Once again this year, we asked David Revoy to illustrate our year-end campaign. And on this last day of 2023, it’s time to give a little nod to this important work!
đŠ VS đ: Let’s take back some ground from the tech giants!
Did you notice? The monsters started the campaign very serenely, enjoying grilled data skewers. But as you donated more and more, they became more than a little concerned…
Our cheerful mascots face off against some rather repulsive Datavöres
Each Framasoft mascot, representing one of our projects, stood up to a monstrous, unattractive GAFAM. But did you notice that our mascots were showing signs of life?
Once again, we’d like to extend our warmest thanks to David Revoy, who has been working with us since 2017 to illustrate our work and hopes with talent, heart and intelligence.
Speaking of success, last night, we’ve reached our fundraising goal to meet our 2024 budget!
We’d like to take this last day of our review to thank all those who have worked, discussed, shared, supported, encouraged, criticized… and contributed to our actions. The Internet isn’t big enough to mention all of you at least as much as you deserve, but you know who you are and from the depths of our little hearts we modestly say: thank you.
Thanks to you, we’ll have the means to continue our work over the coming year (well, if some of you want to give us a bit more means, we won’t say no… but that’s not the point!). Above all, thanks to you, we feel supported.
We hope you have a wonderful end to the year, and we send you ou best wishes of emancipation, joy and freedom in 2024,
Une fois encore, nous tenons Ă remercier chaleureusement David Revoy, qui travaille avec nous depuis 2017 pour illustrer avec talent, cĆur et intelligence notre travail et nos espoirs.
Qual Ăš l’impatto concreto delle azioni della nostra associazione? Ă questa la domanda a cui ci piace rispondere alla fine dell’anno (vedi dati 2022): prendersi il tempo per quantificare le nostre azioni Ăš essenziale per rendersi conto del servizio che possiamo fornire agli altri. Iniziamo con le Framastatistiche 2023!
đŠ VS đ : Riprendiamo terreno ai giganti del web!
PiĂč di 1,8 milioni di persone visitano i nostri siti web ogni mese: Ăš il doppio delle visite che Disneyland Paris riceve ogni mese! Questa cifra Ăš aumentata del 16% rispetto all’anno scorso, quindi Ăš pazzesco (e molto motivante) pensare che ciĂČ che facciamo sia utile a cosĂŹ tante persone. E cosa significa questo, per ogni singolo servizio?
Framadate
Framadate consente di creare dei mini-sondaggi, in particolare per trovare la fascia oraria giusta per gli appuntamenti. E in cifre, Framadate significa:
33.785.780 visite nel 2023
1,2 milioni di sondaggi ospitati nel 2023
80.000 sondaggi creati in piĂč rispetto al 2022
Framapad
Framapad consente a piĂč persone di scrivere sullo stesso documento. Framapad Ăš senza dubbio uno dei piĂč grandi servizi Etherpad al mondo, con:
510.900 pad ospitati attualmente
Diversi milioni di pad ospitati dal lancio del servizio
309.000 account su MyPads (+ 60.000 rispetto al 2022)
Circa 280.000 e-mail inviate in media ogni giorno lavorativo
Framaforms
Framaforms semplifica la creazione di questionari online. Framaforms in cifre:
867.000 visite al mese
418.628 moduli attualmente ospitati
172.289 moduli creati quest’anno
Framacalc
Framacalc consente di creare fogli di calcolo collaborativi. Ă forse il piĂč grande istanza Ethercalc del mondo, con:
4.235.879 visite nel 2023
218.000 calcoli ospitati
Framateam
Framateam Ăš un servizio di chat che consente di organizzare dei team suddivisi per canale. Ă probabilmente una delle piĂč grandi istanze pubbliche di Mattermost al mondo, con:
148.870 utenti del servizio (di cui 5.582 si collegano ogni giorno)
29.665 team
168.102 canali di discussione
