This is an art
I think this is a really important project, as someone who has been involved in lots of community projects that had really unpleasant and proprietary internal comm systems. It’s a great adventure! A few resources that might be helpful:
ownCloud. A super scalable and adaptable libre cloud system that can be self-hosted. It keeps getting better and better. I’ve found the document storage (i.e. Dropbox) to be fairly functional, the calendar to be excellent (synched with Thunderbird), and the contacts to be fine, though the Thunderbird side of the interface is screwy. There are lots of other features, including a rudimentary replacement for Google Docs and more. But this is a very worthwhile project to work with and contribute to, as it could be very powerful in enabling communities to detach themselves from evil Goog dependency.
Occupy. During its various iterations the Occupy movement developed some interesting tools to manage collaborations across the movement. It could provide something of a model. Here are some examples:
- BuddyPress is a sophisticated social network plugin for WordPress that was often used for the internal websites for various occupations. Here's the one for the ill-fated New York General Assembly. For a while it functioned very, very well as a way of keeping track of events, working groups, and discussion about proposals in the assemblies. It was eventually overrun with trolls, but there are probably ways of dealing with that via moderation of a kind that wasn't possible for a movement that was, at the time, at the center of world media attention while trying to remain open.
- The Occupy Network was a later attempt to create an Occupy-in-a-box framework full of libre tools. It kind of ran aground, but the idea was great: a suite of stuff like Etherpad, classifieds, a directory, forums, wiki, etc.
- InterOccupy started as a really well-moderated conference calling network and then developed into a more extensive set of services. You can fill out a form to set up a "hub," which means being listed in their directory and calendar. I think it used to also get you a GNU mailing list and other open tools maintained by fairly competent folks. It was the network created by these folks that became the basis of the hugely successful Occupy Sandy relief effort.
Riseup. This is a suite of tools that are useful to lots of activists in the US, maintained by supposedly competent folks. For users who agree to a statement of principles (which is as specific as not privileging class politics above identity politics), they offer stuff like Tor, Email, Mailing Lists, VPN, chat, and etherpad.
Vanilla. These forums simple and wonderful. An old idea that keeps being great.
There’s so much more. Maybe every unMonastery should have its own unCurrency. The challenge, I think, is to figure out how to have everything you need and absolutely nothing else, so it doesn’t overwhelm the folks who don’t like to deal with lots of do-dads like some of us do. In one collective I’m part of, I made the very luddite team very happy (and ended internal emails almost for good) with just a simple HTML page with a Vanilla forum and plain text and chat via etherpad side by side. This is an art.