OurNetworks Planning 2020-08-02

--- tags: meeting notes --- # OurNetworks Planning 2020-08-02 4-7pm EST via Zoom Attending: Casey, Katie, Emma Facilitator: Casey Notetaker: Casey, Emma Agenda - Can co-create/prioritize agenda for this on the spot, but dropping in some ideas on format -- if needed: - Casey - Refresher on context, proposal, and goals - Any goals not in the proposal that people want to add? - Constraints (limited time, etc.) - Roles (I see myself doing X...) - Generate X number of ideas as a group - Round Robin for X minutes - Writing to self for X minutes then sharing - Jamboard (or something like a post-it wall?) - Focus on generating ideas, not winnowing down/critiquing (Yes, and...) - Emma - Refresher on proposal - General grasp on structure of a workshop - What do you want participant to take away - Good with everything outlined above - emma's brief notes - intro to the project + intro to archives + archive-a-thon + omeka workshop - bibliography (resources + definitions already compiled) - what are other "decentralized"/"zine networks" besides diso? how can this format be applied outside of the diso context - initial proposal: bringing people into the project (presupposed relations w/ institutions/academia) - i want an our networks t shirt - "network as a metaphor" -- how does the university/libraries/commons figure into this extended metaphor (this a a bridge between two diverging workshops) - Katie - Structure pretty good - Starting with participant goals """"learning objectives"""" - A few min to catch up - What we hope to get out of doing this - Where to focus on effort - [5m on Proposa] - Katie - How broad or narrow is definition of networks? Technology but also metaphor for type of organization - Casey - p2p/distributed publishing - stigmergy - how ants navigate, leaving traces in the environment that others can follow. indirect coordinated communication, activist idea of leaving traces for the future - Emma - initial proposal, goal is to bring people into the project on the premise that they have relationships to academia and incorporate into existing archive. as we've discussed, diverged into broader intro to archive, archiveathon, technical workshop. not sure which is direction at the moment. we've compiled a lot of cool resource. casey referencing a lot of codes of conduct and terminologies -- would be cool to have a bibliography of terms and concepts. if we were to make a general workshop, what are other examples of distributed zine networks -- struggling to think of zines on same topic. something beyond that? - would move in more general direction. who might participate in the workshop, not necessarily students or people who've been students in recent times. - not clear on participants - [5m on OutNetworks] - Emma: More tech oriented than imagined. Makes sense to have a technical workshop because so much content seems technical? Like what Katie said about networks as a metaphor -- what role does university library or commons play in extended metaphor? Bridge between workshop for folks with institutions, vs. anyone who wants to build an archive for themselves. - Katie: Making metaphor the focus/objective. More technical than I was expecting. I don't know anything about technical sides of this project yet. Would be interesting to look at how technical networks do or don't mirror technical networks and infrastructure of groups and work we're trying to work on. - Casey: drawing the future, activist/technology activism (protect activists), politics of/embedded in technology (and drive to decentralize/distribute, mesh, local, etc. networks), environmental activism, tech worker organizing (students become workers and workser organize; student organizers -> worker organizers), zine library, datafication (tying into the question of politics of archiving, turning people into data vs. zines into archive objects)!!, solid contingent of artists, activists, academics, interested in ideas about the commons + how this project plays into this, pitch a question to everyone at this conference, not necessarily to help us but to think with us: what kind of network infrastructures are most like what we're trying to do? what sets of technologies would be most resonant with this project? what kind of technical networks mirror the works we're trying to do? - bibliography, sometimes being specific can be really helpful (vs. general workshop). infinite panel discussions about the archive (what is the archive?) (true); being able to be specific about our project and being open to what we don't know, treating the technical attendees like an input into our thinking (we actually have something to learn about networks/infrastructure, we'll tell you about what we know about researching, archiving). an exchange! people are open to exercising, drawing/mapping, either writing or visualizing, a generative activity. originally thinking getting a login to our website -- too task oriented? simplistic? nothing strange/cutting edge about the tech, more of a generative workshop - Katie - Cool thing about confs. having chance to get random ideas in room. Ideas, thinking conversation -- important. - Emma - Wish that engineering students and compsci in undergrad would think about work as techworkers. I studied CS, acquainted with tech worker pipeline and frustrates me. - Casey - Politics and alternate futures of tech organizing, creating something at the nexus of technology and activism. a different kind of university and different kind of world...project started from a frustration with current platforms, putting together a stopgap platform, so much room for an open discussion about technology, activism, education, politics. unlike a CS department, this conference has technologists who are utopian/radical thinkers - Emma - How much more powerful student organizers would be if technologists were on their side? Tangential but definitely relates to alternative worldbuilding. - Katie - Thinking about diso curriculum would look like, if it expanded from a guide. Informally that's what a lot of student organizers do. One application that's interesting: how would you sufficiently disorient CS curriculum? Alongside it. - Emma - Thought from earlier: Ethics of archiving, think about this a lot. Lots of critique about anthropology as a field, when you archive something into an institution you