Posts of Rob Elshire RSSMon, 05 Jan 2026 00:58:24 GMTGFANZ has been using the messaging tool Slack for some years. It has been an effective way to get organisational communications out of email boxes. One downside is that Slack is proprietary software running on corporate servers in the cloud. Slack was the last piece of proprietary software in our organisation's software stack.I have been wanting to shift to Mattermost for some time and last week, I tackled the job. I was able to migrate all of our users, channels, and public messages to a new Mattermost instance. I could not migrate private messages and DMs due to the type of slack account we had.The heavy lifting was done with mmctl from the bash shell. From the user's point of view, the experience is similar to using Slack. There are a variety of ways one can deploy Mattermost. I used the app on TrueNAS. Another inexpensive option is to use something like Railway.com

]]>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:58:24 GMT‍This piece is U.S. focused, but the exact same system is at play around the world. Pretty mind blowing to compare the research publishing industry to any other type of publishing. Good for their profits, not so good for researchers or the public. The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research Opinion | The hidden economics behind federal research funding causes Americans to pay three times for the same body of research. undark.org ‍... Read more

]]>Fri, 28 Nov 2025 17:45:21 GMTAmanda Craig is doing an 8 session course on Māori Data Sovereignty. It is designed for people who want to make a difference. It has a price point that can be more accessible than an organisation wide course.‍Check it out ? Upholding The Mana of Our Knowledge This is the page for course Te Kura o Tahetoka. amber-craig-s-school.teachable.com  ‍‍... Read more

]]>Thu, 27 Nov 2025 05:12:18 GMTThis is well worth watching to understand that the government makes choices, bad choices in regards to the public health system. The video link is at a time stamp near the end with a message of hope and change from Craig Renney. Fundamentally, it is this message that needs to be taken to heart and acted on. As it is for the public health sector, it is for the rest of the public sector including research.If we are to have a system that functions for the many, we need to push for political change. That's it. Anyone want to contribute to a manifesto for public good policies?

]]>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 01:23:07 GMTThis article addresses the issues with cloud based smart home devices and the many problems with them (privacy and obsolescence). It suggests that the software Home Assistant has gotten much more user-friendly than it has been in the past. As I mentioned in the webinar about data sovereignty, we intend to add solar panels and batteries to our set up. An important aspect of that for us is to have hardware that is compatible with Home Assistant. That will allow us to avoid reliance on cloud based software.

]]>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 23:23:51 GMTI was invited by my friend @Karaitiana Taiuru to do this webinar on sovereign computing. It is for a general audience who are interested in shifting away from multinational IT companies for their computing. The kōrero covers a lot of information based on 25+ years of experience using software that respects software users. It expands on some of the ideas underpinning this post about small / medium business IT infrastructure.

]]>Tue, 11 Nov 2025 03:38:01 GMTThis is side 2 of my sign for the Big Strike tomorrow. Simple message with a QR code to a short video by Gary Stevenson about how wealth inequality harms you.https://te-ara-paerangi.community/page/view-file?id=79

]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:21:03 GMTIntroductionBluesky user The Broke Bonsai Bloke asked where Kiwis might go if Bluesky takes a nosedive. I offered up this site as one possibility. I had in mind people for whom our kaupapa resonates. He asked for a bit of background about the site. This is a condensed explanation.History / Background of Te Ara Paerangi CommunityTe Ara Paerangi Community is a project of Genomics for Aotearoa New Zealand (GFANZ) GFANZ is a registered charity and incorporated society. GFANZ was formed as an alternative to business as usual in the genomics research community. It has a focus on promoting genomics science to benefit the public, with a strong sense of what makes this place special. Genomics is a broad research area covering all living things. Its use is connected to many other parts of daily life and influenced by the many ways people live and think. GFANZ aims to work in the place where society and genomics science meet.Te Ara Paerangi / Future Pathways was an MBIE process to reform the public research system (excluding universities) under the last Labor Government. I spent a year on the New Zealand Association of Scientists council working on that effort. I had concerns that the MBIE led process would be too narrow in reach. Basically that the usual voices would be heard and the chance for serious reform might be missed.Te Ara Paerangi Community was started as a way to expand reach and promote collaboration. One thing we did was set up a place to share ideas for submissions to the Green Paper. Things that could be remixed or combined. We also gathered historical documents about previous reforms and made it easy to access all submissions to the Te Ara Paerangi / Future Pathways process. There were a record number of submissions for this process. That is some indication of the interest in reforms and the time and effort so many people put in.With a change in government, Te Ara Paerangi / Future Pathways was killed. But the work the broader research and public put in remain... Read more

]]>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:14:48 GMTResearchers face an increasingly hostile environment, with intimidation and harassment originating from a variety of external actors. Learn more about the problem and the actions needed by different stakeholders here.‍The Researcher Support Consortium has a suite of tools aimed at funders, research institutions, and researchers. These issues are ever increasing, making it even more important to have ways and means to effectively mitigate them. Researcher Support Consortium researchersupport.org  ‍... Read more

]]>Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:58 GMTIntroductionWhile every business is different in the details, there are some things that are very commonly needed. For example: email, web site, scheduling, document processing, and document management, invoicing, and so on. Many businesses outsource this type of infrastructure to multinationals such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. This comes at a cost in annual fees as well as in data privacy and sovereignty. Others (including many large companies and governments) take a different approach which allows them to retain control of their IT and their data. This piece is about one way to achieve the latter.My aim is to showcase the components of such infrastructure so that business people can see what can be done and provide technical details for a systems administrator to build it out for a small / medium sized company. I was prompted to write this while doing a bunch of systems administration over the last couple of months, including moving this site to a new host and the GFANZ NextCloud instance as well. A shout out to Peter Bryant at Rimu Hosting for the suggestion to use Virtualmin and for having that as a one button click install option for their servers. It saved me a huge amount of time and effort, and made me keen to share what I learned. The scope of this piece is purposefully limited to software that can be used with Virtualmin.Every piece of software I describe below comes with no licensing costs. The expenses related to this set up are in hosting / server fees and IT support. All of which can be done right here in Aotearoa so that the money you spend on your IT infrastructure goes right back into circulation in the local economy instead of heading overseas. Local providers also pay their fair share of taxes, supporting our communities.Please note, I am not looking for employment to do this kind of work. I am plenty busy with my genomics research service business and many volunteer activities. My hope is that some people can use this post to help provide... Read more

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