Yeah, I totally get what you mean, I am kind of expecting that aswell, but at least I know, that other scouts groups in the area already have a nextcloud and it is actively beeing used, so I have some hopes in that regard. But yeah, getting them to use something like Matrix is probably pretty unrealistic.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 hours ago
Given someone already pays for electricity and internet at the location, I'd say the cheapest option would be to ask all the members if someone has an old laptop to donate, maybe even with a broken display or whatever, main thing is it still somehow runs. Rip out the battery, Install Linux, Nextcloud (maybe Yunohost), and put it somewhere without public access.
My smaller VPS costs somewhere around 70€ a year, guess that could be worth it as well as long as it contributes something meaningful.
And be prepared to be disappointed, 99% of my scout group never used the selfhosted services I tried. I guess that's somehow okay. They were focused on the real life activities and no one had any interest to do office work or remember logins... Was always the same 2 people who did paperwork and they didn't need a cloud, so I scrapped it. Your story could be different, I'm not saying it needs to turn out that way.
BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
How is the other group doing it? Could you leverage any of what they’re using?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 6 hours ago
Good luck, though. I believe first-hand experience with living a self-determined life - including online services - aligns nicely with scout ideals. And trying to convey the media-literacy that allows people to make informed choices.
And I can see some benefits with having documents available to everyone, templates and collaborate on the paperwork...
Glad to hear other groups in the area have success with Nextcloud... Another idea would be to somehow unite and share the hosting bill for a slightly bigger Nextcloud... But I still think my old laptop idea might be promising... depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can make port forwards and all the things that need to be done.
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Since it’s a public instance you’d want to be sure to keep it pretty up-to-date with new system patches and the latest stable versions of Nextcloud. If you’re comfortable with automating updates with ansible, k8s, docker-compose, etc. then it’s not a big deal. If you’re ssh’ing to a server to manually update things then it’s going to be a lot of overhead and likely forgotten.
Old hardware may also bring its own issues and you’ll need backups especially since old hardware (especially consumer-grade stuff) can fail very unexpectedly. And providing support for users is a whole… other thing…
I like the idea of starting with the “old laptop in a basement” approach as a way to get things going to see if the service provides benefit then look to migrate to a more stable platform in the future.
BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Yeah, I guess the plan would be (if we decide to use an old labtop) to have a similar backup system to my home server, so one daily incremental backup with something like borgbackup to a newly bought external hard drive and automated updates using watchtower (I heard major nextcloud upgrades can be tricky though, so I an not shure if it would be a good idea to automate those). I guess it would still suck if the laptop unexpectedly failed and we would have to scramble to find new hardware though, how long would you expect an old laptop to last as a server?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Could you pay them to host it for you?
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
The “old laptop” method is only feasible when it’s a personal service. You don’t want people (non-techie adults in leadership positions, especially) expecting AWS/MS/Google level of availability only for them to find out that a busted laptop (using “average people” terms) is the only thing that’s keeping their data in place. It’s not a good solution for a non-familial organization.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 6 hours ago
Idk. Really depends on what you put there. And Nextcloud does file sync. Even if the server coughs up and becomes unavailable, you'd still have your directories and calendar on your devices. And creativity and problem-solving are core scout skills, so I guess bulding that thing for no money would be an interesting exercise in that. Though you're right. At some point you'll have to think about maintainability and reliability. I guess that wouldn't stop me from starting the project, but everyone has to decide for themselves.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
Having been involved with many youth groups as a kid, including BSA, a not-insignificant amount of the leaders were - for lack of better word - idiots.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 hours ago
I don't think the BSA compare to the major German scouting associations. Different organization structure and substantially different ideology. But I suppose idiots are everywhere, at least that's my general life experience 😅