Organizing a remote Contact event

[Thaddeus]

Dear Event Organizers,

Can we get more promotion of the remote Meetup Events on the main
site?

There is a Meetup Group in San Francisco that I am a part of, but we
need more members! http://www.meetup.com/Contact/San-Francisco-CA/86976/

Thank you,

Thaddeus

[Douglas]

Yes.
I'm not sure how exactly, but yes. I have wanted this for a while, too.

[Jon Lebkowsky]

I see that someone's set up an Austin meetup - I'm making contact and suggesting that we have meetups between now and the event.

~ Jon

--
Jon Lebkowsky (@jonl)
Polycot Associates

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Wikipedia | Blog | EFF-Austin

[John Havens]

Very cool. 

 

If it’s helpful, our Agency has an office in Austin and they’re very social/digital savvy (we’re AOR for SXSW and they work directly with the SXSW team).  Happy to introduce whoever from Contact to those folks if that’s helpful.

 

John C. Havens

EVP, Social Media

john....@porternovelli.com

917-597-3323

@johnchavens

[Jon Lebkowsky]

John,

Thanks! We're covered with SXSW - I'm on the advisory for Interactive and am meeting with a SXSW rep tomorrow, was planning to bring this up.  Lisa from your office here and I are connected and just ran into each other;  if she's got a green light to help, I'll coordinate with her. I also have social media expertise, but we need all the help we can get.

best,
Jon L.

[John Havens]

Awesome.  Please give my best to Lisa—and btw, didn’t mean to say you didn’t have SM expertise—just wasn’t sure if you might need a space or whatever and I can connect you with our office MD, etc.  But it sounds like you’ve got your bases covered, so please let me know if I can be of any help with whatever else.

 

Thanks and best,
JCH

[Douglas]

And do take advantage of this kind offer if there's anything you want. PorterNovelli has significant resources, and John is "a friend of ours."

[Vince]

This is probably an appropriate place to let everyone know that a group of us are planning a satellite event in Sydney, Australia. Most likely its going to have to be a bit later than the NYC event. If anyone is interested you can join our mailing list here sydney-con...@googlegroups.com
More details to come soon!

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Mark Pesce wanted to be involved with that too, because he's unable to make the trip all the way here to NYC. 

On Jun 29, 2011, at 4:54 AM, Vince wrote:

This is probably an appropriate place to let everyone know that a group of us are planning a satellite event in Sydney, Australia. Most likely its going to have to be a bit later than the NYC event. If anyone is interested you can join our mailing list here sydney-con...@googlegroups.com
More details to come soon!

---

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Come to Contact! http://contactcon.com

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Thanks, John!  I plan to be in NYC for the event, but I'm connecting with the person so was setting up the Austin meetup group and will make sure we connect with your office here, too. Many thanks.

[Noah Nelson]

Right now I'm the only person listed on the Los Angeles Meetup.

http://www.meetup.com/Contact/Los-Angeles-CA/87068/

I know it's early, but that doesn't feel right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah, I'm just getting started on promoting those. There's a few months until this happens, and Meetup generally coalesces much closer to the event than a pay conference. 

I am sure there will be LA people, especially once we let them know. 

[Sibylle Schwarz]

Hi,

I'd like to add our initiative to the list of remote groups:

Retake the Net (retakethe.net) is a group in Wellington, New Zealand, dedicated to concrete projects to keep the internet free and open, and inspired directly by the Contact Conference. We've already had a few conversations with Venessa.

A number of projects are currently underway. Our next group meetup is on August 3, and we'll have an all-day barcamp in late October (a bit after the NY event:) http://www.meetup.com/Contact/Wellington/

Any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Sibylle

sib...@retakethe.net

Twitter: @retakethenet

http://retakethe.net/

[Douglas Rushkoff]

This is exciting! I want to support remote groups through our MeetupEverywhere initiative. Jon Lebkowsy has offered to help strategize, organize, and advocate on these groups' behalf.

