Two months in: how are we doing?

23 Nov, 2025

Time to Read: 7 min

It's been a little over two months since we started MTEC. All I had was a desire to take action and a little bit of knowledge around free software I could use, but we made it! For as much as I hope we can accomplish, this is also the story of starting an advocacy group and club from scratch in the 21st century without the help of Big Tech.

What are we working with?

We got up and running with a few tools to get us started.

Bear Blog is used for hosting our blog and website. This covers our default online presence and replaces the need for a Meetup or Substack. This is a great platform that is more independent, runs on free software, and respects all visitors by not tracking and not requiring an account of any kind (especially one on an exploitative platform.) This is also free and open source.

Mastodon and Bluesky are our social media. Both are running on open protocols that are decentralized. The former is also free and open source and does no invasive tracking. The latter is not as bad with tracking as the mainstream options. Neither require you to make an account to view content.

Tuta Mail for email. It's a simple job, but we wanted to have an account we can use that didn't require us to give a bunch of info and would respect our privacy.

Signal for chat and community organizing. It's been great to not have to point people to a Discord server when our goal is to make technology more privacy respecting. FOSS.

Jitsi for video calls. This is what we use to host our meetings since we only meet virtually as of today. It's been great! I could use my Tuta Mail account to make a GitHub account and then use that account to run Jitsi calls. Jitsi is open source and does not track you like Zoom and Google Meet do.

I won't promise that we will never move to tools that are more fit to purpose, but my goal is to at least start as close to the ideal as I can. I want to see how that stretches us to find new ways to reach people, as well as what it means to try to create community out from under the eye of Big Tech. We may end up coming around to some of these technologies, but hopefully we can make it work and grow in a better direction.

Things we have tried

My mission is simple. I need to reach anyone who is interested in being a part of a local community and cares about digital & consumer rights. I don't know where these folks are, but I will try my best to find them. When I run out of ideas, I put on my Paul Heyman hat and try to be the best promoter I can be!

I don't know how you start a new group even if you had all the tools in the world available to you, but I started the best way I knew how. I told my friends and family about it. I literally got all the social media and website set up and posted it to my locked down personal social media. My request: if you know of anyone who is into tech or in IT, please tell them about this club! That is my target audience.

After that I tried reaching out to all of the groups listed in the Electronic Frontier Alliance's directory that were in Florida. I wanted to learn more from them as we were only starting out with our group. They were all student clubs at MDC, UCF, UF, and FSU. All contact over email but no replies yet.

Then I emailed student organizations at FIU, since I figured I could go down the list of tech clubs in Miami-Dade. Emailed several. Nothing back yet.

Next I reached out to about a dozen tech repair shops in town. I tried calling first and explaining what we were trying to do, and then email those who did not have numbers or who didn't pick up. There was mild curiosity from a few, but no one has actually joined the club as a result.

I did have a couple of friends who were interested in the project who were techy, so they became our first two members!

I pitched the club to a few people at work and two people have joined our Signal chat from there.

I also talked about it at the South Florida Linux User Group meeting that happens monthly and two people expressed interested from there.

One bump in the road that I have hit is that all of my emails may be going to spam. I'm using a new email account made specifically for this project, but I am also using an alternative email provider to the mainstream, which I think makes it more likely to be marked as spam. I'm hoping that with a few more engagements that will stop being a problem, but for now it is pushing me toward calling and connecting with people directly rather than pursing emails.

I have plenty more ideas and calls to do as we continue recruiting, but if you are interested, please join us!

Where we're at today

In all, we now have 7 members of the club! That's awesome and I'm grateful for everyone who's come along for the ride. We've also had three meetings since we started with an average attendance of 3-4. It's a fun time, but also a good sign for consistency! (By the way, next meeting can be found on our Events page.)

The social media presences remain an important avenue to try to grow the club, but mostly they are serving as a sign of life right now. I think that a project like this one gives the vibe that it won't be very active, so I want to show that we are active and doing all kinds of things. We have a handful of followers, and for now that is enough.

The meetings themselves have been great. The format we've settled on is that we will spend the first 40-50 minutes chatting about whatever, usually tech related, and then the last 10-20 minutes going over calls to action that we can participate in. So we're hanging out but then learning how we can actually do something. Some of those calls to action remain the same week over week, but that's how these things go in the fight for digital rights.

Next steps

Looking back on our goals for MTEC's launch, we did it folks. We have been around for two months and I do subscribe to the Fulu newsletter to be updated about calls to action they need.

What we would have done next is sign up to become members of the Electronic Frontier Alliance ourselves, but sadly that has been discontinued. In light of that... bada bing bada boom, MTEC has stepped into the room! I'm just gonna say that we're now official and we're moving on!

Next step will be to get a real domain name and then lean into a few more marketing opportunities that will enable. That will help others view our group with more legitimacy and make it easier to spread by word of mouth, which is what we need. I want every IT department in Miami-Dade County to know about MTEC.

"Phase 2" is mostly characterized by investing a little money into the club in order to help us do more, so I hope that the next few things we try will be easier and more effective to do.

And besides that we have to continue telling people about MTEC. I have continued to find new opportunities to share it with people. I will continue to make proactive calls to reach other organizations that may be interested in working with us.

Once we have a decent amount of people (let's say 12), then it will be easier to plan more things. We can have presentations, find ways to serve the community and raise awareness about these issues, make events that anyone can join to, say, install Linux or learn how to lock down their smartphone. We can have more than our bi-weekly meetings or change the format every so often based on our interests and what we want to share. We can coordinate in-person meetups, which is part of why I wanted to emphasize the local aspect of this club. I guess none of this has to wait until we hit a certain number of members, but this is the direction I want us to go in as we grow.

Let's rock and roll

If any of this seems exciting to you, whether you live in Miami or not, lean into that.

If you live in Miami, join us! We talk about Linux a lot, but we can talk about all other kinds of tech too! Or even like books and magazines or Formula 1. We want to be a community first, and then a community that takes action on behalf of itself.

If you live in Florida, still get in touch! We need to work with allies across the state as we monitor the funny business coming out of Tallahassee. And we can see how we can support each other in the local fights we need to have, like against Flock cameras being installed everywhere to surveil our movements. We need partners across the state. You can email me at joseph-mtec @ tutamail .com.

Is there a club like this where you live? Join it! Is there not? Consider making one! I will be happy to help anyone who is trying to start a group and we can trade ideas on how to grow this movement in an organized way.

If you feel inspired to take action, don't let that fade. Use that fire and fight back against the erosion of your rights. And make friends along the way.

Hope to have more news for you in the coming months. ✌️

Written by Joseph, Organizer for MTEC

Wants to see the world get better.