Was thinking about this today: what is “plan B” for this group when Google kills off Google plus? Facebook doesn’t see, logical, do we have a plan?
I don’t think they’re planning on killing it off (yet), are they? Just making it not automatic for all Google accounts?
Looking at ideas - I hate most forum software with a passion - especially because so much of it sucks for sharing media like photos and video, and yes, Facebook isn’t a good option (I’m in a different led group there and I find the interface irritating).
That said, there’s no rush to move - we’ll get some notice when things start turning down, I had a good year or two notice about Google code.
Nothing is getting killed, folks. Mostly they are unwinding g+ from a bunch of integrations it shouldn’t have had in the first place. (And no, Google groups isn’t a good backup option - it’s basically just a mailing list with a quasi-usable web ui)
Again gonna suggest http://www.discourse.org—Because Jeff Attwood Managed To Unfuck Q&A Software Pretty Good, I’d Trust Him With Forums™.
It’s definitely better than forums, but far from ideal for what I want - which is why I haven’t moved anything to it. I had some experience with it because the spark core folks use it for their forum/discussion site. One of the things I like about g+ for this group is that posts with images/videos live at a top level that’s scrollable, vs navigating a list of topics. Also, dedicated mobile apps w/mobile notifications is really useful for me to keep up with what people are doing in here.
If it were 15 years ago I’d make it a livejournal community 
If it were 20 years ago I’d make it a Usenet group 
I second the motion to Discourse – @HSBNE_Inc uses it, and it’s pretty good (although they have it set up to display like a traditional forum, because some oldies couldn’t deal with using something unfamiliar without many delicious tears)
I’m with Daniel on preferring the way G+ displays pictures and video. Are there any examples of someone using Discourse in a way that’s not just a wall of text, like all other forums?
Any consideration given to a dedicated website with a forum? Would want to find a way to make it self-supporting (financially) though.
Did you miss my comment above about most forum software sucking?
Nope. But sometime the least sucky is better than nothing at all? Guess all I’m saying is that I’d hate to see the wealth of knowledge, experience and camaraderie here disappear. It’s an awesome community with awesome people. Certainly did not intend to gloss over or contradict your opinion on forums.
The way these shutdowns happen is they take a long time - so there’d be quite a bit of notice before anything went away (I had well over a year’s notice on the google code shutdown, and the move to github was quite smooth).
For self hosting, what I’d want is something that ideally looked similar to the way g+ does now - having photos/videos of led projects people do be visible, front and center on the page as you scroll through (vs. having to drill down into topics, which is the case with every forum setup i’ve seen so far) is something that I really want for this community. It gives people ideas, lets them see what’s possible, etc…
We won’t be going away anytime soon