We are making some video ahead of time with short talks by me and Pesce. And then recording the opening provocations at Contact, hopefully for live streaming. We are also creating a bbs for use at the conference and at meetups, for groups to record initiatives and followup on ideas.

We have to regain access to some of our resources (long story) but should be up and running shortly.

[Gabriela Agustini]

Hey all,

In Brasil we are planning to streaming the Contact in Casa da Cultura Digital, a creative cluster focused on free culture in Sao Paulo. One of our current projects is buying a bus to adapt it as an creative environment and run the country in caravans for public data transparency (look at: http://catarse.me/pt/projects/167-onibus-hacker).

We also are organizing a digital culture festival in december, gathering free culture, open data, digital art initiatives from all over the country.

Hope we can contribute to this debate.

Feel free to get in touch :-)

Gabriela Agustini
@gabiagustini
Casa da Cultura Digital
http://www.casadaculturadigital.com.br/

--
Gabriela Agustini
@gabiagustini
Casa da Cultura Digital

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Sounds great, maybe we should all meet in Brasil instead of NYC!  *8^)

~ Jon L.

[Technoshaman]

hi Gabriela,

If you know Jose Murilo from the Ministry of Culture, give him my
greetings and tell him, i'd love to have him joining us at Contact in
NYC or via Sao Paulo

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Just following up on this thread - Doug and Venessa asked me to help coordinate the Meetups, and I'm working on an overview document. I'd like to hear your various thoughts about how you think the Meetups should work. From my perspective, I was thinking they'd be similar to what's happening in NYC - people would gather, possibly break into groups, and have discussions based on the project areas.  Thinking about various other aspects. For example, I assume we need someone responsible for each Meetup, and a process for getting reports from each Meetup group, probably on the wiki. Are those of you doing remote Meetups also thinking about creating Google Groups or other types of email lists locally? Will you start having regular Meetups sooner than the October date to get to know each other and start percolating discussions? What kind of support do you need?

best,

Jon L.

[Sibylle Schwarz]

Here's what we're doing with Retake the Net:

We are doing 3 smaller meetups, six weeks apart from each other, after on Wednesday evenings after work in a bar. The first one took place in June, the next one in early August, and then there's another one in September.

The purpose of these meetups is to share more details about our initiative, recruit people to get involved with projects, and share progress and ideas. They are maybe an hour of "official" agenda, but people tend to hang around for more beer and conversation afterwards. Right now, we have four active projects underway, reaching from anti-censorship to open culture to bringing internet access to communities that don't have it, to a "policy auction" website. This is awesome, but we need more help, so the next meetup will be all about generating more buzz and getting more of our passive supporters actively involved.

The main event, six weeks after the final evening meetup, will be an all-day barcamp on the 29th of October. We wanted to keep the date as close to the Contact Summit in NY, but we have to do this on a weekend to get the attendance (and we all have day jobs, too), and wait for after the Rugby World Cup, which is likely to cause a bunch of disruption in our country until it ends on Oct 23 (the things you have to consider! :-) We're still working out the details for that barcamp, but it's likely that it will be similar to what you posted on the Contact website: talks/presentation, some organised by us on specific topics we want to see covered, but mostly relying on the attendees in traditional barcamp style. We also envision some sort of workshops or deeper sessions related to the projects. We just started planning for that event so a lot will emerge over the coming weeks. The main thing about Retake the Net that it's about concrete action rather than just talk, and that principle will be reflected in the event.

As far as tools go, we use the Meetup Everywhere page for RSVPs only. We have a Wordpress-powered simple website (http://retakethe.net), a Twitter account (@retakethenet), and the projects have their own mailing lists going, as do the organisers. We have also been pitching our initiative via word-of-mouth in our various circles through work, industry groups, friends, etc. It helps that New Zealand is a small place with strong networks, so we've been able to get quite a bit of visibility quickly. The key is now to keep the momentum going. 

