Hylo 2.0.0 Release Notes — Responsive Map Edition
By: Clare Politano
Tags: Regeneration, Community, Collaboration, Maps

Introducing the Responsive Map

We are thrilled to announce the release of a geographic map in Hylo! Now you can view posts, people, and communities by location, and easily find requests, offers, resources and events in your area. Releasing this feature is a major step towards realizing our vision of Hylo becoming the coordination platform for the regenerative future. We hope that these mapping tools will:

Catalyze the growth of meaningful relationships and projects within local communities and landscapes.

Enable more mutual aid networks to thrive.

Inspire bioregional organizing for social and ecological regeneration.

Make it easier to connect with each other and the planet.

Responsible Mapping

Any tool can be used for good or ill. So, before sharing more about the map, we want to highlight some important considerations and requirements for how it will be used. Maps have a lot of power. They reveal unseen landscapes to the world, and in many ways define how we relate with each other and the planet. Throughout history, maps have been used to extract resources from the earth, and to oppress peoples around the world by coercively defining arbitrary boundaries. We are carefully considering an important concern raised by Indigenous communities here in the Bay Area: that these mapping tools could be used to share the locations of precious natural resources or sacred sites, which could then be over-harvested, exploited or defiled.

Over the next few months, we will work with stakeholders and relevant community members to develop and implement an (ever evolving) set of user agreements that clearly articulate a definition of what is acceptable content to share, and help to steer how the map is used.

Here are some initial ideas on how we’ll handle this sensitive and nuanced issue:

Before posting anything, we’ll encourage community members to please ask yourself if by posting this you could be causing more damage than benefit to your communities or the planet.

Before sharing a resource, we’ll invite community members to please ask yourself if you have permission to do so.

We may step in if we believe something is not being shared responsibly.

We will add reminders of these agreements when you go to post something publicly.

Over time, these reminders can be community/place specific depending on where one is posting. This can help move us towards a bioregional understanding of where we live and the history of each place.

We are exploring the idea of hiding by default arbitrary political boundaries and place names derived from colonization on the primary map layer.

We will add the ability to show a layer of Indigenous territories on the map (similar to native-land.ca)

We are exploring unique ways to allow communities to moderate their own content. E.g. When someone flags a post as inappropriate, we could add a way to specify which agreement was violated, which could then lead to a restorative/transformative justice process.

We reserve the right to remove users or communities from Hylo if they explicitly and consistently violate the agreements — or at the very least, limit their ability to post publicly.

If you’d like to participate in the conversation on responsible mapping, join us on Building Hylo to weigh in.

How to Use the Map

The map view is live on hylo.com and accessible in any community you’re a part of. Since location functionality is very new to Hylo, there may not be many posts appearing on your map just yet. You can be the first to add to your community’s map by posting a Request, Offer, Resource, or Event with a location!

How to Access and Use the Map:

You can select the map view in the left navigation bar either for a community, a network, all your communities at once or for public posts and communities (more on that below)

We are starting with a simple line map and will be adding satellite view and other map layers soon.

You can zoom in & out of the map by scrolling on your mouse or trackpad. You can move around by clicking and dragging.

Single colored dots represent different types of objects: Posts or Members.

Click on the “Post Types” button in the bottom left to choose which types of posts you’d like to see on the map.

Clusters of map objects will appear as a bigger circle with a number inside. The colors around the circle will indicate which types of things are inside the cluster.

Clicking on a post on the map will open it up so that you can interact with it.

Clicking on a member will open their member profile.

Clicking on a cluster will zoom in on that cluster.

Click on the menu item in the upper right corner of the map to view a list of all the posts and people visible in the current map.

You can click in the search box to filter by topic tags or keywords.

In the Post drawer you can sort by latest posts or popular posts.

The Public Map: Posts and Communities

We’re well on our way to a public, global directory of communities, starting with the new Public Posts and Communities context.

When creating a post you can now choose to make it Public. This means that Hylo users who are not a member of any of your communities will still be able to see the post in the new Public Posts and Communities context which can be accessed in the communities navigation drawer.

context which can be accessed in the communities navigation drawer. You are still required to share a post with at least one community before you can make it public to help prevent spam.

Communities now have the option to mark themselves as publicly discoverable, which means they will appear on the public map. Next we will add the ability for community members to request to join these communities.

Responsive Web App

Up until now Hylo.com has only ever worked on desktop browsers. If you wanted to access Hylo from your phone you had to download the iOS or Android app. As of today you can access hylo.com from your phone or tablet and it will adjust size to work beautifully! This makes it easier to show or share Hylo with friends without them needing to download a new app. It also means you can access all the new features of Hylo (like the map) from your phone right now, as it will take us longer to add all the new features to the mobile apps.

Mobile Infrastructure

The Android app has returned to the Google Play store at last!

We have our mobile development workflow up and running again so we will be updating the apps more regularly moving forward

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug that was causing some images to upload rotated by 90 degrees

When a community leader posts an announcement post it will now correctly send an email along with a push notification (depending on each user’s notification settings)

Make sure to show all pending invites in the community invite settings page

We hope you enjoy these additions to Hylo, we’re just getting rolling. Thanks for supporting us!

Your friendly Terrans,

Tibet | Neha | Kelly | Clare | Aaron

Hylo and Terran Collective are resourced through aligned partnerships and donations from community members like you. If you’d like to support our work creating tools for a regenerative future, please donate to our nonprofit Terran Watershed.