Community Building

There's a particular kind of person who walks into a Heritage Hackers dropin session for the first time. They've usually been talked into it by someone. They're not sure it's really for them. They sit down quietly, watch what everyone else is doing, and say something like "I'm not very technical."

That was Paul Owen, not so very long ago.

Your data isn't really yours — not while it lives on someone else's servers, governed by terms nobody reads and monetised in ways nobody admits. But the open source movement has spent decades building the alternatives: from encrypted email and self-hosted file storage, to open food data, open hardware, and community mesh networks built by and for the people who use them. This is what digital sovereignty looks like — and once you start pulling that thread, there's no going back.

Digital inclusion is important. But are we really empowering people — or just plugging them into the matrix and calling it a win? Paul Woodhead makes the case for genuine adult retraining, and asks whether Rochdale could be the next Silicon Roundabout.