Hope this is helpful. It's exciting to see so much good stuff bubbling everywhere!

Best regards from NZ

SIbylle

[Sibylle Schwarz]

P.S. Our writeup about the first meeting: http://retakethe.net/2011/06/26/our-first-meetup/

[Venessa Miemis]

sibylle,

thanks so much for the info. this is a good thread to keep going for anyone organizing a remote Contact event so people can ask each other questions. we're also working on a doc that we'll upload to the wiki with some basics for organizing. 

thanks!

- v

[Douglas Rushkoff]

This is cool.
Inspiring, really.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And running a bit of interference for Jon (or at least myself) let me say that what's going on in NZ is how I imagined this all to be. Contact, the summit in NYC, is just one gathering of people dedicated to all this. But it's not like we have money or technology or anything to share. We are operating at a great loss out of pocket and all that, and can't directly support more than the people who are coming to our event. 

I am hoping what we are doing is inspirational to others, and that our BBS (ready soon) will be a repository and meeting place for lots of people and ideas, including the NY ones and the MeetUpEverywhere ones. 

If people want to find sponsors and patrons for international contests and more, I welcome it - but this isn't a "centralized" thing, so whoever does it would be in charge of it. 

[Fabio Barone]

Oi Gabriela,

o meu nome è Fabio.

Trabalho pra a organização STRO (www.socialtrade.org).

Vou estar em Porto Alegre do 17 de agosto atè novembrou.

Eu queria ir pra contactcon, tenho invitação, mas não sei

se for posible, por questões de recursos, e outras.

Se não ir pra NYC, gostaria de participar no evento em São Paolo.

De toda forma sò queria apresentarme, estaria interesado a ficar em contato com você,

jà nos 'encontramos' digitalmente no culturadigital.br :)

Você sabe de alguns contactos de cultura livre em Porto Alegre?

Muito obrigado!

Abraço

fabio

2011/7/12 Gabriela Agustini <gabiag...@gmail.com>

[Sibylle Schwarz]

Thanks everyone for the kind feedback and support!

Retake the Net just had our second public meetup; here's the blog post if anyone's interested:

http://retakethe.net/2011/08/06/taking-shape-our-second-retake-the-net-meetup/

We're also seeing some good interest from other influencers  - journalists, city council, people involved in politics and government on central and local level, industry-related organisations such as Internet New Zealand, etc, who are all spreading the word and raising awareness of the project.

What we're finding too is that many people we've talked to are keen to get involved *somehow*, but aren't necessarily able to commit a lot of time. Therefore, we're trying to give people a number of very concrete ways to support us and tell them very specifically how they can help. This lowers the barrier, gets people excited and committed to the cause so they tell their friends, and allows them to contribute to a degree that they are comfortable with and able to. A brilliant example of the network effect, really, where lots of small contributions can change the world. :-)

Exciting times!

Sibylle

[Sibylle Schwarz]

Our barcamp finally took place last weekend. We had about 70 attendes, and the day was a great success with overwhelmingly positive feedback. More: http://retakethe.net/2011/11/05/making-our-ideas-better-impressions-from-the-retake-the-net-barcamp/

Cheers,
Sibylle

[Douglas Rushkoff]

yay!

[Samuel Rose]

These look great, too: http://retakethe.net/projects/

--
--
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners, LLC
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
email: samue...@gmail.com
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://futureforwardinstitute.com
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Yeah, it'll be great to see more information appearing under those categories. 

There were quite a few interesting posts at http://forum.contactcon.com/ following the NYC event, but no real followup conversations in that context. I'm wondering how many have signed up and take time to read what's there? The challenge, as always, is to sustain the energy of the event.

