Outsiders Village: Roadmap (Initial Proposal)

Content updated: September 21, 2026 at 5:50 PM MDT

Purpose

This roadmap describes a path from the current manual beginning of Outsiders Village to a stable, usable, open-source production system. It is intentionally a product-level roadmap rather than a technical task list. The village should be able to begin meeting before the software is finished, and the software should grow in response to real village life rather than requiring people to wait for a complete platform.

Contents

• Roadmap principles

• Phase 0 — Current foundation

• Phase 1 — Begin village life manually

• Phase 2 — Establish the Outsiders Village website

• Phase 3 — Add core village operations

• Phase 4 — Improve event discovery and integrations

• Phase 5 — Add communication and shared resources

• Phase 6 — Distribute control and make leaving practical

• Phase 7 — Production readiness

• Phase 8 — Ongoing village-led development

• What this roadmap is not

Roadmap principles

• Village first, software second. People and relationships can begin now. Technology should remove friction as real needs become clear.
• Build in useful slices. Each stage should produce something people can actually use rather than waiting for one large launch.
• Manual is acceptable before automated. Direct communication and admin.itsrobee.net (only accessible by Robee at this time) can bridge gaps while new tools are built.
• Distributed responsibility matters from the beginning. Robee may provide initial infrastructure and coordination, but hosting, facilitating, welcoming, and village decisions should spread among villagers.
• Public discovery and private village life are different needs. Broadly open events may use Meetup while smaller village-specific activity can remain inside Outsiders Village tools.
• Portability is part of the product. The software, documentation, and data should eventually make it possible for people to leave, fork, self-host, or create another instance.

Phase 0 — Current foundation

The Village already has enough structure to begin operating manually, but until the new Outsiders Village Meetup group exists, most event coordination will depend on villagers texting or otherwise contacting one another directly to decide what to do, when to meet, and who will take on practical roles.

Current foundation includes:

• Core public documents describing the Vision and Values, Village Guidelines, and Robee’s current role.
• A developing infrastructure and portability model.
• admin.itsrobee.net, which Robee can use to create and manage events during the transition.
• Direct communication between villagers to work out who is hosting, facilitating, helping with the buddy system, or contributing in other ways.

The goal of this stage is to recognize what is already in place and use it as the starting point for the next steps.

Phase 1 — Begin village life manually

Start regular activity before the new website is complete.

Initial gathering types:

• A recurring Outsiders Village orientation for people who want to understand the Village, ask questions, and figure out how they might participate.
• One-off discussion gatherings around topics villagers actually want to explore.
• Villager-created gatherings that do not have to become permanent groups.
• A Hosts & Facilitators Mutual Support gathering where people doing those roles can exchange ideas, talk through challenges, and support one another as fellow villagers.

For now, villagers who want to create an event will send Robee the event details directly, including the date, time, location, description, RSVP limit, and any other information needed for the listing. Robee will then use admin.itsrobee.net to schedule the event in the new Outsiders Village Meetup group. Roles and other logistics can continue to be coordinated directly with the people involved.

Needed from Robee:

• Create the new Outsiders Village Meetup group.
• Message members of the two remaining Meetup groups to explain that those groups will become part of Outsiders Village as topic-specific events rather than continuing as dedicated groups.
• Seed the first events and provide the temporary administrative plumbing.
• Invite people into hosting and facilitating rather than automatically taking those roles.
• Help make the documents and participation model understandable to newcomers.

Needed from other villagers:

• Propose gatherings by sending Robee the event details needed to publish them.
• Host, facilitate, welcome, help with the buddy system, and give feedback according to interest and capacity.

Ready to move on when:

Village activity is actually happening and the recurring friction of running it manually is clear enough to guide the first website features.

Phase 2 — Establish the Outsiders Village website

Create outsidersvillage.org as a useful home even before it becomes a full application.

Initial website capabilities:

• A clear public explanation of Outsiders Village.
• Easy access to the current Village documents.
• A public events view or calendar.
• A simple explanation of how to attend, propose a gathering, host, facilitate, or otherwise participate.
• A way to contact or connect with the Village.

The first version does not need accounts, forums, or sophisticated automation. It should simply make the Village understandable and make current activity easy to find.

