about the publication: In March 2009 the Institute of Network Cultures brought 12 networks to Amsterdam for a week of getting things done. Aim of Winter Camp was to connect the virtual with the real in order to find out how distributed social networks can collaborate more effectively. The more people start working together online, the more urgent it becomes to develop sustainable network models. Do we just go online to gather ‘friends’ or do we get organized and utilize these tools to provoke real change in how we work together? How do networks deal with difference, decision making and economic issues? Together with 28 online interviews, this report provides a comprehensive overview of the general issues that the participating networks dealt with during Winter Camp.

colophon: Editor: Geert Lovink. Editorial Assistance: Margreet Riphagen. Copy editing: Marije van Eck. Design: Michael Schekyr www.schenkyr.com. Printing: Raamwerken Printing & Design B.V. Illustrations: Het Harde Potlood. Photos: Anne Helmond and others. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. ISBN: 978-90-78146-08-7.

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The whole project is now documented together with the videos and the photostream. Download here the pdf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is the role of networks in this tangle of creeks and oil pipes? Both social and technological networks can be used to inhabit institutions. The long-term aim of the project is to map and track environmental and human rights issues in the Niger Delta. And also to mobilize the people in the region to form communities and networks that can help with the mapping and tracking and use that data as a platform for campaigns.

Microvolunteerism has brought various networks together and in the constitutions they have mobilized other institutions. The relation between networks and institutions serves as an instrument to achieve their goals. It is important to get a sense of the nature of the role of institutions. In Nigeria for example there is a democratic framework. They want to inhabit the (existing) institutions and use networks to develop a platform that will allow people to recognize themselves in the institutions.

Microvolunteerism acknowledges that there are a lot of different people with a lot of different talents. During their sessions they had several visitors from different disciplines: hardware hackers, firmware / software developers, web developers, new media people, advocates, documentary makers and artists. The power of Microvolunteerism lies in being able to bring these people together and have these people make their own specific contribution.

There are different components to approaching the Nigerian delta project and its problems. There is a need for understanding the hardware, how can we protect and secure the data, how can we use it to lobby / to make change and to put pressure on the oil companies and governments. Finally, how can we create artistic expression to move other people to also care about this issue and help us?

Winter Camp has made a difference by bringing the network together, or rather it has brought the several networks together. Melanie Rieback expresses this by saying, “lovely we are now a family!”

However, the problem with families is discipline. How to use a vehicle that relies on volunteers, coordinating microtasks and how to use a network to run a campaign? It is difficult and involves an architecture that coordinates the network. There needs to be preparations in advance and a concrete vision of what the network has to do and this has to be instituted into the architecture of coordination.

So far, the network has been building two things:

1. a social network
2. a tech infrastructure to support this social network.

During their meetings they also had an expert on crowdsourcing volunteerwork join them. They raised questions of how can we build a tech infrastructure to support loose contributions that the organizers of the network never comprehended could have existed? There will be loose collaborations on projects. The coordinator is often the bottleneck, he or she does so much that there is an almost inevitable overload and nothing actually gets done. How do we crowdsource so these bottlenecks don’t occur?

UPGRADE! by Niels Kerssens
GOTO10 by Annette Wolfsberger
MYCREATIVITY by Niels Kerssens
GENDERCHANGERS by Rosa Menkman
MICROVOLUNTEERISM by Anne Helmond
FLOSS MANUALS by Rosa Menkman

FREEDIMENSIONAL NETWORK performance by Anne Helmond and presentation by Niels Kerssens
EDUFACTORY by Anne Helmond
DYNE.ORG by Rosa Menkman
CREATIVE LABOUR by Annette Wolfsberger
BRICOLABS by Annette Wolfsberger
BLENDER by Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff
PLENARY CLOSING DEBATE by Rosa Menkman

As I described in an earlier post, FLOSS Manuals focuses on the documentation of Free / Libre / Open Source Software. In the final plenary session, Adam gave us a short history of his collective and then went deeper into the outcomes of their week of labour, which they presented via a diagram.
FLOSS Manuals outcomes’ of the Winter Camp are both internally, located within the organizational structure of the network and externally, located within the new FLOSS Friday – sessions. How these new organizational structures will turn out and when their new project will actually start, we will soon read on their website. So it might be a good thing to keep an eye open at the upcoming projects page.

Photography: Anne Helmond

Click here to view the embedded video.

On Thursday evening, the Hard Pencil collective gave a cardboard hacking workshop at Winter Camp. The workshop did not require any specific skills but everyone could hack at their own level.

All the participants had to form duos and make an avatar. No, not your own well-known online representation but an avatar made out of cardboard and other materials. Hard Pencil had collected an abundant amount of various materials lying in a huge pile on the table. The major challenge was that you had to make the avatar of your partner within 15 minutes. This tight deadline was actually pretty nice because everyone just started grabbing materials and working with it, without thinking too much about the aesthetics.  It also embodies the idea of “to hack” as a clever or quick fix.

After our avatars were finished we sat into a round and dimmed the light. In a short meditative setting with our eyes closed we were asked to imagine our perfect working space. After a few minutes I felt so relaxed that I actually imagined my perfect “working” space as a big bed with fresh white sheets and a nice breeze.

