Fwd: [Open Manufacturing] call for input: P2P Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action, Open Design and Distributed Manufacturing

[Nathan Cravens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michel Bauwens <michel...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 3:12 AM
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] call for input: P2P Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action, Open Design and Distributed Manufacturing
To: Peer-To-Peer Research List <p2pre...@listcultures.org>
Cc: Open Manufacturing <openmanu...@googlegroups.com>


Dear friends,

great news, Phoebe Moore has obtained funding for 2 workshops to be held at Salford/Manchester on November 3, bringing together people working on platforms for collaboration (1) and for open manufacturing (2)

who should come? who'd like to come?

Thanks for inputting names (with some qualifications).

Our method is to first work on the best possible program, then see what is possible with the funding, and to experiment with videoconferencing for people who cannot participate because of their remote location,

OM list people, thanks for copying the p2p list, or my own email, if you offer suggestions; otherwise, I guess Nathan can transmit the ideas

Michel

Overview

The intention is to invite a series of speakers who are passionate about using/holding/developing projects in public spaces that actively work toward the sustainable future of our post industrial world. The series will include both practitioners and academics who are committed to Media Ecology, a contemporary term that refers to the relationships and interactions between people online and media environments, and their relationships to the political and social contexts where poverty and climate change are our biggest concerns. These spaces include fab labs, crowdsourced democracy systems, mutualist monetary systems, Open Manufacturing and other concrete ideas for community building through the use of technology.  The radical ideas of the Media Ecologies community have already begun to impact ideas for sustainable development and new practical platforms for production.

 

Suggested speakers will include for example Matthew Fuller of Goldsmiths University (author of Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture, MIT 2005), and Michel Bauwens of Dhurakij_Pundit_University (Founder of the P2P Foundation), who are very influential scholars in the research area of Media Ecology. These two researchers will discuss the emergence and proliferation of a new form of production and value creation: peer production, where communities of volunteers as well as waged producers work to create (free) software and/or (open) content, which is accessible to everyone. Within peer production, producers create products within a ‘commons’ or shared space, which can be used and modified by others who then return the product, thus improved, to the common pool. Producers can be volunteers or paid programmers or authors, often both operating as a cooperative ecology between communities as well as the companies that create market-based spin-offs from that same commons. Linux is a good example of peer to peer production, a software operating system that led to an economy of USD36 billion.

Discussion Profile

1) Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action

 

This panel will look at various projects and proposals for more integrated [and adaptive] collaborative platforms for social action. It will look at the following issues: 1) what is missing in the current generation of technology; 2) specific issues related to commercial ownership of collaboration and social networking platforms: to what degree should they be replaced by independent platforms and under what conditions would such alternatives be viable; 3) what is the direction that alternative platforms are moving to, are there compatibilities which could lead to synergies?

( How might these adaptive platforms be used to build collaborative networks to meet specific needs without knowing needs in advance? How might we better match people, skills, resources, and other necessities?)

 

Sam Rose, Flows project

Sophia Bustamante

Molly ? Yes. 

Suresh Fernando / Matt Cooperrider, OpenKollab

Tav, Espian platform

 

 

2) Media Ecologies for Open Design Communities and Distributed Manufacturing

 

Free software-based peer production has developed integrated and sophisticated platforms facilitated by the fact that software can be executed in the same digital environment in which it is designed. But such is (at least presently) not the case for open hardware and any object that need to be made physically. In this case, much more integrated feedback loops  are  needed which require more sophisticated collaboration platforms that may included designs, videos, the management of flows, recursive loops from physical experimentation; comparisons between experiments in various locales, etc .. What is the state of the art of the current collaborative platforms? What is needed? Are there any possibilities for synergies between various platform projects currently being undertaken? 

Smari Mccarthy,Tangible Bit

Sam Rose, Flows

Catarina Mota, Open Materials

Neil Gershenfeld, Fab labs

Charles Collis

Marcin Jakubowski - He can tell us what doesn't work.

Paul Fernhout 


NOTES

( After talk 1 we will have a good idea of the platforms to use, then then materials and fabrication aspect is introduced in talk 2, so now: what standard(s) can we agree on so we may have all software and hardware universally accessible from a single interface? Note: I think Sam's flows may be the ticket here. If so, this can be where Sam makes his case to invite developers on-board in partnership with the OpenKollab community--assuming he says yes. That may be a post-workshop or post-conference widget if we do not have time to discuss that with much depth here)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nathan Cravens <knu...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 3:24 AM
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] call for input: P2P Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action, Open Design and Distributed Manufacturing
To: openmanu...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Peer-To-Peer Research List <p2pre...@listcultures.org>


Thanks Michel,

Here's a link to observe the emergence.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATsf-IaJ1pQxZGcyanpkZnRfMjc1aGN2YzdnZ2Q&hl=en

I have the smallest workload; send your suggestions to me at knu...@gmail.com
Look forward coordinating these events with you.

Nathan