PiĂč di 43 milioni di messaggi scambiati dal lancio del servizio
Framagit
Framagit Ăš una fucina di software dove gli sviluppatori possono pubblicare il proprio codice e contribuire a quello degli altri. Framagit Ăš probabilmente uno dei piĂč grandi server Gitlab pubblici in Francia, con:
70Â 679Â progetti ospitati
49Â 642Â utenti
8Â 966Â fork
149Â 789Â issues
91Â 623Â Merge requests
1Â 764Â 909 note
Framacarte
Framacarte consente di creare mappe online. E in cifre, Ăš:
2Â 770Â 510 visite nel 2023
6Â 690Â utenti (+Â 1Â 246 in un anno)
170Â 845Â mappe ospitate (+ 33.476 in un anno)
Framatalk
Framatalk consente di creare o di unirsi a una sala di videoconferenza. E in cifre, questo Ăš:
656Â 765Â visite nel 2023 (+Â 45Â % rispetto all’anno scorso)
Una media di 75 conferenze attive per 200 partecipanti per giorno lavorativo
Framindmap
Framindmap consente di creare mappe mentali. In cifre, Framindmap Ăš:
295Â 379Â visite nel 2023
1,13Â milioni di mappe mentali ospitate
489Â 690Â utenti
Framavox
Framavox consente a un gruppo di persone di incontrarsi, discutere e prendere decisioni in un unico luogo. Framavox Ăš probabilmente una delle piĂč grandi istanze esistenti dell’eccellente software Loomio, con:
119Â 633Â utenti
124Â 566Â visite nel 2023
12Â 265Â comunitĂ
Framagenda
Framagenda consente di creare calendari online. In cifre, si tratta di:
260Â 000Â calendari
122Â 919Â utenti
Framaspace
Framaspace Ăš un ambiente di lavoro collaborativo per piccole associazioni e gruppi. In cifre, si tratta di:
850 associazioni e piccoli gruppi non organizzati da Google
750 nuovi spazi aperti entro il 2023
16 server (dedicati e macchine virtuali) per 640 TB di spazio su disco
PiĂč di 800.000 file ospitati su Framaspace
PeerTube
PeerTube Ăš un’alternativa alle piattaforme video. E in cifre Ăš:
300Â 000Â utenti
893Â 000Â video
1Â 151Â istanze pubbliche
287Â 000Â commenti ai video
231 milioni di visualizzazioni (una visualizzazione viene conteggiata a partire da 30 secondi)
434Â To di file
413 issues risolti nel 2023 (su un totale di 4.360 issues trattate)
2 sviluppatori stipendiati (il secondo si Ăš unito al team a settembre!)
Mobilizon
Mobilizon Ăš la nostra alternativa ai gruppi e agli eventi di Facebook. In cifre, Ăš:
313Â 554Â eventi
29Â 789Â utenti
86Â istanze
3Â 438Â gruppi
1 sviluppatore (nemmeno a tempo pieno!)
Framadrive
Framadrive, il servizio di archiviazione di documenti, non Ăš piĂč aperto alle iscrizioni, ma funziona ancora! In cifre, si tratta di:
10,8Â milioni di file
4Â 794Â utenti
2,6 TB di spazio su disco utilizzato
Framapiaf
Framapiaf, un’istanza del software di micro-blogging Mastodon, non Ăš piĂč aperta a nuove registrazioni ma rimane molto attiva. In cifre, si tratta di:
1Â 500Â utenti che si sono collegati negli ultimi 30 giorni
850Â utenti che hanno postato almeno un messaggio negli ultimi 30 giorni
Infrastruttura tecnica
Per quanto ne sappiamo, Framasoft Ăš il piĂč grande fornitore associativo di servizi online al mondo. E a priori, questo modello di funzionamento associativo non esiste da nessun’altra parte! In cifre:
58 server e 60 macchine virtuali che ospitano i nostri servizi online
0,6 tonnellate di CO2 equivalenti per il consumo annuale di elettricitĂ della nostra infrastruttura tecnica (il nostro host, Hetzner, utilizza energia idroelettrica ed eolica rinnovabile)
1 amministratore di sistema a tempo pieno e 2 addetti al supporto tecnico
I servizi online che forniamo al pubblico non sono le uniche cose che ci tengono occupati. Ecco qualche dato su alcune delle altre attivitĂ che abbiamo svolto quest’anno.
AttivitĂ interna
Framasoft conta 28 membri volontari e 11 dipendenti.
45 presentazioni nel 2023, in presenza e/o online, sulle tecnologie digitali, i beni culturali comuni e le questioni in gioco.