We were asked to find another partner, talk about our perfect working spaces and then build one space would incorporate these ideas. Fortunately my partner James Wallbank had similar ideas and we envisioned a place that was neither inside nor outside. We decided to build a structure out of straws and use semi-transparent plastic to execute our ideas.

In the last part of the workshop all the ideal workspaces were put together to form a small community and all the groups were asked to describe their spaces.

The workshop was a big success and a lot of fun. Thanks Hard Potlood and all the participants!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Edu-factory reflects on the dynamics of Winter Camp as a group and on what happens when networks meet face-to-face. What is the status of the term network itself, or is it a disposable term? Aren’t there better ways to describe some of the groups present here at Winter Camp? Is “network” the most relevant term? It also has to do with the network dynamics which can fall away when meeting face-to-face.

Edu-factory came across problems in their own internal process but came up with a series of proposals and steps to translate their activities out into the wider network. There are some dangers we perceive when acting like groups. Groups in the form of networks are often seen in two forms: the network as community or network as institution. Edu-factory is interested in heading for the network as an institution, or rather, a new institutional form.

They have made an inventory of specific events that can help them achieve this goal. They are doing their planning around four events in Brazil, India, Taipei and Minneapolis.

Networks often have various planes of activity: different email lists, websites, blogs, etc. How can these relate to each other, how do they communicate with each other and what is the hierarchy. There are verticalities operating within the Edu-factory network and the main question is how to let these parts develop on their own grounds? The Edu-factory web journal is an important method to build a trans-national institution and to organize information in different parts of the globe.

More information, goals and backgrounds can be found in the Edu-factory Manifesto.

But a lack of organizational structure doesn’t per definition mean that a network lacks an added value. Because what especially is the added value of an organized network? What’s important for the MyCreativity network is that information is exchanged amongst its partakers as Bas explains. And from my own experience of sitting-in during some of their sessions this certainly happened, but if this is enough for a sustainable network to grow out of it, well, I have my doubts. Regardless of my doubts, a concrete group end product was realized, the intangible negotiation website. Described by themselves as, ‘a collaborative editing site for ethical guidelines and working contracts for collaborations of freelancers with institutions and funders’.

But only zooming in on the creative industries through a present day perspective didn’t provide the overview the MyCreativity network needed to map the issues at hand. They decided to project themselves into the future, the year 2020 to be exactly, and look to the present through a future day perspective. Well, see it yourself.

Before presenting the points made, it’s Kyd’s first remark that deserves to be highlighted. It brings out an important strength as well as weakness of the Upgrade! Network, certain qualities realized by the group during Winter Camp activity. Namely, that it’s the collaboration within the local nodes that forms the strongest part of the network, harboring most of the activity, while communication about local activities on the International level of the network often is lacking, signaling a crisis in both local and international network identity. But now this network ‘error’ is detected, time has come to strengthen the local to the international, and vice versa. It’s time for interaction and the Wiki summary indicates it’s happening!  And as the Wiki pretty much speaks for itself, I have been so free to re-map these outcomes, listing the concrete practices of Upgrade! during Winter Camp successively as; considerations, realizations, initiations, collaborations and decisions.

Considerations:

• Consider giving the option for people (organizers/participants) to make their own profiles etc. to dialog online (visibility)
• Considered voting systems, did not like them (central structure and decision making)
• Wanted to be more open, not to feel just like a network of organizers. (opening up)

Realizations:

• Important to share info about our collaborative activities with each other in order to avoid frustrations that the network is not working. Helps with motivation. (invisible networks)
• Realized we must better use our own local/personal network resources to make our international projects visible (visibility). Realized we have many resources of connections to universities (education)
• (Not yet realized) Planned to but did not manage to rewrite our mandate/list of core values (central structure and decision making)

Initiations:

• Started an open mailing list http://open.theupgrade.net (opening up)
• Made some progress on web presence (each node has an aggregated WordPress blog) (visibility)
• Will create a resource list of artists residency and exchange possibilities that exist already in the network (exchange of artists/cultural actors)
• Exchanging and disseminating art works through collaborative curatorial projects (exchange of artists/cultural actors)

Collaborations:

• Encountered FreeDimensional, discussed many possible collaborations, especially in Sao Paulo
• Met Genderchangers, possibility for upcoming collaboration in Istanbul
• Attended the FLOSS manual writing workshop (useful for our bi-annual publications?? or more opensource oriented contents)
• Connected with EduFactory + Creative Labour
• South network: as a problematical etiquette, breaking the cliche; making bridges between isolated communities, upgrade concrete projects to link Latin America/Africa by actions, events, network… project on mapping digital art productions and diffusion ‘tools’, networks and cultural actions in under-represented regions, find more other synergies through the network.

Decisions:

• Decided to focus on educational projects using this opportunity (education)
• Decided to form small committees when projects arise (central structure and decision making)
• Decided to leave each city’s ‘main goal’ up to them to decide freely (central structure and decision making)

Although a debate regarding the realization of a central decision making structure is still in process, and definite conclusions still have to be drawn, progress has certainly been made. For the next Sao Paulo event in 2010 separate Upgrade! committees have already been formed, with their own responsibilities, and mandates to make decisions.