Framasoft, the French free software organization behind projects such as PeerTube (among many others) is currently raising funds for their latest initiative, an events platform called Mobilizon.

[we want to create] free/libre software that will allow communities to create their own spaces to publish events, in order to better emancipate themselves from tech giants. We want to develop a digital common, that everyone can make their own, which respects privacy and activism by design.Mobilizon fundraiser page

Billing itself as “A free and federated tool to get our events off Facebook”, Mobilizon in theory could replace Facebook Events as well as MeetUp groups. As a platform, it’s based on Pleroma, but geared specifically towards events and group functionality.

Given the platform’s base origin, and the fact that it intends to support ActivityPub, some interesting conclusions emerge. Aside from federating with other meetup-like platforms like GetTogether (which hasn’t adopted ActivityPub quite yet), it’s possible that many types of federated apps might adopt the same activity types.

There has been growing interest in the possibility for platforms like Mastodon and Pleroma to adopt a formal groups feature, and the possibility of federated events could mean that both features might end up getting adopted by the wider fediverse as a result.

Since Mobilizon has blown past the €50,000 (Milestone 3) point in their campaign already, here’s the features they intend to adopt below:

Additionally, Framasoft has already done some of the leg-work on UX design studies and developed some graphic design assets ahead of time. The two visual designers working on the project are Marie-Cécile Godwin Paccard, and Geoffrey Dorne, with some contributors from PeerTube to bring in code development work.

In all, this is a pretty interesting development, and we wish Team Mobilizon the best with their efforts!