~ Jon

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Samuel Rose <samue...@gmail.com> wrote:

These look great, too: http://retakethe.net/projects/

--
--
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners, LLC
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
email: samue...@gmail.com
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://futureforwardinstitute.com
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan

--
Jon Lebkowsky (@jonl)

Polycot Associates: Advanced Internet Solutions Twitter | Facebook

Weblogsky.com: Smart Thinking About Culture, Media, and the Internet 

Jon at Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Wikipedia | EFF-Austin | Society for Participatory Medicine

[Hellekin O. Wolf]

On 11/07/2011 02:09 PM, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:
> Yeah, it'll be great to see more information appearing under those
> categories.
>
> There were quite a few interesting posts at
> http://forum.contactcon.com/ following
> the NYC event, but no real followup conversations in that context. I'm
> wondering how many have signed up and take time to read what's there? The
> challenge, as always, is to sustain the energy of the event.
>
> ~ Jon
>
>

*** You know how it is, Jon, too much information, too little time.
There are many parallel projects working in similar directions, and it's
always very hard to
end up cooperating with each other. I'll try to put eyeballs there
in-between
Brainstorms, the SocialMediaClassroom, Lorea, Dyne, SmallestFederatedWiki
and FoeBud/Secushare, etc. ;o)

==
hk

[Jon Lebkowsky]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Hellekin O. Wolf <hell...@gmail.com> wrote:

*** You know how it is, Jon, too much information, too little time.

There are many parallel projects working in similar directions, and it's
always very hard to
end up cooperating with each other.  I'll try to put eyeballs there
in-between
Brainstorms, the SocialMediaClassroom, Lorea, Dyne, SmallestFederatedWiki
and FoeBud/Secushare, etc. ;o)

Understood - we all have a lot of demands. Early on we were thinking to evolve a network of meetup groups with the forums (or something similar, maybe this list) as a nexus of activity, but when OWS emerged it felt like a broader, potentially more engaging context for new thinking, and consistent with the Contact vision, it depends on social media to sustain the many conversations for which it's an umbrella. So Contact is looking more like a Temporary Autonomous Zone with emphasis on the 'temporary.' Contact inputs and outputs have had real significance in providing a context for exploration, but the movement-building can happen elsewhere.

We were prepared to catalyze whatever might emerge, and if it's emerging elsewhere, we can support that.

There are many challenges in movement-building, especially if a fundamental of the movement is to remain headless, as seems to be the case with "Occupy." If we were going to bake and ongoing conversation here relevant to the movement that seems to be growing, it could be about the environment and principles required to build and sustain that movement with an effective balance of power, ethical principles, methods for preventing various kinds of abuse... generally, rules for a participatory movement that isn't coopted or controlled by any set of "powers that be."  

I was in a political conversation with a couple of activists last week where the key criticism of 'Occupy' was about its lack of persistent and well-defined leadership. I talked about the concept of emergent leadership that I'd been considering earlier in this decade, but experienced advocates can't quite go there - they're not about building participatory structures, they're more about accomplishing very specific goals. One challenge we could discuss: how can a global movement emerge and remain headless, and at the same time be effective in producing some set of real results. OWS challenges a well-established, powerful financial establishment that is not committed to sustainability (of financial systems, of society, of the species, of the planet). One articulation of the occupation mind-set is the Kick It Over Manifesto: http://kickitover.org/download/23/kick-it-over-manifesto  Interesting question how you make something like that actionable while preserving peace, without actually "kicking over" a social and political order that can potentially work (i.e. I tend to think that what we call 'democracy,' the representative form of government and its trappings, as well as some form of capitalism, has worked well, but in a context with regulation, checks and balances that seem to be missing).

Lessig has a good piece on our need to overcome polarization and for right, left, and center to work together to rebuild a sane political and economic context: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/something-more-than-polar_b_1030476.html

From my perspective, this is the sort of thing that Contact adherents could be working on...

~ Jon

[Jon Lebkowsky]

Typo: should be "bake an ongoing conversation..."