[wsfii-discuss] worries and list membership

Tue Mar 22 08:02:51 UTC 2005

I am cc'ing Vickram Crishna,  who needs to be part of this discussion.

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 01:21:24 +0100, Tomas Krag <t at wire.less.dk> wrote:
> your assumption that we probably won't get
> same kind of international participation for a w4d track is probably
> pretty accurate as well.

My suggestion would be, to do a  live online event,  along the lines
of Global Learn Day, please see http://bfranklin.edu/gld/

"Each October we host an annual 24-hour, non-stop round the world
"voyage" which showcases highly innovative activities in education and
internet technology from 24 time zones. In order to build an audience
in the millions we involve community radio stations and local
television. Rule One is to make it easily accessible, underpinning the
whole show with heavy use of POTS, Plain Old Telephone Systems. It's a
worldwide celebration of learning that opens in the South Pacific and
closes in Hawaii; in between are education's all-stars on a stage as
big as the planet.
"

We could do the same with community wireless networking: we already
have friends in different parts of the world, who may not be able to
come to London. Why don't they organise a panel discussion, radio talk
show, whatever, which is carried live to all of us, wherever we are?
For GLD, we use a chat room that allows text and audio chat, and the
pushing of web pages. It is as if you are watching a powerpoint
presentation, the difference being, that if you want to, you can be
typing questions and comments in the text chat alongside. Works great,
 this is the 9th year we will be doing this. I have handled the South
Asia segment since the beginning, in fact, last year, community
wireless was the focus of my segment,
http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Global_Learn_Day_presentation

Just a thought...  24 hours might sound strenuous, but who says you
have to attend all of it? And who says it must be 24 hours?  The idea
is to hold events at convenient times for the international
participants in their own regions.

> 
> And I actually think calling it a prepcon is interesting, and probably
> worthwhile. It shows our continuous commitment to bringing the
> discussion to the world outside Western Europe and the US, and it also
> commits us to that plan of action. Of course I'm coloured by the fact
> that that is what I consider our most important role at the moment...

Let me strengthen that. Can we not say, that this is our attempt at
active solidarity: we see a huge potential in w4d, and will, at this
conference, work on a strategy for promoting rapid growth in
developing countries, using India as an example? We could take this
idea further...

I am also very excited at the role wireless networks could play in the
lives of the disabled. Consider spastic students in a normal
classroom: many have motor difficulties, and  problems with vision, in
varying degrees. Their wheel chairs could easily be equipped with a
WiFi-enabled notebook, which automatically connect with each other in
a classroom, and with the teacher using a PC with a beamer. They could
have the contents of the presentation on their own laptops, which they
could magnify or otherwise process in whatever manner suits them best.
They could record the entire presentation, and watch it again later
(could be helpful for those who are slow learners) Once you start
using this,  you could easily have students participating from remote
locations, e.g. the hospital.

We are also examining how special call centers could be set up for the
disabled. A blind person might hold up a camera phone to take a
snapshot of the street signs, and a wheelchair bound deaf person
sitting far away could look at the picture, and tell her where she is,
using voice or text. If you used a WiFi device on a community network
for this, call centers could be set up locally: think how much money
the government would be willing to invest, to give a decent job to
people with extreme disabilities. This would also facilitate
networking within the community at a human level. As we discovered at
Djursland, people mostly use community WiFi networks to connect to the
Internet. Perhaps we need to look at how wireless networks might
foster community activity.