PiĂč di 130 articoli pubblicati sul Framablog nel 2023
Un corso di formazione e un MOOC creato per chi ospita servizi etici
21 operatori in grado di supportare le associazioni nella loro emancipazione digitale elencati sul sito emancipasso.org
5 visite di studio in 5 Paesi europei per il progetto ECHO Network
8 anni di coordinamento del collettivo CHATONS, che attualmente comprende 91 fornitori di hosting alternativi
Abbiamo bisogno del vostro aiuto!
Ă grazie alle vostre donazioni che possiamo garantire la totale indipendenza finanziaria dell’associazione: la libertĂ di sperimentare, di continuare, di fallire, di fermarci, di portare avanti i nostri progetti, dai piĂč seri ai piĂč strampalati, sempre in linea con il nostro progetto associativo di educazione popolare ai temi del digitale e dei beni culturali comuni. E in cifre:
Il 93% del nostro bilancio Ăš finanziato dalle donazioni
5Â 463 donatori finanziano iniziative di cui beneficiano piĂč di 1,8 milioni di persone ogni mese
Il70Â % del bilancio Ăš destinato al pagamento degli stipendi.
Â
Framasoft Ăš un’associazione di interesse generale: tutte le donazioni fatte a noi sono deducibili fino al 66% per i contribuenti francesi. Quindi una donazione di 100 euro vi costerĂ in realtĂ solo 34 euro dopo gli sgravi fiscali.
Se vogliamo raggiungere il nostro budget per il 2024, abbiamo solo 3 giorni per raccogliere 48 000âŻâŹ : non possiamo farlo senza il vostro aiuto!
What is the concrete impact of our associationâs actions? Thatâs the question we like to answer at the end of the year: taking the time to quantify our actions is essential if we are to realise the service we can provide to others. Letâs get ready for Framastats 2023!
đŠ VS đ: Let’s take back some ground from the tech giants!
More than 1.8 million people visit our websites every month: thatâs twice as many people as visit Disneyland Paris every month! This figure is up 16% on last year, so itâs pretty crazy (and very motivating) to think that what we do is useful to so many people. And what about service by service?
Framadate
Framadate allows you to create mini-surveys, for example to find the right appointment time. And in figures, Framadate is:
33,785,780 visits in 2023
1.2 million hosted surveys in 2023
80,000 more surveys created than in 2022
Framapad
Framapad allows several people to write on the same document. Framapad is undoubtedly one of the largest Etherpad services in the world, with:
510,900 pads currently hosted
Several million pads hosted since the launch of the service
309,000 accounts on MyPads (+ 60,000 compared to 2022)
More than 5 million visits in 2023
Framalistes and Framagroupes
Framalistes and Framagroupes allow you to create email discussion lists. As the Framalistes server had reached its maximum capacity, we opened Framagroupes in June 2023 to continue offering this service, which we consider essential. Framalistes and Framagroupes are undoubtedly the largest discussion list servers in existence (excluding the web giants), with:
more than 1.1 million users
63,900 open lists
An average of 280,000 messages sent per working day
Framaforms
Framaforms makes it easy to create online forms. Framaforms in figures:
867,000 visits per month
418,628 forms currently hosted
172.289 forms created this year
Framacalc
Framacalc allows you to create collaborative spreadsheets. It may also be the largest Ethercalc database in the world, with:
4,235,879 visits in 2023
218,000 hosted spreadsheets
Framateam
Framateam is a chat service that allows teams to be organised by channel. It is probably one of the largest public Mattermost instances in the world, with:
148,870 users of the service (5,582 of which log on daily)
29,665 teams
168,102 discussion channels
More than 43 million messages exchanged since the launch of the service
Framagit
Framagit is a software forge where developers can publish their code and contribute to the code of others. Framagit is probably one of the largest public Gitlab servers in France, with:
70,679 hosted projects
49,642 users
8,966 forks
149,789 issues
91,623 merge requests
1,764,909 commit notes
Framacarte
Framacarte allows you to create maps online. And in figures, itâs:
2,770,510 visits in 2023
6,690 users (+ 1,246 in one year)
170,845 hosted maps (+ 33,476 in one year)
Framatalk
Framatalk allows you to create or join a video conference room. And in numbers, thatâs
656,765 visits in 2023 (+45% compared to last year)
An average of 75 active conferences with 200 participants per working day
Framindmap
Framindmap allows you to create mind maps. In numbers, Framindmap is:
295,379 visits in 2023
1.13 million hosted mind maps
489,690 users
Framavox
Framavox allows a group of people to meet, discuss and make decisions in one place. Framavox is probably one of the largest existing instances of the excellent Loomio software, with:
119,633 users
124.566 visits in 2023
12.265 communities
Framagenda
Framagenda allows you to create online calendars. In numbers, thatâs:
260,000 calendars
122.919 users
Framaspace
Framaspace is a collaborative working environment for small associations and groups. In numbers, thatâs:
850 associations and small groups not organised by Google
750 new spaces to be opened by 2023
16 servers (dedicated and virtual machines) providing 640 TB of storage
More than 800,000 hosted files
PeerTube
PeerTube is the alternative to video platforms. And in numbers, itâs:
300,000 users
893,000 videos
1,151 public entities
287,000 comments on videos
231 million views (a view is counted from 30 seconds)
434 TB of files
413 issues resolved in 2023 (out of a total of 4,360 issues handled)
363,591 visits to JoinPeerTube.org
2 employees (the 2nd joined the team in September!)
