Invitation to workshop on distributed FLOSS for communities
Samer
Hi,
I'm contacting you on behalf of the P2Pvalue.eu project, and would like to invite Unhosted to the following workshop we are organising next month in London (scholarships available if you cannot afford it).
FLOSS4P2P: Call for Participation
A 2-day London workshop in March, gathering FLOSS projects that are building software for peer production and organization, with a focus on distributed platforms. Scholarships to attend are offered to grassroots communities.
** Context **
We know that the Internet was originally decentralized, with protocols and services built by hackers. However, with the arrival of the celebrated Web 2.0, centralization and corporations proprietary platforms seem to have taken over. Moreover, this centralized structure is used by governments to increase surveillance (following Snowden’s revelations), to blackout internet whenever it is needed (e.g. Egypt, Syria, or San Francisco’s BART) or to choke annoying activist organizations (such as Wikileaks).
On the other hand, in the last few years we have seen the emergence of Internet-enabled collaborative communities building shared libre/open resources. Commons-based Peer to Peer Production (CBPP) is rapidly growing: not just for software and encyclopedias, but also for information (OpenStreetMap, Wikihow), hardware (FabLabs, Open Source Ecology), accommodation (Couchsurfing) and currency (Bitcoin, Altcoins).
In the last few years, it has become clear to many that it is not enough to develop free/libre/open source (FLOSS) alternatives, but we also need to re-decentralize the Internet. Many initiatives are being undertaken under this premise (e.g. Ethereum, Diaspora, OwnCloud, MediaGoblin, Sandstorm). These new software tools may also be useful to boost CBPP communities further. In this workshop, we will gather those working around the decentralized FLOSS that could help CBPP/P2P communities. Hackers, academics, activists and interested stakeholders are welcome.
**When**
March 16-17th 2015
**Where**
Fab Lab London
**Call for Proposals**
We welcome proposals for:
Lightning talks (2m-5m): summarise your idea & receive feedback
Show & Tell presentations (20m): explain your project/tech/research
Tutorials on software tools (1h)
Please email: lu....@surrey.ac.uk with your idea/proposals.
The workshop will have both presentations and unconference-style participatory dynamics for finding points of collaboration and extraction of conclusions.
** Topics **
Focus on FLOSS software with some of the following features:
Social: communication
e.g. social-networking, microblogging, reworked email
Social: collaboration
e.g. wikis, pads, wave, shared file hosting, multimedia repositories
Alternative to proprietary choices
Federated / Distributed / Interoperable
Open Standards
Secure / Encrypted
Encouraging Peer Production communities
Encouraging the construction/maintenance of Commons
Potential cases for discussion:
Diaspora (federated social network)
Wave (federated real-time collaboration)
Lorea (federated social network)
DarkWallet (distributed wallet & social network)
Ethereum (P2P infrastructure)
MaidSafe (P2P infrastructure)
Sandstorm.io (facilitates federated sw)
Mailpile (encripted email)
MediaGoblin (federated multimedia repository)
OwnCloud (file hosting)
… (your case)
**Scholarships**
There are a few scholarships for potential participants who wish to attend the event. The scholarship will cover participant’s travel and subsistence cost, up to €400. If you are interested in applying for the scholarship, please email: lu....@surrey.ac.uk before 28 February 2015, with a paragraph stating why you think your FLOSS is relevant, plus a short bio. Priority will be given to those with low resources, innovative FLOSS within the topics of the call, and being a grassroot community.
** More **
More info will be posted online in:
http://p2pvalue.eu/2nd-floss4p2p-workshop
Email queries to: lu....@surrey.ac.uk
Giovanni P
Michiel de Jong
I will reply to the Call For Papers and propose:
- a 20 min talk about all the explorative research we did during the last four years regarding how to build unhosted web apps (and how to get people to use them, which is always a much bigger question).
- a 1h hands-on tutorial using the remoteStorage starter-kit so participants with a bit of JavaScript knowledge can build their first unhosted web app and try it out.
I can also give a 20 min talk about my current main project, IndieHosters.net, which is not so much interesting in what it does technically (it's just managed personal server hosting), but is quite novel I think in the way it's organized, as a non-profit franchise. Each IndieHoster operates independently and has a personal conversation with his or her own customers, but we're organized into a migration network, so customers can always move to another IndieHoster seamlessly, and don't have to be affected when their IndieHoster retires, shuts down, or turns evil. It's similar to a workers' cooperative, but more decentralized. :) I think that might also be interesting for the topic of the workshop. I'll propose it to Lu Yang! :)
Cheers,
Michiel
Samer
I cannot join the effort, because I am too far away, but really wish to watch the talks and see ideas and implementations about P2P software for communities. How can I stay updated?