New member orientation guide

Wiki ▸ Guides and advice ▸ New member orientation guide

Welcome, potential Anarcho-Tech NYC members! As a first-timer to one of our events, you're probably getting a lot of information (mostly by people talking at you?) both welcoming you to the meeting space, and asking you if you have accounts on this or that service or collaboration tool. Maybe you're already familiar with some of these systems, but maybe you're not. Moreover, our collective itself created some custom software and, on top of that, tech antifa folks often create new tools or apps that you might find useful, but aren't well-known.

The following page hopes to familiarize you with these tools and provide a self-paced (but guided!) tour of them. Follow the links to dive into whatever rabbit hole looks like it would be a fun adventure to go on. :) Additionally, please read our Social rules, which will help you become a valuable and valued participant in our spaces.

🔰 💡 Feeling overwhelmed? No worries! Come to a meeting in person and we'll walk you through this process ourselves. 😸

1. GitHub
2. Signal
3. Gitter
4. Buoy

GitHub

If you're reading this, you're already here! GitHub is a Web-based collaboration tool useful for documenting incomplete knowledge (this wiki), having discussions (our issues tracker), organizing various software development efforts (organization repositories), visualizing an overview of our projects (our meta repo's Projects), and more. Everything that happens on GitHub is public, and easily downloadable. Accounts are free. Creating an account on GitHub allows you to edit these wiki pages and contribute to our community in other ways.

Do this:

1. If you don't already have a GitHub account, sign up for one here.
   • Be certain you select the free plan. There's no need to give GitHub any money.
   • You'll need an email address that you can check; you can use a disposable (temporary) email address if you need the added privacy.
2. Tell someone at the meeting or event you're at what your GitHub username is. That person will add you to the AnarchoTechNYC "organization" on GitHub.
3. You will get an email asking you accept your invitation to join the GitHub organization. Confirm this, and you're in.

Signal

To stay in touch when we're not meeting face-to-face, we use Signal Private Messenger, a privacy-enhanced mobile messenger app built for Android and iOS devices. Signal is also useful for communicating with your friends and in some cases can (and maybe should) completely replace your existing txting (SMS) app or other mobile messengers. You'll learn more about why we like it as you get more involved but, for now, just know that Signal is how we broadcast up-to-the-minute updates about meeting locations, times, and other logistical details.

If you don't have a smartphone or tablet, sadly, you can't use Signal. In that case, let a collective member know, and we'll loop you in through other means. If you do have a smartphone, get Signal and ask us more about how to use it. We'll be happy to show you the ropes. :)

Do this:

1. Using your smartphone's web browser, go to https://signal.org/.
2. Find the "Install" link (probably in the navbar), and click on the icon for your platform. This will take you to the appropriate app store.
3. Look at the byline and confirm that the app is published by "Signal Foundation." If it is, click Install.
4. Launch the app and run through its registration process. If you have any trouble, come to a meeting and we'll help you troubleshoot it.
5. Once installed, tell an AnarchoTechNYC regular that you'd like to join our tech collective's Signal group.
   • In addition to being at many in person meetings, most regulars hang out in various project rooms on Gitter; see the #Gitter section, below, for how to find those.

Gitter

Some in our collective host events that overlap with efforts of other collectives, work on projects with the intent of being publicly visible, or are designed to ease newcomers into security culture practices in a more familiar way. For these efforts, we often use Gitter, a Web-based chat room service. If you want to participate in one of those projects, you'll want to join the associated Gitter room, as well.

Do this:

1. Log in to your GitHub account.
   • If you don't already have a GitHub account, follow the setup steps in the #GitHub section, above.
2. Go to https://Gitter.im.
3. Click the "Sign in to start talking" button.
4. Click the "Sign in with GitHub" button. This will automatically associate your GitHub account with your new Gitter account.
5. Click the "Authorize Gitter" button if prompted.
   • You can review the requested permissions, which should just be "read" access to public profile information, before authorizing and creating your Gitter account.

Once you have a Gitter account, when you encounter a project that uses a Gitter room such as our cybersecurity study group, for example, you can click the link to its chat channel and click "Join room" at the bottom of the screen. The textual link is often accompanied by a little image that looks like this:

You can click on the above image to try it out. It will take you to our public test channel, the AnarchoTechNYC Lobby. Once there, say hi and introduce yourself! :)

Read Gitter § Our rooms for a more complete listing of the collective's presence on Gitter.

Buoy

📝 Editor's note: Buoy isn't really ready yet; it's here as a reminder and to pressure the Buoy devs to hurry up.

Buoy is software for autonomous communities that helps provision and dispatch support to individual community members who need help.

🚧 TK-TODO.