It’s important to stay connected. In addition to a regular every day cell phone I use a few other open source projects to assist communications.
Email
I operate my own email server to relay email. It isn’t strictly necessary but I don’t want to be entirely dependent on Gmail and the like
I use mailinabox to manage my personal email server and as part of my DNS infrastructure.
You can learn more about mailinabox at https://mailinabox.email or find the source code at https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox
Video Conferencing
If the need ever arises I don’t rely on FaceTime or snap. I use Jitsi Meet if I need to have a face to face but can’t meet in person.
My Jitsi Meet is invite only.
Learn more about Jitsi at https://jitsi.org or get the source code at https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet
Live Chat
I use an open source program called Matrix to serve instant text based comms over the internet, encrypted on both ends. It’d basically like Discord but privately operated.
If you already use Matrix you can set your server to “s.chat.lost.ws” and join #pub.
If you’ve never used Matrix Chat you can try out the Element web client at https://chat.lost.ws
You can learn about Matrix Chat Server at https://matrix.org or obtain source code at https://github.com/matrix-org
Learn more about Element Chat Client at https://element.io/ or view the source code at https://github.com/element-hq