Mobilizon
Mobilizon is our alternative to Facebook Groups and Events. In numbers, itâs:
313,554 events
29,789 users
86 instances
3,438 groups
1 developer (not even full-time!)
Framadrive
Framadrive, the document storage service, is no longer open for registration, but itâs still working! And in numbers, thatâs:
10.8 million files
4,794 users
2.6 TB of storage used
Framapiaf
Framapiaf, an installation of the microblogging software Mastodon, is no longer open to new registrations, but remains very active. In figures, there are:
1,500 users who have registered in the last 30 days
850 users who have posted at least one message in the last 30 days
Technical infrastructure
To the best of our knowledge, Framasoft is the worldâs largest web host for online services. And a priori, this associative operating model doesnât exist anywhere else! In figures:
58 servers and 60 virtual machines hosting our online services
0.6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent for the annual electricity consumption of our technical infrastructure (our host, Hetzner, uses renewable hydro and wind energy)
1 full-time sysadmin and 2 technical support staff
The online services we provide to the public are not the only things that keep us busy. Here are some figures on some of the other things weâve been up to this year.
Internally
Framasoft has 28 volunteers and 11 paid employees
45 presentations in 2023, face-to-face and/or online, on digital technology, the cultural commons and related issues
over 130 articles published on the Framablog in 2023
Itâs thanks to your donations that we can guarantee the total financial independence of the association: the freedom to experiment, to continue, to fail, to stop, to continue our projects, from the most serious to the most mad, always in line with our associative project of popular education on digital issues and the cultural commons. And in figures:
93% of our budget comes from donations
5,463 donors finance initiatives that benefit more than 1.8 million people every month
70% of the budget is spent on salaries
Once again this year, we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces.
If we want to balance our budget for 2024, we only have 3 days left to raise âŹ48 000: we canât do it without your help!
Framapiaf, installation du logiciel de micro-bloging Mastodon, n’est plus ouvert aux nouvelles inscriptions mais reste bien actif. En chiffres, c’est :
There was one more present left at the foot of the Christmas tree… The French free software directory and founding project of Framasoft is evolving once again, into a site that’s nicer, simpler, more ergonomic… and a lot more practical for recommending your favourite free software!
đŠ VS đ: Let’s take back some ground from the tech giants!
There was one more present left at the foot of the Christmas tree⊠The free software directory and founding project of Framasoft is evolving once again, into a site thatâs nicer, simpler, more ergonomic⊠and a lot more practical for recommending your favourite free software!
So, for people who were used to the previous version of Framalibre, we warn you: itâs going to leave a gap⊠You have every right to exclaim âbut whereâs all my junk?â ⊠But for many newcomers to the world of free software, that was the problem!
Maiwann has done a lot of usability testing for us, especially at conferences and at the stands where we meet. These tests helped her to realise, for example, that putting a simple âmailâ label on the home page wasnât helping people who were âlooking for an alternative to Gmailâ.
