News: new site, digital commonality and design in progress

Dear Caroster users,

We hope you had a good summer, and wish you all the best for the new school year! We are pleased to announce the official launch of the new Caroster website!

Here's what's happened recently and what's coming up:

What's new?

📣 New Caroster website

The aim of this refurbishment?

✅ Modernize the site

✅ Discover Caroster in pictures

✅ Clarify our car-sharing offers (Caroster Basic, Caroster Plus & Caroster Pro)

✅ Making the site accessible through multilingual navigation

🗣 Participation in ADEME's Call for Proposals

Caroster is taking part in ADEME's Call for Proposals by proposing an easy-to-use car-sharing platform dedicated to the regular journeys of associations and companies, with the aim of pooling daily or leisure travel to promote social cohesion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To make this project a reality, we need your help to give weight to our application:

1️⃣ Create an account.

2️⃣ Go to the project sheet.

3️⃣ Liker and add a supportive comment 😊

Thank you very much ❤️

🌍 O penness to external contributors

We are currently working on opening up Caroster to external contributions, so that the project grows with its community and is no longer solely dependent on Octree. This also enables developers to enrich their views and knowledge of the project's technical aspects.

We welcome all kinds of contributions:

✅ Propose an improvement based on our RFC (Request For Change)

✅ Feature development

✅ Any additional help (documentation, translation, feedback, etc.)

Don't hesitate to contact us at caroster@caroster.io or check out our Github (a copy of our Gitlab).

🎨 Working on the new app design

We're carrying out a UX overhaul to improve the user experience and return the app to a solid, user-friendly footing. Thomas, our UX Designer, is currently working on the new app design, taking user feedback into account. Here's an overview of the challenges and reflections he faces:

👉 The app must adapt to mobile and desktop alike

👉 Modular app design for adding new functionalities

👉 User actions must be intuitive and clear

⬇️ Learn more in the team’s message below

Thanks

• Many thanks to all those who have already commented onADEME's Call for Commons project:

  • Pauline Thyrion, Coeur de Condroz Territory

  • Andrea Spila, Humanity On Planet Earth Association

  • Pierre Emmanuel Fardin, Agir pour tous

• Thanks to the contributors who have made the new version of the Caroster website possible:

  • Lucien Langton, Octree & Cyberschnaps

  • Issé Tusevo

Word from the team

Our aim is to be as close as possible to you, and that means being transparent about our choices:

1. The new Caroster website

The new website allows us to modernize the site and highlight the carpooling platform. Thanks to the various visuals, we can show off the app without interested parties needing to create a test carpooling event to see what it's like. We hope this will increase understanding and confidence among people wishing to organize their journeys.

We also wanted to clarify our different offers to the community: Caroster Basic (free), Caroster Plus (charged according to size and per event) and Caroster Pro (customized development offer):

Last but not least, multilingual navigation makes the new site accessible beyond the French-speaking world.

2. Caroster, a digital commons

But what is a digital commons?

It's a shared digital resource, created and managed collectively by a user community. This can include open source software, databases or freely accessible content, such as OpenStreetMap geographical data or Wikipedia articles. These resources are governed by common rules to guarantee their accessibility and collective use, enabling everyone to contribute to and benefit from them.

The 3 pillars of a commons are Community, Resource and Governance (click here to find out more).

Where are we with Caroster?

The project's raison d'être is to build a common ground for shared mobility.

💛 Community: With over 8,000 users since 2020, 5,000 events (with at least 2 rides and 4 passengers), and 30,000 rides, the community is growing exponentially. We have an active and fairly solid user base, and needs in the field are well established.

🌱 Resource: Caroster is licensed under AGPLv3, which means that the project can be copied and used freely in any other project. In return, any modifications must also be published under the same open source license so that everyone can benefit from them. The reason? The project will outlive us, and every contribution helps the project move forward.

👥 Governance: Caroster's governance is currently being structured. Contribution rules are framed on GitHub, and participation rules are defined in a Code of Conduct aimed at ensuring an inclusive, respectful and collaborative environment. The roadmap is public, and users can propose changes via feedback.caroster.io. We are working on a model of shared governance with user organizations and contributors, so that decisions about the tool are taken more collectively, and the community is not just consulted, but fully involved in the project.

Above all, we want to continue building and developing a sustainable solution with the community through collective intelligence, to strengthen the platform's adoption and sustainability. If you have any ideas or suggestions for moving in this direction, we'd love to hear from you.

Our mission remains unchanged: to promote sustainable, collaborative mobility through car-sharing, by developing a digital commons.

We look forward to continuing this journey with you and sharing our progress!

With enthusiasm,

Mathilde Draps

Product Manager at Caroster

Useful links

💛 To help us move our project forward, don't forget to vote on ADEME's Call for Proposals.

🔎 To find out more about the digital commons, consult the resource document made available by the Fabrique des Mobilités.

💬 Feedbacks in real time: Don't hesitate to give us your suggestions for improvement. We've created statuses so you can track how your feedback is taken into account like a project roadmap.

We hope you enjoy this news and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for being part of the Caroster community!

See you soon.

- The Caroster team