Bulletin Board: ATmosphere, custom feeds, music scenes

We’re back with the second installment of New_ Public’s Bulletin Board.

This newsletter strives to be a space to find the best of what the public-spirited internet has to offer while building connections between New_ Public readers.

This only works with community input, so we’re opening up this space for your requests! Share anything you’d like to see here, from an event you want to amplify, to help finding support or collaborators for your project. You can share your request in the comments section or use our contact form.

– Josh Kramer, Head of Editorial, New_ Public

Announcements and events

• Watch New_ Public Co-Director Eli Pariser’s talk at CreativeMornings NYC on why we desperately need alternative solutions that center communities, not the profit incentives of large tech companies.

• March 26: Join a virtual talk with four of New_ Public’s team who are working on Roundabout, our local community app — Trei Brundrett, Blaine Cook, Adit Dhanushkodi, and Sam Liebeskind. We’re excited to dig in with our friends at Prosocial Design Network!

• March 26-29: If you’re coming to the ATmosphere conference in Vancouver, we’d love to see you! New_ Public’s Deepti Doshi, Blaine Cook, and Angelica Quicksey will be there, as well as Expert-In-Residence Catherine Tait. Join us for a Meet & Greet session next Friday at 1:30pm.

• March 27: Our friends at the Relational Tech Project, (Deborah Tien, Josh Nesbit, and others) are doing really important, experimental work in local communities:

Relational technology is not about endless feeds, addictive features, or growth at all costs. It’s about thoughtfully crafted tools that help neighbors care, collaborate, and build trust. The best relational tech is itself co-created in a way that deepens relationships with people around us.

Join in as they continue to test out their new Relational Tech Studio platform in this virtual session. Bring your project ideas and build them into something functional in real time!

• March 31: In this conversation at Columbia University, Ava Smithing, Gen Z host of the Left to Their Own Devices podcast, joins Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of bestseller The Anxious Generation. They’ll discuss what changes when young people get a say in the laws that shape their digital lives, followed by a Q+A with the audience and a community organization showcase.

• June 4-6: We’re excited to share that at this year’s PublicSpaces Conference in Amsterdam, we’ll be presenting The Next Socials — sessions on developing new platforms and products for the open web. More details to come, but save the date!

Links I would Slack you

• Here’s a really useful piece on how to think about AI-based fraud in user research on digital platforms, and what researchers and builders can do about it (from New_ Public’s Staff Researcher, Abby Bajuniemi).

• We’re in good company as co-signers of New Civic Future’s open letter:

We’re committed to a new civic future where people feel agency over their lives, where neighbors are connected through relationships of trust, and where communities have the power to shape their own futures.

• A surprising stat: “it’s harder to stay informed about your neighborhood than about another country.”

The more you know

In a recent study, researchers had 15 Bluesky users customize their feeds using natural language-based prompts. The results were what many of us crave: participants were able to focus on info they were interested in, discover relevant related content, and engage with their social media feed intentionally.

This sort of thing might be coming to a feed near you: some of the biggest social media companies have begun tip-toeing towards giving users more agency and choice, if only temporarily.

A connection is made

Occasionally we get requests that might be a great opportunity for someone in our larger community. Let’s see if we can make a connection!

Aaron Bear Berger offers:

I’m building a map-based platform that makes local music scenes visible, accessible, and financially supportive. Instead of relying on algorithms like Spotify and social media, it lets people explore real artists in their area based on what’s happening now with new releases and upcoming shows. Each artist has a simple profile where fans can listen to a track and directly support them, creating a more intentional, community-driven way to discover and sustain local music.

I’m primarily looking for collaborators right now and pressure testers, especially folks who understand building community around local culture/arts. Funding might come later, but right now I’m focused on finding partners to build this out with. Honestly, creative brainstorming / ideation could be fruitful.

Want to get in touch with Aaron? Use our contact form and put “For A.B.B.” at the start of your message. We’ll pass along your messages. Or, if you have a request to share in the next Bulletin Board, also please send that along.

Digital Spaces Directory spotlight

Roomy, described by Laurens Hof in this recent newsletter, is an experimental Discord-like group chat built on top of AT Protocol, the infrastructure that powers Bluesky. Founded by friend of New_ Public Erlend Sogge Heggen, Roomy allows for group chats to become gardenable digital spaces. While the platform is still a work in progress, Roomy will be used to connect attendees at ATmosphere next week in Vancouver.

Want to find more prosocial digital spaces, products, and tools? Our Digital Spaces Directory is a list of spaces that have taken at least some notable steps to build a public-spirited user experience, embody at least one of New_ Public’s Civic Signals, and/or implement creative new design patterns. You can submit a digital platform to the DSD here.

New_ Thing to try

We love to experiment and learn about new things. This New_ Thing to try comes from New_ Public’s Tori Sgarro:

I’m excited to try out a new Beta feature in Figma, called “slots.”

As New_ Public’s designer for Public Spaces Incubator, a large part of my job consists of maintaining a mature design system that we share with our consortium of partners. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to allow our partner designers and developers creative freedom to explore without breaking the structure that supports a coherent end-to-end experience in our product. Seemingly just in time, Figma released slots, which “give you the ability to customize components without breaking the system.”

It will require some design system refactoring in Figma, but I’m excited to see how slots can specify areas of customization in our design system, making it more flexible to work with.

LMAO

Kudos to the Norwegian Consumer Council, not just for this actually funny “A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator” sketch, but also for pushing policymakers to take action against Big Tech “degrad[ing] their services without fear of consequences.”

Ready for biking around in the springtime,

–Josh