Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: shared email accounts for Coho business

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Nov 9, 2022, at 8:07 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

> TL:DR - how are your communities handling this, if you have team-wide gmail
> accounts or a community Zoom account that is supposed to be available to
> everyone who does governance tasks?

We have several members who have professional zoom accounts that we can use. 
And we also use Groups.io. We have used it for a long time so were 
grandfathered in when they recently limited their free subscriptions to 100 
members and reduced access to other features like files, photos, database, 
wiki, etc.

I do think, however, that Groups.io is worth the cost of $20 a month (I think 
that’s current) because it is very reliable and very full featured. Fast search 
functions. Their standard is enterprise hosting — serving as the email service 
for large businesses and associations so they aren’t designed on 
the-minimum-we-can-get-away-with style of Yahoo and Google.

But there is another alternative that I’m happy to recommend. Mosaic.
> 
> A related question is, is there a reliable free email service that does not
> require a phone number?

Mosaic. I’ve been working with Sean on an almost daily basis to understand how 
Mosaic is structured and to tweak and build out some features. And to write 
support files. And to resolve the fundamental risk that Sean is its sole 
support person. Big plans. 

The email function works interestingly. Each community can request a Mosaic 
installation. It has 19 modules that can be activated or  ignored as you 
choose. They include people/household contact info, cash accounting for meals, 
meals scheduling & sign up, decision log, discussions/newsfeed, document 
storage, surveys, workshare job posting & tracking, debit/credit accounting, 
etc.

The email function links the email addresses to other modules and you can make 
lists of email addresses of groups. To send an email click the button for a 
group's list already assembled or choose the individual names from a checkbox 
list. An email message opens for your personal email account to send the 
message to everyone on the list. (I haven’t discovered the location but Sean 
says the emails are stored on the site for later reference.)

Mosaic truly has the potential to be a one-place-for-everything solution for 
community communications. There is a learning curve but unlike the various free 
services that have been taking nosedives or changing the rules with no notice, 
it is a one time learning curve. And you can learn one module at a time. My 
personal goal for years has been to develop a program that serves all the 
online communications needs of cohousing and other cooperative organizations. 

The dream: One password and everything in one place. 

Nothing cobbled together from multiple sites and services.

Sean has built Mosaic using open-source software and communities are welcome to 
have the software installed on their own server so they have more control. Any 
developer would be likely to understand the code. After working on Mosaic, I 
have realized that many commercial programs are actually built using open 
source software so I’m less afraid of it. It isn’t software that one person 
developed in some idiosyncratic language. 

Sean has been incredibly accessible and responsive but we all worry about the 
reality of the airline passenger and astrology. It doesn’t matter how good my 
chart is today — the pilot’s chart is the one that matters most.

Anyone else who is interested in developing Mosaic, please contact me or Sean.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org