JournoDAO Weekly: Colo Servers and Web3 J-School

It's a weird balance to strike with these updates. On the one hand we want to convey all the cool stuff that's happening in the DAO as if it's all planned and masterminded by people who know exactly what they're doing. On the other hand we want to make it clear that we're making it up as we go along and we need your help in making this project really take off.

Trust us, if you think you can't make a positive contribution, you're wrong. Just fill out this quick "I'm a human" form and contribute your amazing brain to fixing the part of the world that journalism touches.

• TODAY: Town Hall via Zoom at 1pm PDT (UTC -7). Email or DM us for link.
• TOMORROW: Twitter Space at 11am PDT (UTC -7). Watch @JournoDAO for the link.

Now on to the tea!

The Gang Buys a Colo Server

It's becoming more and more obvious that talking about Local Journalism means talking about Local Connectivity. For this reason the DAO's mission is broadening to help connect remote communities, and remove as much centralized infrastructure from the journalism tool kit as possible.

A colocation server (colo) is a computer that you buy or rent in a data center that gives you nearly direct access to the internet. What if the DAO bought one and offered it to journalists to remove the amount of trusted parties in between the journalist and their audience? A JournoDAO mesh network ISP?

B_rad_c put together this fascinating diagram of a co-lo decentralized storage idea that was fleshed out during our Spaces.

From his Discord post:

I drew up a chart representing the co-op network topology. In regards to the co-lo center idea, it could serve as the "network head" in the "local network" diagram, and a few of us could run nodes at home to create the first prototype "local network". The "co-op network" in the diagram represents many different locals joining together to create a shared CDN. The IPFS protocol allows peers to share resources, so if the network becomes bogged down the p2p nature (in theory) would help your app with capacity bursting

peers may potentially be incentivized to leave their node online to serve as a relay in exchange for premium content from the network. I should update the chart, but you could imagine peers who leech the network (don't relay content) as requiring to pay for subscriptions, but relay nodes could act like miners in a crypto network and be incentivized in exchange for the internet bandwidth

We know we're not the only ones thinking about decentralized and ubiquitous internet connectivity, so please let us know of any relevant projects you're aware of.

Binge Watch the Week

Our Town Hall and Twitter Spaces are slowly growing and we had some amazing conversations about using open source data derived from the blockchain to conduct investigative reporting, data security and what it means to be “decentralized” from the perspective of a media outlet or working journalist.

And both of our public forums this week landed in the conversation of education for journalists looking to incorporate decentralization into their work. Please take a few minutes to listen to one, or both, of the events at the links below and hop into our Discord to contribute to the conversations.

Twitter Spaces: https://twitter.com/JournoDao/status/1529886722472828928

J-School, Decentralized

Since education is an ongoing thread right now, we started a curriculum brainstorming board on Miro to capture ideas as we travel deeper into the educational component of onboarding journalists to web3. Here’s a sneak peak at the very beginning of the curriculum.

You've Got Questions, We've Got ... Answers?

Clinamenic.eth created the following form for people to submit ideas or questions about entering the web3 world from the perspective of journalism and traditional media outlets.

We’ll be announcing this initiative formally soon and those wishing to participate in our free public forums to explore specific questions, projects and initiatives can use this form to submit their information. https://forms.gle/w1H8YS2fS664EGDw5

On the Horizon

We’re currently in talks with CityDAO about participating in several of their upcoming initiatives involving educational curricula and programs to onboard more working journalists into the web3 ecosystem.

Next week we could be talking about the big idea that YOU bring to our town hall, Twitter stream, or Discord chat. Come join us!

Please share this update with your community and apply to join our DAO using this link. We’d love to see you in the Discord!