Newsmast unplugged: FediCon Part III

Travelling nine and a half hours around the world is one way to get a different perspective.

Made easier by finding a welcoming Third Space to call home for a few days. FediCon was the perfect place to unplug and unwind. A refreshing break from finishing the Newsmast Foundation Fediverse onboarding stack.

Here are the seven tech and non-tech layers we have in place:

Advocacy

Adding new campaigns and platforms to our high-octane social media activity.

Education

Leading onboarding with a programme of webinars, online resources and live events.

App

A white-label mobile and web app, which an organisation can make their own, with their name, branding, colours, language, channels and server. We've found that putting a clean, easy-to-use app in people’s hands is a great way to introduce them to the open social web.

Channels

Our high level, topical Newsmast Channels, covering climate change to chemistry, politics to photography, can now be supplemented with local, national or global channels tailored to each app.

Communities

From Mastodon microservers spun up within Channel.org, to bigger servers with a custom Patchwork Dashboard, to fully-featured and tailored Bonfire flavours coming soon.

Moderation

Global Patchwork filters are a good start, but local moderation is essential. We’re supporting Bonfire and IFTAS in building a unified dashboard across multiple communities and platforms. 

Support

From our first channels, communities and beta partners, we’ve learnt how important support is throughout the onboarding process. We’re a small team, so we’ll look to Fediverse knowledge sharing tools to help.

There’s a lot going on.

Newsmast onboarding has many moving parts, and as we’ve tried out and launched individual pieces, it hasn’t always been clear what they do, and how it all fits together. Rushing forward, we’ve ended up moving slowly, falling behind in our development and messaging. Now we can slow down, join up all the layers, and paradoxically move faster. Here’s the plan.

We’re an educational charity supporting knowledge sharing and community building in three ways:

Campaigning for the Commons

We’ve just launched the first own-branded version of our app - Mo-Me -  with tailored channels and a dedicated server for Media Revolution, a UK campaigning organisation driving towards mass rejection of mainstream media, including social media, on 5th November 2025. Guy Fawkes Day.

Onboarding Organisations

We’re talking to a pioneering independent news publisher, again in the UK, who are looking to hook up our app to their existing Wordpress site, bringing news and social media to their members. News is one of three verticals where we plan to offer our full onboarding stack:

• Independent news publishers and journalists.
• Non-profits and for-good organisations.
• Academic groups and institutions.

Growing Communities

We’re bringing locally-branded, local-language versions of our app to two Fediverse communities, in Canada and the UK. Simplifying the onboarding journey, and offering users easy access to tailored content matching their interests. With a goal of community engagement and growth.

Slowing down and getting comfortable.

What’s been hard for us to articulate, to ourselves and the outside world, is that we aren’t just building tech products, and we aren’t just curating content.

The tech products, curation, content, education and support are all part of a bigger process of community onboarding, building and growth.

Over the coming months, we’re aiming to refine and simplify our message, slowing down and becoming comfortable with what we’re doing, and fitting it all together in one onboarding programme. Which should help people and organisations outside the Fediverse feel comfortable too.

We’d love you to join us, in any way you can.