kill it. A piece of writing, oral history. Disos are usually distributed. Unclear if they're distributed digitally now. What's bridge between print and digital, and digital archiving? - Casey - reminder of Katie: "what are the links between structures...?" meme: who led the transformation of your technology -- ceo, covid? suddenly everything about (?), longing for a different kind of connection, something a lot of presenters are exploring...our networks is kind of a disorientation of whatever you would consider their networks, counter hegemonic internet. joanna drucker (?) media studies researcher, print and digital book -- when you scan a book, the scan is no longer the book but the image of it. an ebook/digital book is not the same thing at all, elements of light that are being refreshed a hundred times a second (what happens inside a screen). putting a book online, no longer a book. its a fascimilie of something in the physical world in a flickering screen. what is a book in digital space? what is a text? this thought might loop into the "bridge between print/digital"...what are the network infrastructures that student activists need? these are pdfs plopped altogether. what kind of ways of publishing/and on what kind of networks might amplify this kind of work? - Emma - Tangent reminds me of workshop on how to make cool selfies. Thorough powerpoint on embodied research and different mirrors or bodies. Image and self-image. Fine that we're tangential. Super generative. Hope generative and tangential thread is something we achieve in workshop. - Casey - proposed archive-a-thon, or wikipedia-a-thon -- a model we should keep in the back pocket and think about who/where/when is that useful for? - one of the thoughts/dreams about the project: student activists should get paid to archive other student activism (how it works TBD). an alternative model is for that archiving labor is the volunteer based archive-a-thon. this is not a group of student activists necessarily, giving people logins to omeka and asking to fill in metadata is not going to be the most generative use of energy. - sense of what's emerging: some kind of presentation of what we're doing, where we see it going, generous/expansive resource list, bibliography, goes in many directions (about networks, organizations, activism, archiving). looking at /talking about what's a structure through which we can engage radical technical people about a set of questions we're starting to pull together. (eg: "what kinds of technologies/protocols are best for student activists?" ":)") - Emma - maybe good time to return to outline of roles, constraints, same question from earlier: When is it appropriate to not use technology? Surveillance and tracking. Distribution of things outside of digital commons -- protection of identities and networks. Curious about low-fi and non-technical archives. - Katie - Thinking about having question: What can we gain from having an archive of disos? Didn't think deeply just thought it's cool and I like them. What do we gain and what do we lose? Can inform what kind of networks are useful to distribute, and what ways technical storage and distribution work, and informed by networks that will continue to create them. - Emma - Read on Twitter around time when pandemic arrived in NY and gov was shutting things down, a lot of people were framing it as a time to figure out alternative organizing structure but also a reminder about folks already doing this work, not accessible to everyone. We haven't mentioned this but figuring out what covid is doing to diso publishing process and distribution. It's not possible to do in person distribution at this moment. A lot of our intial discussion is pandemic x higher ed, moving students, staff, workers around carelessly. Haven't talked about it in this workshop but wonder if there's a space. - Casey - how do we frame what we set out to do/what its relevance might be, this fall people are/have been forced to jump into technologies that are forced/unintentional, surveillant, banal question about technologies for archives...original frustration was why do these materials exist on a venture capital site vs. a community website? even on a technical level, what are the technologies for publication and communication that point to a different kind of politics or world? don't have to exist yet...[a feminist server](https://cross.virtualprivateserver.space/manifesto/2014_A_Feminist_Server_Manifesto_%5BEN%5D)...goes back to the idea of a metaphor, not code but in the realm of provocation. - "what is a disorientation archive in a technical sense?" "what is a server for student organizers?"(shared web hosting, but pretty much centralized...map out how the site works, ways you would imagine it working) "what is a virtual disorientation?" (where we're at -- it's a pdf now. "what would a curriculum look like?" "how would it look if it were put online intentionally...?") we don't need to be technical to imagine that. a virtual disorientation wouldn't doxx anyone involved, a virtual disorientation would be a virus, hack the main website, parasite onto it - don't need to have all the answers, we're tasked with setting the table...what do we want to tell this group of people so that they can contribute? how do we create a space that's generative - Emma - Curious what generative workshops look like for us. I've been in a lot of boring workshops and good workshops. Haven't given much thought to what feels good to attend. - [5m break] - [jamboarding] - Jamboard: https://jamboard.google.com/d/1wlPscwSuErztrkzVvyUqq6Z4BSZzNsFJ_GDrqBGyidA/edit - Who are the people attending the workshop? And why? - ![](https://i.imgur.com/w5wr0RY.png) - What do participants take away? What do we take away? - ![](https://i.imgur.com/mVeGNEi.jpg) - Elements of a workshop - ![](https://i.imgur.com/SbaH0hn.jpg) - Open Questions - ![](https://i.imgur.com/P1s0i0z.png) - [post-Jamboard] - Casey - When works for you for next meeting? - Emma - Either weekend or weekday works. How do we keep other people in the group in the loop? - Katie - Moving etc. no claims about more than 3 days in the future :) - Casey - Next Sunday: website workshop - Sunday 16th: next OutNetworks workshop - Rolling downhill soon, just getting stuff done - Tuesday evening will be short check-ins to do regular business and catch people up