I suck at introductions; it is without a doubt that always finding the right way to start any form of writing has been a challenge for me, just like how finding the right way to start working on Gopherdon was. I had no idea as to where to go, what to do, or what steps would be the easiest to take when Gopherdon was just a question of, “Hmm, I wonder what would happen if we brought Mastodon to Goucher…”
After writing a small op-ed about the possibility of bringing Mastodon to Goucher and publishing it, I knew that it would be hard to get everything running, let alone getting anyone to use the platform. And so I decided to get started with what I knew I could do best at that time: create an app for Mastodon that Goucher students would want to use. That project became the Hyperspace project, one of the more popular clients for Mastodon. It currently has over 70 stars on GitHub and has an active team working alongside with me to create the best fediverse client yet. And, in the later half of the spring semester of 2019, the underpinnings for Gopherdon began to take shape. I worked with the IT department and Professors Tom Kelliher and Jill Zimmerman to get the server running in a lab on a cheap Raspberry Pi as a private beta, which you all have been willing to participate in.
Fast-forward to a year and a half later from conception, and the small project that was an answer to question has become an experience that I’m going to share with the general Goucher community as a public beta. It’s taken a few steps to get there, but we’ve finally made it. And, I couldn’t be happier or more grateful to share this experience with you all today. Whether you helped set up the technical end of Gopherdon with me, spread the word on campus, tried out the platform yourself, engaged in the conversation of decentralized social media, developed the app that students will want to use, or helped back this project from the get-go, you all have contributed to this project in amazing ways that I couldn’t appreciate more. I’d like to personally thank each and every one of you today for walking with me on this journey to bringing the future of social media to Goucher. Furthermore, I’d like to thank the following people for willing to take a step forward and help run Gopherdon alongside me as moderators of this platform: Linus Berggren, Alistair Watson, Nodar Sotkilava, and Eitan Avni-Heller.
However, the public beta is only the beginning for Gopherdon: with the public beta now in full force as of today, I will continue to work with my moderator team, app developers, and the greater Goucher community to let Gopherdon grow and prosper as it becomes a place for discussion, experience sharing, and cultural sustainability for the Goucher community. I can only hope that we continue this discussion with the Goucher community about what it means to have a student-led and student-run, decentralized, and open platform within Goucher College and how we can keep our community alive in the digital world where, especially now, privacy and transparency is important.
Note: This was originally written for the Gopherdon public beta launch party and has been made available to the general public.
