Conveners: Michel Bauwens, Phoebe Moore, Nathan Cravens
University of Salford, Manchester, UK, P2P Research Group
Conveners: Michel Bauwens, Phoebe Moore, Nathan Cravens
http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/sssi/p2p/
Facebook Group :
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=63814529959&ref=ts
Nov 3, 2009
This was a really, really intense, interested, enlightening, and rewarding 4 days trip to Manchester, UK. This was by far one of the very best conferences we have ever attended.
We met Smári McCarthy Sarah Haq for the first time, along with Phoebe Moore, Michel Bauwens the night prior to conference. Smári McCarthy asked us (the night prior to conference) "what if we change to p2p systems when the majority of 'energies' are in the industrial paradigm/structure?" This was a really interesting question. By "energies" I think that Smári means the activity and focus of people. So, he is asking basically what if a minority of people start successfully changing many systems into protocal based interactions, but the majority of people are still working and living mostly in industrial paradigms where they solve most problems by way of transactions with corporations and governments?
Sam notes: Yochai Benkler discusses in the "The Wealth of Networks":
"There is no guarantee that networked information technology will lead to the improvements in innovation, freedom, and justice that I suggest are possible. That is a choice we face as a society. The way we develop will, in significant measure, depend on choices we make in the next decade or so. "
On top of this, it seems that non-self-sustaining p2p systems will die a quick death and systems will tend to revert back to what we basically have now in many places.
The next day we headed to the Innovation Center in Salford early. Waiting for the Center to open, we walked around the area for a bit, and took note that it was a mix of industrial/warehouse and various college buildings all surrouned by be-spiked poles and razor wire fences. This area also had no public transport that reached it, which is strange for a University related area (and for an area in Machester, as most of the rest of the city seemed to have public transport).
We made our way in and had a good early morning conversation with Suresh Fernando and others about the business models that are possible with open source design, including ideas about agricultural equipment models, etc.
9.00 – 10.00: Keynote Speaker, Michel Bauwens
Founder, P2P Foundation
Lecturer, Dhurakij Pundit University International College
Michel went over his mindmap of An Infrastructure for Open Everything. Paul notes: It always amazes me how Michel is ability to tackle copious quantitites of information and distill it into easily digestible concepts and ideas.
During Michel Bauwens everything open and free mindmap at Everything Open and Free Michel discusses how a Self Selected Certification emerges around Arduino projects, that displays recognized stamps on arduino circuits allowing end users to recognize high quality arduino contributors and fabricators. Some participants criticized the idea that concepts can be "reduced to a mindmap".
Sam notes: A mind map is a beginning, a model. John Henry Holland will remind us that the map is not the territory. Perpetually generative maps may be more reflective (and less normalized) of reality. People tend to need a literacy of looking at complex patterns to make use of maps that are generated by complex data (and maps that are generated by complex systems models).
Morning Sessions: Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action
This panel will look at various projects and proposals for more integrated and adaptive collaborative platforms for social action. It will look at the following issues: 1) what is missing in the current generation of technology 2) specific issues related to commercial ownership of collaboration and social networking platforms: to what degree should they be replaced by independent or common platforms and under what conditions would such alternatives be viable 3) what is the direction that alternative platforms are moving to, are there compatibilities which could lead to synergies 4) how might these adaptive platforms be used to build collaborative networks with an interface simple enough to meet specific needs without knowing potentially novel needs in advance? In other words, how might we better match people, skills, resources, and other necessities to best meet a variety of desired outcomes without diminishing others?
Room 1
Chair: Michael Goddard
Tav Espian Blog & Mamading Ceesay Blog Espians Web 4.0: Creating weapons of mass construction through a decentralised socio-economic-technological platform
Suresh Fernando & Matt Cooperrider– OpenKollab Creating a Collaborative Platform to Connect Organizations with Aligned Missions – possibilities and challenges Radical Inclusion
Sam notes: Tav Espian challenged us all to bring up to 1000 people to meet in London by next spring for another conference on this topic. Tav also talked about the "PECU" (personal economic unit, see: http://tav.espians.com/pecu-allocations-by-tav.html ) Mamading talked about place-based collaborations and mobile devices like the OpenMoko Wiki Reader and how these are changing the game for collaborative systems. Matt Cooperrider gave a really great talk about open government and community information ecologies, and collaborative co-government systems. Suresh wrapped it up by giving a possible real-world way that projects can connect in meaningful ways by way of http://wiki.openkollab.com/wagn/ProjectMapping This is a project from Open Kollab to create systems for allowing social enterprise projects to find useful ways to connect based on metadata about the groups. This has already evolved into a collaboration between Forward Foundation and Open Kollab to create project ecologies that allow projects to collaborate based on work they are already doing.
