Internet Learning Festival/Meeting 1

Attendees

• Yael, Yahel, Aaron, Freeman, MaxB, Jenny, Rikke

Key points

• Burning Man (camping in style)
• Internet-enabled education
• "Burning Man with fast Internet"
• Manchester Pomo Rancheria
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Band_of_Pomo_Indians_of_the_Manchester-Point_Arena_Rancheria
• Stornetta family ranch
  • Huge area, part near the beach is being donated to the feds for a national monument

• Core question: securing land for the event

Intention/Intro

• Freeman: Open to all audiences, would love to see students/startup kids/coders 17-30
• Yahel: egoistic - De Novo humanitarian project; local community [tribe, Irish Beach retirees; high schoolers/youngsters; what the Internet can do for you
  • Tap into local organizations, creating partnerships with them
• Yael: Internet as bridging rather than dividing generations; involving families; connecting the elders
• Aaron: What would the rest of the world use high-speed internet for?; why would rural people want to get on the Internet? research questions :)
• Yael: Internet as bridging rather than dividing generations; involving families; connecting the elders
• Aaron: What would the rest of the world use high-speed internet for?; why would rural people want to get on the Internet? research questions :)
• Jenny: Connect to the tribe? Documenting stories, cultural preservation, co-learning, urban hacker/maker respite,
• Max: Pulling down the culturally-created curtain of mystery around the tools people use every day; that we feel like we can't touch or don't feel confident touching / deconstructing - facilitating familiarity with tools - deeply skeptical of Burning Man - more interested in things that are transformative after the Thing is over; positive and useful change for communities that we have good relationships with
• Rikke: Appropriate technologies / environmentalism, way too many hours in a lab; lived in Mendocino County w/ satellite uplink, trying to figure out a backhaul across several ridgelines straight west, lived part of childhood in Tanzania so familiar w/ underserved communities; research on deployment of IT in rural subsaharan Africa.

Details

• 100-1000 people for 2-4 weeks
• Populations: Locals, hacker/makers, academic people as well, marijuana workers
  • Skills to earn money while they travel
  • Community "under siege" - people are bristly during harvest season

Outstanding Questions

• What's in it for the local community?
• What's the long-term benefit?
• What other historically disadvantaged communities could we also help?
• Examine ICT4D research;

Discussion

• Success defined as having fun
• More important to have clear questions than clear organizers
• Definitely start thinking about fencing

Ideal Numbers

• Yahel: Low thousands - how do you stop it?
• Rikke: 12-1400 people; has helped organized festivals with 75-95,000 people in Europe
• Freeman: Thousands for a full month too much - passing through, yes; capping it at $1K at any given time; 100-220 stayers [scenesters]; fluxes
  • 2-day passes, day passes, week passes etc;
• Max: Tickets? Paid? Fences?
• Jenny: would like to keep it 'village sized' with some events or summer-camp style weekend workshops
• Rikke: First group of people will build it for you, should be free. Second group should be promoted to, need to have an idea of a target audience --> But then you need to deliver.

Key Considerations

• Water Supply
• Sanitation
  • Portipotties
• Energy
  • None? Solar?

Visions

• Yael: Cloud Computing (in the foggy foresty coast)
• Chaos Computer Camp
• Students from UC Berkeley
• Learning / Workshops / etc
• What if we could offer learning camps then extend to DIY
• Berkeley / Stanford classes for accreditation crossing over to other realms of uninstitutionalized knowledge
• Teaching things where having access to high-speed internet combined with these kinds of knowledge
• Natural Building, Yoga, Dance, etc should also be prioritized in some manner
• That maybe we need to cultivate around a form of 'networking technology' that expands beyond the technical to the human relations that create those networks
• That we could smudge it to knowledge sharing
• That we could expand it to a healing relationship with the internet that demands balence, symbiosis
  • Put a university in the woods for a few days
  • We bring you a university for a few days

Organizing

• Showers
• Portapotties
• Water!

Action Items

• Two-pager to give to community stakeholders
  • Why?
  • Content - what sort of activities
• Check in w/ Mendo Mini Maker Faire (Rikke)
  • Where is the local Mendo maker community?
• 10-line pitch to solicit personal invitations [Yahel]