Locally hosted web apps, built by volunteers, powered by renewables
Merri-bek Tech is building local web serving across our neighbourhood in order to provide affordable alternatives to big tech, while improving our local resilience in the face of the climate crisis.
What is web hosting?
Almost every app on your phone, and every web-site that you use, is relying on computers it connects to over the internet that do the work behind each button press you make. If you want to message a friend, post to social media, or invite someone to an event, you’re relying on these services running on computers in big data centers. When Merri-bek tech provides this for you instead, our hosting will be:
- A local non-profit, not a global corporation like Amazon
- Building local skills, helping local people get jobs
- Running on renewable technology
- Located in key community facilities around Merri-bek
- Running on open-source software, with no one profiting from your data
Part of a local climate adaptation
The climate crisis means that our world is getting less predictable. Wild weather, heat waves, fires, power outages, and housing climate refugees are all important realities of the 21st century, and are better tackled together as a strong community. Technology can help groups organise and communicate, but only if it keeps working during these emergencies. Our multi-year vision is to build a resilient local network for Merri-bek that provides these services even if centralised systems like power, NBN and cell-reception are offline.
Participatory by design
We aren’t a professional service provider, we’re a local grass-roots project driven by our values. We work transparently so that you can see and understand the technology that powers our digital world. Regardless of your skill level, if you’re interested in how web software works, we provide ways to get involved by:
- Running a facilitated three-month learning experience for volunteers
- Transparently demonstrating how all our systems work
- Providing documentation suitable to a range of skill levels
- Having a set of experienced mentors standing by to help with your project