Room 2
Chair: Phoebe Moore
Steinn E. Sigurðarson The threshold of confluence: why structural similarities, feeds, and simplicity are they keys to interoperability
Ralf Schlatterbeck Open Source and Peer to Peer Money Open Source consulting
Steinn Sigurðarson's suggestion of using RSS for interoperability and, in particular, dynamically typing feeds, parallels and integrates nicely with Flows.
Also, Ralf Schlatterbeck's presentation noted that current trend towards software-as-service creates new challenges for keeping things open. The challenge is to preserve Open APIs, Open Formats, Open Source, and Open Data. Ralf's possible solution: the GNU Affero General Public License "prevents closed-source modifications to hosted applications."
12.00 – 13.00: Discussions
Facilitator: Sophia Bustamante London Creative Labs
Paul notes: I liked the exercise we did in this discussion, translating mental and verbal commitment into physical bodily motion (“led” by Sophia, we moved around the room, colliding and coalescing into patterns of commitments).
Sam notes: Several expressed interest in creating a multi-use community facility that contains coworking, flexible fabrication, hackerspace, and indoor and outdoor food production and localized energy production, and plays a role of local research and development and foresight. Michel was interested in creating this in Thailand, in fact. Food production could be an early way to boost basic income, and so could flexible fabrication in places where food is already widely available. The awesome thing is that this was done by standing up and taking a step towards those people who's ideas align with yours. This was more of a demonstration, but it was very effective.
Afternoon Sessions : Media Ecologies for Open Design Communities and Distributed Manufacturing
14.00 – 15.00: Keynote speaker, Matthew Fuller
Reader, Centre for Cultural Studies
Goldsmiths University, London
Transparency, Interrogability and Experiment
Matthew’s idea of interrogability stood in direct relation to things Sam and I were about to mention in our own presentation, i.e. the idea of interrogable programs and virtual objects in a newly emerging web of distributed components.
Chair: Ben Light
Smári McCarthy Fab labs, Tangible Bit, Industry 2.0 Profile
Eddie Kirkby & Haydn Insley Manchester Fab Labs: A Transfomational Activity for Advanced Manufacturing in the 21st Century Manchester Manufacturing Institute. This will be a FabLab located in Manchester. Eddie's presentation can be viewed here:
http://www.slideshare.net/EddieKirkby/media-ecologies-seminar-nov-2009
Erik de Bruijn blog RepRap and personal fabrication was a fascinating presentation, that displayed all of the inherent potentials and actualities of the open source http://reprap.org project
Sam Rose & Paul Hartzog FLOWS
Check out our presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/paulbhartzog/flows-2009-uk-media-ecologies and Michel Bauwens review here: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/open-infrastructures-i-conference-report/2...
Great stuff here centering on new modes of small-scale manufacturing offering possibilities for distributed production, sustainable fabrication, etc.
Melissa Sterry Creativity's Role in Creating Collaborative Web 2.0 Platforms & Environmental Digital Messaging Societas. Melissa's communicated projects and concepts were incredible. Enthusiastic communities centering around mutual problem solving, and fitting the activities creatively into their busy lives. See her presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/societas/putting-the-we-in-web-media-ecology-c...
Smári McCarthy walked us through Tangible Bit. The idea is to create Functional Constructive Solid Geometry that can be represented as functions and equations in basic ways, avoiding needing to use primitives for shapes. This gives a designer functional control over every property in a design. It also allows for the mapping of metadata to the design per function. Some really incredible and revolutionary concepts are possible with this approach.
17.00 – 18.00: Discussions
Facilitator: Smari McCarthy Tangible Bits
During the wrap-up/discussion hour the floor will be open to discussions regarding anything that has occurred during the day and makes sense within the context of the conference. The discussion will be guided, in that we will avoid bikesheds and other conversation stoppers. The goal will be to map out what has been done, what needs to be done, and who will do it. People will by this point in time know more or less what is important to the future development of media ecologies, so letting them discuss freely is probably a good strategy.
The afternoon discussion took some of the ideas that had appeared during the course of the conference and moved them forward into the “what do we do next?” category. Appropriately, I think, the conclusion was “have dinner and a pint.” :-)
