Over the last few months, we’ve been looking for a home for all of the data we generate for the whole of Crossed Wires, everything from artwork, show notes, episode plans, all of our stream layouts, and much more.

We tried iCloud shared folders, since we’re both firmly in the Apple ecosystem, but to be blunt they just aren’t built for large amounts of data or more flexible sharing options. We were reluctant to trust our data to Google, and we certainly didn’t need all the functionality of Office 365.

Then, along came Nextcloud, an open-source, self-hosted solution that brings together so many different features like file storage across multiple storage solutions, collaborative document editing and much more.

This week, we talk with Jos Poortvliet, the co-founder and marketing director over at Nextcloud, to dig deep into the history of Nextcloud, what makes it such a compelling option and a genuinely strong alternative to things like Office 365 and Google Workspace, as well as nerding out on some of the available apps and other little gems.

Do you use a cloud service for your own data, or maybe you look after the systems for your business, big or small. Whatever your experience, we’d love to hear from you, so please send us a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, or why not come join the discussion on our Discord server.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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Episode Links

• Nextcloud – Website
• Nextcloud – Mastodon
• Your Data in Nextcloud – Great details on how your data is managed
• Nextcloud Ethical AI Rating – Looking at how to rate different AI solutions based on their openness

Related Episodes

• Open (Source) for Business – Talking about how important Open Source is for business with Tom Lawrence
• Experimenting with Linux – A chat with Nick from The Linux Experiment about all things Linux
• Chatting AI Ethics – A discussion with Dr. Catherine Flick about AI

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:07:04: What is Nextcloud
3. 00:21:48: Why You May Need An Alternative to Office 365 etc.
4. 00:35:30: Monetisation of Nextcloud
5. 00:40:48: Nextcloud Hub
6. 00:45:11: Storage Backends
7. 00:51:19: Deployment Options
8. 01:04:19: Talk, Office, and File Sync
9. 01:21:59: Apps
10. 01:32:11: Nextcloud AI
11. 01:41:35: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW