Internet Learning Festival/Meeting 1
12 Aug 2014
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
- 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]