Would there be a possibility of reaching out to the disabled
community, and perhaps running a session, on wireless networking and
disability? This could form part of the w4d stream, or perhaps a
separate one on applications of community wireless (community radio/TV
might be accomodated in that as well)

Arun

> 
> Also, like Rufus, I wouldn't worry too much about the size of this list
> at the moment. Perhaps that's more of a reflection of the time people
> have to contribute right now, and not of peoples willingness to
> participate in general.
> 
> It would be nice, if we could get one or two of the Djursland gang to
> get involved, as they seem to be the missing link in terms of the last 4
> years event hosts.
> 
> enough from me, I think we should get some dates out as soon as
> possible.
> 
> Sebastian and I will mostly focus on a related documentation project,
> i.e. arranging for the group writing of a book, and some online
> materials, as well as perhaps trying to organise some software projects
> to write some of the code that seems to be missing for some of these
> technologies to take of in a rural developing world environment.
> Hopefully our contribution to the conference will be to present some of
> this documentation work.
> 
> cheers
> 
> /tomas
> 
> On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 11:35 +0000, Saul Albert wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I'm afraid I'm a bit worried about sending out the invite - because I've only
> > got feedback from Jeurgen here. What do others on this list think? There are
> > only a few of us on this list:
> >
> >     * arunlists at gmail.com
> >     * consumercitizen at informal.org.uk
> >     * j.neumann at xorxe.net
> >     * jo at frot.org
> >     * rufus.pollock at okfn.org
> >     * saul at twenteenthcentury.com
> >     * sebastian at less.dk
> >     * shekhar at crit.org.in
> >     * t at wire.less.dk
> >
> > Perhaps it would be good to review the members of this list (only 6 or so of us
> > joined) and see if others can be pulled into discussions before sending it out
> > - or perhaps we should just start sending this out personally... If it looks ok
> > to you all..
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Saul.
> > -----
> >
> >             -------------------------------------------------------
> >                        For Distribution Far and Wide:
> >             -------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >                             WSFII PREPCON '05
> >                                     ~
> >           ~ World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures ~
> >
> > Every year for the last four years, Free Networkers from around the world have
> > organised summits, the last one being the Freifunk.net Summer Convention 2004
> > in Djursland, Denmark where Free Networkers, free infrastructure pragmatists
> > and community network builders from 32 countries got together, shared ideas,
> > made plans and forged alliances.
> >
> > This year, we are widening the scope through an association with the Open
> > Knowledge Foundation (okfn.net) - we want to invite people from all areas of
> > free infrastructure development to participate in a world summit, trying to
> > cross the streams Free Hardware, Free Software, Open Geodata, LETS trading
> > systems, Open Licensing, Community TV/Radio, Public Knowledge Infrastructures,
> > and other areas of research and activity that we haven't thought of yet.
> >
> >                                 ~ why ~
> >
> > Because Free Infrastructure developers don't really have to ask this question.
> > We have this in common - that FIIs come from pragmatic application and problem
> > solving rather than being led by policy or law. By meeting and joining forces,
> > we can do what we do more effectively.
> >
> >
> >                              ~ structure ~
> >
> > The structure is a 2 day public conference in a central accessible location
> > during which the various FII groups can present their activities and the
> > specifics of their FII domain to other groups and the public. Prior to that
> > weekend event (1st/2nd October for the London WSFII) there will be a week
> > during which a venue will be available to groups if they wish to hold
> > preparatory meetings, workshops, talks and social gatherings.
> >
> >                               ~ prepcon ~
> >
> > This might not be a 'world' summit with as many international delegations as we
> > had in Denmark last year. Instead, this is a call to FII groups to organise
> > summits on their continents around the same time, to feed into a more ambitious
> > WSFII scheduled for summer 2006 in India.
> >
> >
> >                         ~ How to get involved ~
> >
> > If you are involved in research and activity in one of the knowledge domains
> > we've already listed as FIIs, or you work on one we've missed out, please get
> > in touch and help by proposing someone, or some group to come and represent
> > that FII.
> >
> > The first confirmed WSFII venue is London - which will be a Western European
> > hub for this year's WSFII prepcon If you would like to set up a WSFII prepcon
> > in your locality, please get in touch via the mailing list:
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss and we can set you up a
> > subdomain.
> >
> > We are developing a programme on our wiki and taking registrations for
> > participation in the london WSFII on the website: http://wsfii.org, so we look
> > forward to hearing from you and your FII group there.
> >
> > All power to Free Infrastructures!
> >
> > the WSFII provisional organisers.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > wsfii-discuss mailing list
> > wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss
> 
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