Needed from Robee:

• Build and deploy the initial site.
• Connect it to the existing event data where useful.
• Keep the public site simple enough that it can evolve without becoming a second legacy system.

Needed from other villagers:

• Feedback about what is confusing, missing, or difficult to use.

Phase 3 — Add core village operations

Begin moving the work currently handled through direct messages and manual administration into the website.

Core product capabilities may include:

• Villager accounts or identities.
• Creating and managing smaller villages.
• Joining, leaving, or managing membership in a village.
• Public, broadly visible, and limited-access village settings.
• Creating and managing events.
• Assigning practical event roles such as host or facilitator.
• Attendance tracking when it is useful.
• Village-specific descriptions, settings, shared resources, and other content.
• Village-level ability to manage participation, including removing someone from a particular village when necessary.

The goal is not to create a large central moderation system. The goal is to let each village manage ordinary village life without needing the infrastructure operator to do it for them.

Needed from Robee:

• Build the core application and permissions model.
• Translate recurring manual work into simple product features.
• Keep technical administration separate from ordinary village decisions.

Needed from other villagers:

• Use the early tools, identify missing workflows, and take responsibility for their own village activity.

Phase 4 — Improve event discovery and integrations

Connect public-facing Village activity to the places people already use to discover events.

Likely capabilities:

• Publish or synchronize broadly open events with Meetup.
• Keep village-specific or limited events inside outsidersvillage.org.
• Reduce duplicate event entry and repetitive administration.
• Reuse or adapt the existing scheduling and event-management infrastructure where it still fits.
• Make it clear which system is the source of truth for each kind of event.

The goal is to make public discovery easy without forcing all village activity into a public platform.

Phase 5 — Add communication and shared resources

Add features that help relationships continue between events when real use shows they are needed.

Possible capabilities:

• Village-specific discussion spaces or forums.
• Announcements and notifications.
• Shared resources or useful links.
• A Hosts & Facilitators Mutual Support space.
• A villager business or resource directory if people find it useful.
• Ways for villagers to share paid services without turning Village participation into a sales funnel.

These features should be added because villagers are trying to do something repeatedly, not because a social platform is expected to have every possible feature.

Phase 6 — Distribute control and make leaving practical

Turn the open-source and anti-capture principles into working product capabilities.

Capabilities and infrastructure should increasingly support:

• Village-level administration that does not require Robee.
• Clear limits on infrastructure-level administrative access.
• Data export and migration.
• Backups and restoration.
• Open-source repositories and an explicit open-source license.
• Deployment documentation.
• The ability to run an independent instance.
• The ability to fork the software and change it without permission from a central authority.

A key test is whether another technically capable person can create a working deployment without depending on private knowledge held by Robee.

Phase 7 — Production readiness

Move from a useful evolving system to one that can be relied on for ongoing Village activity.

Production readiness should include:

• Reasonable privacy and security protections.
• Accessible design and multiple practical ways to participate.
• Reliable authentication and permissions.
• Backups and tested restoration.
• Monitoring and enough operational visibility to know when something is broken.
• Clear data ownership, export, and deletion paths.
• Usable documentation for villagers, village organizers, and technical operators.
• A deployment and recovery process that does not depend on one person remembering how everything works.
• A review of which third-party services are required and which can be replaced.

Production does not mean finished. It means the system is dependable enough that villages can rely on it without Robee having to personally hold every piece together.

Phase 8 — Ongoing village-led development

After the core system is stable, development should continue from actual use.

Possible directions may include:

• New integrations requested by villagers.
• Better accessibility tools.
• Improved discovery between villages.
• Additional communication tools.
• Optional paid hosting, setup, customization, training, maintenance, or technical support.
• Contributions from other developers.
• Independent deployments and forks that may evolve differently from the original instance.

The product should remain capable of changing, splitting, shrinking, or being replaced. Success is not one permanent platform. Success is infrastructure that helps people build and sustain the village relationships they actually want.

What this roadmap is not

This is not a promise that every listed feature will be built, nor a fixed release schedule. Priorities should change as people begin using Outsiders Village and reveal which problems are real.

The immediate priority is simpler: start meeting, learn what village life actually needs, and build the smallest useful pieces that help more people participate without requiring Robee to do everything.