So for this new version, weâve made a radical choice: simplicity. So weâve gone to great lengths to simplify menus, sub-menus, drop-down menus, labels, boxes, notes, buttons, and so on.
This radical choice for simplicity came at a price: we had to refocus the Framalibre directory on digital tools. The previous version wanted to open up to free culture, objects and structures. But the problem with doing a bit of everything is that itâs hard to do everything well: presenting all open source resources meant multiplying menus and categories, while increasing the complexity of creating a listing.
The new Framalibre site is deliberately bare bones. It welcomes you with a page displaying tags (the most frequently used search terms) and a search bar. Goodbye the meta-categories, categories, sub-categories and sub-category filters⊠In short, the tree structure inherited from the 2001 directory!
Our aim is to respond as quickly as possible to your need to find free software to do what you need to do, or to find an alternative to the service provided by the web giants that you want to free yourself from: you search, you find.
đ Under the hood, the pages đ
For the more technical among you (the rest of you can skip straight to the next part ^^), this simplicity can also be found under the hood.
Framalibre 2017âs Drupal 7 needed a good upgrade, which takes time and energy. The entries database was difficult to access: while weâd done a good job of tinkering with something so that it could be used by others, we would have had to spend more time and energy developing a practical, documented APIâŠ
This choice of static allowed us to modify the structure of the entries and the database. Now written in markdown, these records can be read by both humans and scripts (as long as your robots remain well-behaved, of course :p). As the Framalibre records are CC-By SA, we hope that making them more accessible and readable will lead to some interesting re-uses!
Weâve also taken the opportunity to simplify the manuals as much as possible: you wonât find any screenshots of the software, for example. After a few years, these images are often outdated and misleading. From now on, the information presented in a manual will be simple and concise, and if you like this first look at a particular free software product, we invite you to find out more on the official website.
đ âHere, this is what I use to free myselfâŠâ đ.
Because our goal is not for you to stay on Framalibre as long as possible (yes, in the game of attention economy, Framasoft is frankly – and deliberately – bad đ ). On the contrary, Framalibre aims to be a mediator, a ramp to take you to the official site of the free tool that meets your needs.
In addition to being a search tool, we have designed this new Framalibre as a tool for recommending free and ethical alternatives. Whether itâs during the preliminary surveys and tests for this redesign of Framalibre, during the regular meetings we attend, or even when we look at how we operate ourselves⊠we observe the same constant:
Itâs much easier to adopt a free tool when it comes highly recommended by people we trust.
This is how we came up with the idea of adding a âused by Framasoft membersâ box at the top of certain search pages. This doesnât mean that other software isnât as good, or that it wonât meet your specific needs: it just shows the free software and services that we use regularly.
[capture mini-site]
đ Framalibre mini-sites: offer your choices! đ
With this new version of Framalibre, we wanted to go even further to encourage peer-to-peer recommendations. We know from experience that a person who uses free software today is a person who will help those around him or her to liberate their digital use tomorrow.
On the new Framalibre, you can make your own selection of free tools and get a link to a page that you can share with your friends and family!
Just for fun, here are a few examples weâve put together for you:
We look forward to hearing your choice of free tools!
đ€ Collaboration is about sharing! đ€
Of course, Framalibre is and will remain a collaborative directory. Whether you want to add a record to the directory or correct an existing record, contributions are just a click away!
Whatâs more, weâve made the whole process a lot easier (you can see thereâs a theme here!). The downside is that your submissions will be reviewed by our team of moderators before they are published (rather than being moderated after submission, as was previously the case).
The upside is that there are already almost 1,019 entries to discover, like so many of the solutions that open source communities offer each of us to make our digital practices better.
And if you canât find the entry for that great free software or application that freed you from the web giants⊠feel free to add it: youâll see, itâs (unsurprisingly) easy!
So now itâs up to you!
Itâs up to you to use Framalibre to find, share and, above all, recommend the free tools that make your digital life easier⊠and life in general!
Because, yes, at the end of the year, we need you, your support and your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and create more ethical digital spaces.
So weâve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our âSupport Framasoftâ page, which we invite you to visit (because itâs beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible:
If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have just 5 days left to raise ⏠71 398 : we canât do it without your help !
