Digerty is an online magazine brought to you by NAKARMA, a British social enterprise initiative that is headquartered in Hong Kong SAR. Bit of a mouthful we know, even without biscuits.
Another magazine, good grief, why? Reckon we’re not busy enough, hmm?
Well dear reader, for quite a few reasons in fact.
We’re quite a biased bunch, rather strongly focused on a belief that sneaked up on us, and we’ve not been able to shake it off. Though a few of us did try. Some still try every day, but end up coming to the same conclusion.
We believe that the best way to make people more conscious and careful with regard to our global environment, is to make their lives more liveable first. We don’t expect a lot of success for instance, in encouraging hungry families to dispose of waste more responsibly. Until their situation improves, their efforts will, more likely, be focused on stable income instead.
Animal cruelty for instance, is much more common in areas where people are more economically restricted. As such, we believe that lowering the thresholds to economic freedom, will allow people to focus less on short-term survival, and adopt a more long-term perspective on things. Things like our global environment.
As we see it, we need to engineer a ‘multi-pronged’ approach. We need to provide tools and learning materials that achieve better results, for less money, time and effort. Tools that help people to achieve a stable foundation more easily. Tools that are designed from the ground up to require the least amount of financial, personal and environmental resources.
One could say: tools and methods that are too good to ignore for financial reasons, which also happen to be the tools that are designed with the least amount of compromise on efficiency.
This is what we have come to call: A people-first approach to a cleaner world.
As such, we decided to start engineering a number of solutions to various problems, funded by our own efforts, while we live of our savings. We believe attracting investors for our designs would almost certainly force us to cut corners, or prioritise revenue. That dear reader, is something we cannot abide. Our solutions must be free for all, for the benefit of all, or no deal.
In other words, Free and Open Source software, designs, and implementations. We want people to enjoy the benefits of our solutions, and start businesses around them. If we’re successful, then our solutions will disrupt the status quo, quite significantly. So, we feel we also have to map out a path to put it all back together. But this time, fair and open.
A few years in, we now realise that we might need a bit of funding after all. So how do we get that? Well, we thought, we might start a magazine. A magazine that allows us to pave the way for improved methods and perspectives on IT and business, while opening up avenues for us to explore some ethical ways of getting funding for our projects. A magazine that allows us to address some of our annoyances with existing magazines and blogs as well, while we’re at it.
And what annoyances are those?
Well, for one, most magazines and blogs suggest solutions that tie users into proprietary versions of otherwise industry-standard solutions. We believe that avoiding vendor lock-in should be a very high priority. This allows people to get the best deal from vendors, and jump ship with minimal effort.
Second, we’re quite fickle about efficiency. Most solutions offered by others online, pay little to no attention to resource efficiency. We want people to achieve their goals with the least amount of resources, such as hardware and electricity. This saves money, and it reduces strain on the environment as well.
Third, we find that most tutorials online are quite vague and incomplete. It is not often that a tutorial or guide offers a real-world, ready-to-use solution. They’re more often than not ‘jumping off points’, leading people into a quest that leads to other such points, instead of actual solutions to problems. There’s always the official documentation of course, but that isn’t something easily found if one isn’t already looking for it, nor is it generally written with beginners in mind.
All in all, we believe this magazine is worth the effort. With it, we can do our very best to provide real-world solutions to problems, and we can use it to educate and hopefully, inspire. In so doing, we might be able to raise funds with a few ethical sponsorships, and ethical (non-tracking) advertising. If it turns out that you like our approach, we might consider selling a mug, a t-shirt or other items, as long as they’re genuinely useful. We’ll be honest, we’re not entirely sure yet how to monetise the magazine. But compromising on our ethics, is something that we won’t do, as that would undermine the very purpose of our initiative.
Nice play on the whole tools and solutions gibberywhatsit, but you’re not detracting me from the secretive solutions you mentioned earlier on!
Good point dear reader, well made.
Well we can’t divulge all of it, or even most of it, as we’re quite worried about some unethical scallywag coming along and ruining our chances. First impressions don’t come with do-overs do they… What we can say however, is that we’re targeting the foundations we mentioned earlier.
Livelihood
We will introduce a new paradigm that aims to change the way the world handles personal computing, networking and business computing quite significantly. It will be 100% Free and Open Source, ready for people to use, and ready for people to build businesses around. Businesses that provide support to others for example, without needing to pay any licences, fees or royalties to us (or anyone else).
We also aim to introduce various solutions that will greatly simplify doing business with others, at least where technology is concerned. All the tricks of the trade that the big companies use, in free for all, easy-to-use packages.
Sustenance
Nice try dear reader, this magazine isn’t about that part is it? Wait and see friend, wait and see.
Fair enough. What about all the ‘we and us’ gibberish, hmm?
Well, you see dear reader, we have many reasons for that too. For one, this is a group effort, and we don’t want any ‘cult of personality’ nonsense to detract from our goals.
Second, we’d rather not run the risk of having some of our talent being lured away by ‘offers we can’t refuse’ as it were. We act as a team, for a common cause.
Third, we’d rather not make this about us in any personal way. We’re people, who’ve identified issues. We want to fix those issues by offering a new way of doing things. We want to establish a path, not a bastion. After all, ideas are not as easy to extinguish as individuals.
Fourth, we’re engineers, nerds, philosophers (of sorts) and well, a bit peculiar really. Post our pictures online…bit unnerving that. It’s already quite an effort to dodge reflective surfaces on a daily basis, not sure putting our visage online is going to help us keep the therapists at bay.
The Plan
So, the plan dear reader, is as follows:
- We publish this magazine, you take all that you can from it.
- (Optional) You consider using an affiliate link or two, buying some swag, or just making a donation outright. Perhaps you help spread the word about the magazine as well. You know, might help speed things up a bit.
- We continue to polish this magazine until it shines so bright as a beacon, that you’ll need sunglasses. Not to worry dear reader, it features dark-mode.
- We continue development on our grand plan. When we’re ready, we release all of it as Free and Open Source for all, along with usage guidelines and whatnot.
- You make use of everything we create, spread the word, and we all live happily ever after.
Sound good?
Oh, and drop us a line if you’d like to have a chat about tea, biscuits, and whatnot.
Yours,
Digerty
