Here are a few items on how to get started with a regional group.
None of this is meant to be prescriptive, but a guideline of some of the mechanics, including getting yourself
Interest groups powered by atproto - rather than groups about atproto code & apps - is the next category we want to support.
For instance, Games, ATScience could be two examples that aren’t regional. Follow the same steps here to setup your community, except with a virtual meetup. You are welcome to submit such a group for listing on the site as well. npmx and atproto devs are already on the site as example communities of interest.
The https://atmosphere.community website is itself open source and community maintained. Check it out on Tangled: https://tangled.org/atmosphere.community/atmosphere.community
Feel free to edit this wiki page or leave comments with more suggestions.
1. Make an atproto account!
Create one on Blacksky, Eurosky, Bluesky, Selfhosted.Social or whatever makes sense to you.
Something like atprotoantarctica.selfhosted.social is going to be your initial placeholder.
Make a post for people in your region to follow, look for other local community groups that might be active on Bluesky.
Make a list on your account of regional people, companies, communities, meetups - other places to connect with and showcase. Is there an account that showcases art or music or other cultural events?
2. Request a domain name
Head to the Community Fund > Community Infrastructure category and make a request for a subdomain of something like antarctica.atmosphere.community.
You can of course get a region specific domain of your own and use that as your account handle.
Domains the community has:
3. Add your community to the atmosphere repo
This file is how we list on atmosphere.community right now → src/data/communities.yml at main · atmosphere.community/atmosphere.community · Tangled
Make a pull request with your community details. Or, just file an issue with your details and someone can add it for you.
This automatically aggregates all events from this account on the site, puts it on the globe, and in the future will add it to lists and startup packs.
Advanced mode: make an OpenSocial group that people can join (we’ll swap this out with private data spaces as they become available)
4. Organize your first event
A restaurant is often an easy spot to suggest. Libraries or other community spaces are good. Local companies sometimes host meetups.
At this point you might want to find one or two co-leads to help you organize.
You can arrange some talks with a projector, or you can run a more casual meet & greet where people introduce themselves and talk about their projects.
The group could decide on some projects to run locally, and decide what cadence to meet on - once a month is even a lot unless you rotate organizing leads.
Make an event at https://atmo.rsvp and announce it. It doesn’t need to be big!
5. Good Luck, Have Fun!
Take some pictures and notes and write up Bluesky posts and a blog from the event.
Make a Blento for the group. Maintain some regional lists or feeds together.
Try out some apps as a group that are new to you - eg Beaconbits for local check-ins, or browse AtStore https://atstore.fyi
Figure out how to chat. Roomy https://roomy.space or Colibri https://colibri.social or Freeq https://freeq.at are some atproto connected chats, several regions have Signal groups.