EmancipâAsso : Ethical right down to your digits
Until 2022, the time spent on EmancipâAsso was mainly used to find funding for the project, set up and run a steering committee and organise training for ethical service providers, but it was in 2023 that the project really took off. Weâre well on the way to enabling associations that want to free themselves from the digital tools of the web giants to find structures that can support them in this transition.
đŠ VS đ: Let’s take back some ground from the tech giants!
Conceived in 2021 in partnership with Animafac, co-piloted by a large number of organisations from the popular education, voluntary and digital sectors, and integrated into our roadmap âCollectivese Internet / Convivialise Internetâ, the main objective of the EmancipâAsso project is to bring together ethical digital service providers and voluntary organisations in need of support in their emancipatory digital transition.
In order to achieve its objective, the project will include 4 actions:
Training for providers of ethical online services;
An online course, a digital version of the training;
A website listing service providers who specialise in helping associations make the digital transition and providing a place for associations to help each other and share their needs;
A major communications campaign to encourage associations to recognise the contradiction of trying to change the world using the tools of capitalism.
Itâs been a busy year: the first 3 actions detailed above have now been completed! Weâll tell you all about them in the rest of this article.
Training suppliers of ethical digital services to support associations
Weâve come to the conclusion that there are very few ethical digital service providers offering solutions that really take into account the needs of voluntary organisations, and in particular the support required to make a successful transition to open source digital tools. The first stage of the EmancipâAsso project therefore aims to support the development of the skills of these actors through two mechanisms: training and an online course (MOOC).
A much-appreciated training course in January 2023
Once again, we would like to thank the 9 people who agreed to take part in this training session to share their expertise and exchange views with the participants. Their contributions were much appreciated (see below) and proved invaluable in providing a solid base of knowledge and resources for the production of the MOOC.
The satisfaction questionnaire we sent out to participants highlights the fact that, overall, the week was beneficial for everyone. For example, 35% of participants found the training very satisfactory, 60% fairly satisfactory and only one participant found the training fairly unsatisfactory.
The most popular teaching sequences were:
Carry out a digital diagnosis of an association
Developing your network and thinking about complementary work
Communicating and designing a service offer
User training and support/assistance
An overview of the digital uses of associations
Understand the non-profit sector
Establish a strategic dialogue with the association
(Satisfaction rate calculated on the basis of 5 criteria: quality of theoretical content, quality of practical content, quality of teaching approach, quality of facilitation tools and listening ability/availability).
We also asked participants how satisfied they were with other aspects of the training. And as the graph below shows, overall satisfaction was high, with a few rare exceptions.
However, we recognise that certain aspects could be improved:
encourage less top-down methods of knowledge transfer,
providing more practical work and exchange of practice
improving the coherence between the different interventions
using more appropriate premises.
And weâll do our best if we decide to run the course again in the future. But at the moment we donât have the funding to do so.
A full MOOC in December 2023
It took us almost a year to turn the training into a MOOC, but thatâs it: the online course âDeveloping a range of services to support voluntary organisations in their ethical digital transitionâ is now available on the CHATONS MOOC platform (only in French, sorry!). Mind you, the paint is still fresh and there are bound to be a few typos, but this online course, which is primarily aimed at organisations and individuals who already provide online services or who want to offer them to associations, will enable you to acquire a methodology and support techniques that go far beyond simply providing services.
The CHATONS #2 MOOC is broadly based on the educational sequence of the training course and allows you to navigate as you wish within 8 major themes, each of which offers several lessons and an MCQ (for self-assessment of acquired knowledge). Each lesson is structured around illustrated textual content and sometimes includes activities for you to complete. While we do not aim to be exhaustive, we have tried to summarise the state of knowledge on each topic and systematically include a âfurther readingâ section so that anyone wishing to delve deeper into the subject can consult additional resources.
The course is now open and anyone can join whenever they like: thereâs no registration period to keep to. In fact, you donât even need to register to view the lessons. However, we recommend that you create an account to take advantage of advanced features:
Access to self-assessment exercises in the form of multiple choice questions;
Access to the self-help forum
Track your progress through the course (so you can pick up a lesson where you left off, or keep track of your assessment results).
The key word here is autonomy. We want to give learners as much freedom as possible in their learning path: everyone can follow the lessons at their own pace and manage the time they devote to this MOOC.
