hands-on opportunity to learn about alternative open-source tools. For example, we used the Berlin-based non-profit Codeberg for Git hosting and services in place of Github.
Beyond merely selecting the resources to build our Events tool, Community Computing was an exercise in thoughtful design. We wished to build digital solutions that functioned as an extension of our physical space and followed the same social protocols. A full description of our concerns, considerations and selected tools was summarized for the first offline community zine by Stephanie Cedeño:
