We’ve built the network: what now?

Services

• radio and video streaming http://rund.freifunk.net or http://www.livestream.com/dubnighttv/
• Voice over IP http://wiki.ninux.org/Elenco_Telefonico_rete_VoIP_di_ninux.org
• Public web Cams (over the roofs, bird nest’s – very popular in Berlin)

Discovery

Splash screen:

• They don’t really work in most experience. People don’t read them or respond to them.
• Intercepts connections and makes a bad experience
• Problems when being on dual stack
• If you have it: don’t mention money as people will go away (even if just for donations).  Explain what will happen after they press the login button.
• Use SSID as name that you want to announce (use WWW so people know it’s a website)

mDNS:

• Service discovery, networks
• Music sharing services (iTunes like sharing (DAAP))
• Serverless chat
• Good resource: http://wiki.ninux.org/ZeroconfServices

Kiberpipa.net is running:

• Video streaming from Cyberpipe (lectures – http://video.kiberpipa.org)
• VPN for end users
• Local irc server with SSL suport (irc.sioff.net)
• VPS to run and learn about Linux (all the servers are accessible inside network + ipv6 only connectivity from the outside world)
• Multiple-storages (NAS) for sharing stuff/run your own FTP server
• Peering connectivity to other Freifunk networks/hackerspaces

Other services that people are running

• Used books
• Weather report
• Blog server
• Radio streaming
• DNS servers that do all the fancy remapping (service to all the users)

Wishlist:

• WE NEED working SPLASH SCREENS
• nodes running their own webserver
• automatic name registration system (web site)
• alternative domain names redirection (custom zones)
• internet caching services (uncensored)
• decentralized community radio station / shared radio schedule (gsoc project this year): http://radiomate.org and http://fusoradio.net
• game servers (freeciv works!)
• mesh-partys (like lan party)
• local search engines
• good service discovery service. What is the most common way to announce new service around the whole network: mDNS?

Want to share your experience in running services on your wireless networks? Share it in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Free Network Services – Benjamin Mako Hill [Wikimania 2008, notes]
2. WebCamp break out session #1 – Adoption challenges (for social network portability) and ways for solving them
3. Juergen Galler (Google) – Content creation strategies for emerging countries [Wikimania 2008 notes]

I’m excited about this MobileCamp for two main reasons: we’ll be bringing local mobile phone developers together for the first time in such numbers. This is important for Slovenian Mobile scene as there many indie iPhone and Android developers that need to see that their peers are active in the industry and that they’re not alone.

The second is that this venue is much bigger in terms of space so we should be able to introduce more people to concept of unconferences as well prepare grounds for a series of smaller MobileCamps later in the year if there will be enough demand.

We’re seeing increasing demand for iPhone and Android developers from companies and entrepreneurs as well as demands for applications from users, so lets expand this market fast and catch-up with the rest of the Europe. This time we’re switching back to English as primary language and we’re hoping to attract broader community also from the neighboring countries.

As always, go to http://www.mobilecamp.si for all the gory details and how to sign-up for your spot at the MobileCamp.

Related posts:

1. Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana
2. Group Roller Blading in Ljubljana (Ljubljana Nightskate)
3. Geeky events in next two weeks in Ljubljana

We can say once again that our last event, RealTime WebCampLjubljana, was a great success. We didn’t run out of coffee, there was enough electricity and WiFi as well as a great mix of people and the quality of talks and discussions was astonishing.

There are a few things that we did differently this time that had effect on the ‘camp feeling:

• Smaller group – instead of going with 150+ we went for 50+ crowd. More intimate and it allowed for more open discussions.
• Two tracks only – moved from 3 tracks format to 2 tracks as there was less people and we also had to optimize for the available rooms. We still managed to create a nice balance of tech vs. non-tech oriented talks.
• Slovenian language – despite protests from our friends in Croatia, we decided to go with Slovenian as a primary language this time. My current feeling is that this made it easier for everyone involved and we should consider sticking to Slovenian for smaller camps that are not intended for international audience.
• ‘Hackish venue’ – instead of going for university or conference venue, we crashed in Hekovnik this time, a new hackerspace in Ljubljana. This had a totally different feeling of more ‘ad-hoc’ and less sterile environment. It seemed like people enjoyed this more.

There is still a question – how to encourage people to prepare more sessions and how to time the event. Going for early Saturday morning as a start (8am-ish) seems to work great for now. Regarding more sessions, I’m not sure if we can expect more than 30% of attendees to run their own session, would be interested in recommendations on any literature on the topic of facilitating sessions.

Did I miss anything important that we should take into consideration for our next ‘camps?

Related posts:

1. Announcing RealTime WebCampLjubljana
2. MobileCamp Ljubljana in late March!
3. WebCamp break out session #1 – Adoption challenges (for social network portability) and ways for solving them

It’s been two months after last WebCamp and it’s time for another party. Following the idea of BarCamps with story line, we’ve decided to organize RealTime Social WebCamp Ljubljana.

This time we’ve decided to focus on a single emerging technology space: Real-Time Social Web. If you’re not up-to date with the latest buzzwords, it’s about next generation RSS protocols like HubSubPubBub, RSSCloud, XMPP (that powers GTalk), Synaptic Web, Twitter API and a bunch of other technologies and ways of thinking about the Web and Mobile space.

Intended audience are developers and people who are close to them (e.g. interface designers, product managers, etc.) and will need to innovate in this space in the next 6 months.

We’re doing it a bit more limited this time, just 50 spaces. I’m interested in seeing how a smaller and more focused group changes the dynamics of such gathering.

The rules for the tickets are the same as the last time. Send description of your talk early and you get a ticket, or hope that you can click fast enough for the left-over tickets later. I believe that extra effort should be awarded.

The official language this time is Slovenian since we’ve figured out that locals that are not native speakers understand our geek talk enough that it shouldn’t be a problem and we can understand them as they lecture in their own language.

As always: all the details are at http://www.webcamp.si

Related posts:

1. Announcing WebCampLjubljana
2. RealTime WebCamp reflections
3. Announcing BarCampLjubljana

Copenhagen Airport project, In Place-Spective, 2005-2006

• Airports are transitional spaces without special meaning to people – it’s a non-place. So how can we construct a place inside an airport?
• So what’s a sense of place? It’s hard to share and compare your sense of place with each other. Architectural approach might not be the best way to do it.
• Sense of place doesn’t have to be attached to a physical space. It’s more of a virtual construct based on social interaction.
• The problem: you don’t want to socialize, because you’re in the transit; your’ve very vulnerable and you care only about your travels.

Posters inside washrooms, that you can use to share things with each other. The posters were placed inside toilet doors.

• The Ghost in the machine is used to criticize the idea of dualism by Descartes. Dualism – the body is just a vehicle of the mind. By having a belief that body is a slave the mind, it’s the same as saying that we’re just a ghost in the machine.
• It’s about how you define the humanity – separation of human and being, human vs. animal. Animals are locked into instincts while humans are of free will.
• Animal is the machine, while human is the ghost in the machine; meaning that we’re ghost of the animal.

The Living Machine

Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum.
— Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.” The Haraway Reader. 1985. Ed. Haraway, Donna. New York: Routledge, 2004. 7-45.

This new machine becomes a problem because it comes very close to the concept of humanity. So we need to redefine what it means to be a human.

Yes/No/Maybe

Pyshical event that takes elements from the online dating site:

• Anonymity
• Degree of interest
• Object of desire (something that you can interact with)

Look for it in near future in Ljubljana.

No related posts.

One of the big questions we’re always wondering is – is there a community in this small country? Aren’t things better in bigger cities?

There are two answers to that:

1. Sure. It’s better out there and we don’t stand a chance here.
2. or we can say – It depends. We just need to give our community a chance to come out.

The fact that #webcamplj could be done so quickly, while attracting such a lot of high quality speakers and participants gives me hope. While Slovenian (web) IT community might have its quirks, it’s alive and more than willing to come out and share the knowledge. It’s not just the BarCamp like events, it’s also weekly web.zen.si events in Kiberpipa, as well as Webmaster piknik, etc.

With this in mind, I just wanted to say that #webcamplj was really a community effort with more than 10 people working in backstage to keep the event running smoothly and some continue working even after event to make sure that we will be able to archive all the collected knowledge.

But there’s a bigger point to this blog post – you can help too. Consider running your event within a specialized field of your interest, so others can learn with you and we can advance the state of your field. You don’t even have to be an expert, just someone who is interested, as research has shown that people learn the most from peers their same level.

Having said that, there are a few things we can offer

1. We have a wide infrastructure that can support a variety of events. From 30 people meetings up to 150+ person events. Relationships with potential venus and experience at what works where and under what conditions.
2. We can help you with promotion as we’re involved with a number of online and offline media projects or help with Facebook groups or Twitter lists.
3. We can also help you with sponsoring and optimizing costs of your event (if any), due to previous relationships.

Who is we? We are a loose community of people who invest our time and money to keep these open places, events and online communities running. Talk to anyone that seems responsible at any of the community events and start the ball rolling inside your field of interest.

Related posts:

1. Announcing WebCampLjubljana
2. Back at doing open source and community work
3. Why my community is nothing like your community

A while ago I ranted about general BarCamps and the need for more topical unconferences in Slovenia. Because the best way to change the world is to start doing it yourself, I’m happy to present you: WebCampLjubljana, a BarCamp like event focused around web development, design and anything else connected to it. It’s going to take part on the last Saturday of November (28th) at Tehnološki Park Ljubljana, who kindly donated the conference space.

There are three easy things you can do to help promote the event:

• Go to WebCamp.si and check out the page
• RSVP on Facebook and invite others
• Tweet about it

.. and spread the word around.

Can’t wait to meet you at the event!

Related posts:

1. Announcing RealTime WebCampLjubljana
2. Announcing BarCampLjubljana
3. RealTime WebCamp reflections

To navigate them, you can’t think in terms of the infrastructure and you have to think about the way the ocean works.

There are all sorts of dangers if you are excluded from the cloud today. It’s not about the infrastructure but about the flow.

Maps of infrastructure show us what’s possible, but maps of flow show us what actually happens. Example of #flowmapping is Cab Spotting project.

We don’t map flow very often, because mapping flow is an act of surveillance. But by not mapping flow we are missing things.

Lets take a look at what we actually do, instead of what we think we do. We’re not at the peak of globalization, but we’re at the local peak. We’ve got a feeling of globalization because of the availability of global products. As we get “atoms” from everywhere, we assume we can also get “bits” from everywhere.

But generally speaking, we don’t get bits from everywhere. It turns out that it’s really easy to get atoms from Fiji, but it’s really hard to get bits from there. This means that infrastructure matters a lot.

Map of media attention – Technorati based map of which countries people are talking about. There are parts of worlds that we put a lot attention to some countries.

Evolutionary speaking – we humans are not used to thinking globally.

The cloud invites the image of border-less world – in reality, we tend to be pretty parochial. We’re probably ignoring some of the most amazing potential, because cloud lures us into imaginary cosmopolitanism.
We now have a set of tools to shrink the world, but we need help in using them and realizing the full potential of the cloud.

Your view of Facebook is based on the Tribes and is really not a global network. It’s our local environment and we have to recognize this.

We have to take this ocean and sea of possiblity and actually get the sense of what flows through it, instead of assuming that we know what’s happening. We have to resist homophily.

The cloud is not a prediction, it’s a prophecy.

A prophecy is a challenge to the reader. We have to accept the challenge and make sure it happens.

Disclaimer: these notes are my interpretation of the talk and I apologize to the author for any mistakes I made in the process.

Related posts:

1. Juergen Galler (Google) – Content creation strategies for emerging countries [Wikimania 2008 notes]
2. Claire Nouvian – Managing global marine resources in a globalized world [Thinking digital session notes]
3. Heather Ford – The future of the commons [Wikimedia 2008 notes]

Do you want to flex you hacking skills in space of online micro-payements and donations? Are you working on a project that would need this in next 3 months? Or are you just a good person that wants to give something to non-profits? Then Charity Hack ‘09 might just be an event for you.

The idea, as I understand it, is to bring together developers and charities and educate everyone on different API’s in this space and to create something useful in the process. There are of course a number of interesting sponsors like JustGiving, MissionFish and PayPal that will present their new API’s and show you how you can do powerful things with them.

Personally, I would say that this is a great opportunity to hear more about x.com, PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments platform so you can stay ahead of the curve and start building next micro-transaction based application.

I really wish I could make it to the event. Lets see if I can still make it

Related posts:

1. 5 Web events in London worth visiting
2. Berlin Web2.0 Expo and some FOWA, London reflections
3. SemanticCamp London, 16-17th 2008

GimpGirl is a community for women with disabilities, basically talking to each other. It’s very important for them and hard to come by for many of its members. They don’t focus on any special disability.
They’ve started in 1998, started with with mailing lists, later moved to LiveJournal in 2003 (about 350 people there). Opened in Second Life, Facebook and Twitter in 2008.

GimpGirl poster - thanks to @lizhenry for sharing the image

Often different communities transition around different technology, leaving little ghost towns of communities behind.

Second Life

• Provides opportunity to network with other disability, women and non-profit groups.
• Allow easier collaboration within community.
• They’ve added adaptations for further accessibility by adding IRC relay.
• It’s really useful for people with different disabilities, e.g. they to be able to use their hands a lot, have trouble viewing, etc.

Their main site currently runs on Moodle.

You can get the fastest response on Facebook and Twitter.

• Safe Space – we’re all taking from our personal POV, supporting each other, talking from our personal experience. No harassment would be tolerated at all.
• “Being studied” – often academics want to talk to people with disabilities. Community members usually just want to talk to each other and not being studied and trying to explain themselves all the time.

Interdependent Models of Access to Virtual World

• Accommodation for individual users – “guide dog” that tells the names of the objects in SL environment.
• Architectural access to community space
• if you build your online spaces to support accessibility, it can be more welcoming to all people.
• Build it in a way that is useful/easier everyone.
• Universal Design for conversation – some people need synchronic communication, others would need asynchronies communication.

Differences between formal/unformal styles and comments can be off-putting to some people. Different channels allow for better access for everyone.

Integrate multiple channels

• Build strong cross-platform relationship that distribute information on multiple channels. This allows greater amount of people to communicate as not all the platforms are accessible to all people all the time.
• We should be building platforms that allow to aggregate and federate information across the web/platforms/multiple-channels.

Best practices for communication

• Provide accessible formats for event information, e.g not just PDF flyer but also in plain text. (508/WCAG guidelines)
• Live events in virtual worlds should have an IRC relay and audio feeds for voice chat. It might be also useful to everyone that would prefer alternative communication channels.
• Asynchronous methods (blogs, forums) should be used along with synchronous (e.g. IRC).
• Be inclusive of various speech and writing styles.
• Acknowledge all contributions from the community, not just the most active members.

Give responsibility to most active community members. This allows the community to manage itself and own itself.

In bigger communities, it’s useful to acknowledge them also in private on publicly in community as then they have a feeling that it’s really a relationship. Public spotlight it’s also useful way to give community members public awareness.

• Use person-first language or other language preferred by people with disabilities.
• Have clear methods for feedback on accessibility and other topics.
• Include your audience/members in planning and execution of events – “Nothing about us without us”

Anti-patterns

• Impersonal – no opportunity for trust
• Profiles in courage. Pity. Charity.
• Infantilization of people with disability by controlling information.

Patterns

• Authenticity
• Identity
• Respect

+ many more.

Related posts:

1. Tools to manage and keep track of community and ideas around delegation [#cls notes]
2. Heather Ford – The future of the commons [Wikimedia 2008 notes]
3. #webcamplj – community is alive and how you can help!