As usual with Framasoft, all content created for this MOOC is released under a free CC-By-SA licence (some images and videos from third party sites are marked as such). We hope that it will evolve, especially thanks to the contributions and feedback on the support forum. This MOOC should therefore be seen as an organic, living community: it will grow if we take care of it. If there are missing resources, if an activity is off the mark, if a lesson is too long, we invite you to share your opinion and suggest improvements on the support forum.
A website to help associations get in touch with service providers, but thatâs not allâŠ
The first objective of the EmancipâAsso project was to enable ethical online service providers to develop their skills in supporting associations, but the second was to create an online space where associations could identify them. Thatâs why, right from the start of the project, we planned to create a website to bring people together. But before we could start creating the site, we had to create a graphic identity for EmancipâAsso.
A graphic identity and design đ
In September 2022, we asked a group of students to work on the creation of the graphic charter and visual identity for the EmancipâAsso project, as part of the supervised projects within the Colibre pro degree. After an initial phase in which the project was presented and our brief explained, 4 studentsâ es carried out a comparison of the graphic charters/visual identities of âneighbouringâ projects before drawing up a set of specifications presenting their analysis of the needs, from which they each developed a proposal for the graphic charter. One of these proposals met our expectations and served as the inspiration for our service provider, Thomas Nicolas (thanks to him), to create the logo.
The first is a directory of service providers able to support associations wishing to make the transition to open source digital tools.
By âsupportâ, we mean accompanying the association through all the stages necessary for its transition (co-development of a digital strategy, diagnosis and recommendations, implementation of these recommendations and assistance in getting to grips with the solutions deployed). We found that associations often had difficulty finding professionals who could provide this type of tailored support. Like many organisations, not-for-profits think in terms of âtoolsâ first, before thinking about a digital strategy to ensure a smooth transition (without having to return to the services of the web giants after a few months because they havenât thought through all the aspects of this transition). For this reason, associations will not find in this directory providers who only offer technical solutions. In fact, we have systematically asked service providers who have volunteered to be included in this directory to prove that they have already carried out several projects to support associations.
So far, 20 service providers are listed in this directory. Thatâs a start. Over the past month, we have been actively communicating with support professionals about the existence of this site. Whatâs more, weâre expecting service providers who have taken the training or the MOOC to register in the next few months. So itâs still a work in progress and you can access it. If you know of people or organisations that could be listed, please let us know.
The emancipasso.org website is also intended to be a gateway to a community where associations and other players in the emancipatory digital ecosystem can help and advise each other, share best practices and communicate their needs in terms of tools and/or functionalities so that development costs can be shared between several organisations. Based on the observation that associations, and in particular the people in charge of the digital aspects within them, currently have very few forums in which to discuss their practices in relation to the digital transition (thanks, incidentally, to the Mouvement Associatif and its regional delegations, which regularly address this issue), we felt it was essential to offer a space where they could feel less isolated on these issues.
Finally, the Resources section offers a selection of content aimed at voluntary organisations, so that they can familiarise themselves with ethical digital technology, but also at service providers, so that they can improve their knowledge of the voluntary sector and their methods of support. Our aim here is to list as much educational content as possible to promote the emancipation of the voluntary sector. If you have resources that we have not identified, please let us know (by sending a message to contact(at)emancipasso(dot)org) so that we can add them.
We will also continue to invite service providers to join the EmancipâAsso directory and to process applications. Itâs a long-term task to identify all the existing structures and ensure that they really offer services to associations that include a support dimension. Throughout the year, we will try to be present at the main gatherings of ethical and responsible digital professionals to inform them about the scheme and encourage them to join.
Finally, once the associations are aware of the project and have joined the EmancipâAsso community, we will put more energy into animating this community in order to facilitate exchanges between participants. Our goal is for the EmancipâAsso community to become an essential space for all associations in transition or that have completed their digital transition, and for frequent visits to this community to become an integral part of associative practices.
Thank you for supporting EmancipâAsso and Framasoft
So if you like this project and if itâs possible for you, we encourage you to support Framasoft. A part of your donations will help us to finance the costs (communication campaign and project coordination) of the EmancipâAsso project in 2024.
Once again this year, we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces.
So weâve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because itâs beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :
If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have just 12 days left to raise ⏠109000: we canât do it without your help !