[wsfii-discuss] worries and list membership

Tue Mar 22 12:55:37 UTC 2005

Hi All,

excellent! It makes much more sense now. I'll re-draft based on your comments
and Julian and I can send it out today. I think Julian will hit some lists and
I'll pinpoint individuals listed on the wiki pages.

Arun, interesting ideas about disability/wifi! But check out these wikipedia
pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_model_of_disability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability

of course wifi is useful for all kinds of people - but having worked with
disabled peoples international, I found that civil-rights campaigning disabled
people's groups are always quite suspicious of technological solutions or
'fixes' (aka.  bionic leg syndrome).

Nice one for adding Vickram Crishna to the cc list - I'll cc him the
announcement too.

I'll try push it out to individuals this afternoon. 

Cheers,

Saul.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 01:32:51PM +0530, Arun Mehta wrote:
> 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
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > wsfii-discuss mailing list
> > wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss
> >
> 
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> 

-- 
-- http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/~saul/