Open Social Network Cookbook
The Open Social Network Cookbook is the collective product of the Open Social Incubator, a cohort that MEDLab hosted from Fall 2024 to Spring 2025. At the heart of our work together was the question: How can the online communities that we participate in use tools that truly reflect our values?
Over the course of six months, the Open Social Incubator became a vibrant container for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. We learned about the varying affordances of open social tools like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Matrix, and, as each member’s project developed, delved into the site-specific challenges of constituting new online communities.
Each participant in the Incubator has crafted a “recipe” for building a community on alternative social media. Their platforms and protocols of choice vary. If you don’t know a Raspberry Pi from an apple torte, don’t fret! As is the case with making a meal, some recipes require more advanced techniques, whereas others are easier for beginners—but with a little patience (and some encouragement from hungry friends), anyone can become a seasoned chef.
The cookbook includes stories, conversations, sample tech stacks, Unicode art, and more. Get it, print it, fold it, and share it!
The Open Social Incubator was organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder thanks to generous gifts from Colorado ReWild and Mask Network Academy.