In a few weeks we are launching COMPOST, a magazine about the digital commons. Each issue serves as a collective lab, where we test and validate novel approaches to content production, distribution, and monetization, with a unique cohort of contributors every quarter. Through subsequent issues of COMPOST, our learnings and code will be published to the commons as Distributed Press. Along with inspiring creators and readers with our magazine, our objective is to develop better open-source tools for decentralized publishing to catalyze an interdependent ecology of publishing projects.
In our talk, we will present the organizational and technical scaffolding of COMPOST and Distributed Press. We will share our learnings from the first issue working directly with writers and artists to inform features and user experience of our tool. We will present how Distributed Press will help publish works to the DWeb (IPFS, Hypercore, Scuttlebutt), enable monetization, add a disintermediated social layer to publishing, and verify content, in a manner aligned with our values. Finally, we will talk about radical practices that ensure decentralization extends into governance, decision making, and community building.