Community Lab

Community Lab - software infrastructure for ecosystems

Community Lab want to build purposeful human-led movements that embrace open innovation and unlock the power of social capital to produce real outcomes.

There is a tension between the self-organising, sharing, vibrant world we want to be part of and the command and control box that our employers, governments or universities force us to fit within. Community Lab empowers individuals to share ideas, discover challenges and connect.

The platform has a vision to unite people across sectors, industries and places to kickstart real-world change. Community Lab believe this will create better ideas, faster results and more action.

The Community Lab story

Community Lab started out as a project called "The Gen". We met founder of Community Lab, Andrew Barrie, back in 2017. Andrew had a burning problem with how powerful, overachieving grassroots movements were being overlooked at a macro level. These grassroots movements are highly valuable however often volunteer led and lacking support can often fizzle out.

Andrew set out to change this. From 2017-2020 Add Jam helped The Gen prototype some ideas before developing out the Community Lab platform from 2020. Now in 2024 Community Lab is a thriving and growing platform with thousands of users and hundereds of communities.

Our role with Community Lab

Add Jam have helped Community Lab develop and grow a rich online platform for communities with:

• Vibrant, rich social feeds with various content types supported
• Instant messaging and chat for seamless communication
• Organizational tools for events to foster community gatherings
• Resource and file sharing capabilities to spread knowledge
• Video sharing features to enrich community content
• AI integration for improved discover, smarter engagement and insights
• Comprehensive dashboarding and reporting tools for informed decision-making
• An extensive notification system (including email and push notifications) to keep users connected and informed

Our agile development process, centered around sprint methodologies, has allowed us to continuously innovate, adapting and expanding the platform to meet the evolving needs of Community Lab's diverse user base.

The Community Lab tech stack

Community Lab is a web first product with a progressive web app. Add Jam have developed Community Lab using the following core technologies

• Scalable cloud infrastructure
• Ruby on Rails API
• React (Next.js) web app

This technology mix, powered by our development expertise, supports thousands of users worldwide, underlining the global impact of the Community Lab platform.