This topic is to register expressions of interest from collectives to participate in the OFFDEM.
Feel free to invite people who think would be willing not only to host an event there, but also help around.
The sooner we know about the volume of participation, the better we can organize space and figure out adequate funding.
Hi!
I would like to express interest in organising a Tor relay operators meetup at OFFDEM.
There are BoF rooms at FOSDEM too, but they can be rather small and only on-event registration, making it harder to bring everyone together.
Kind regards,
brabo.
Welcome!
How many people do you expect @brabo?
Hey, I would like to express interest in participating. No specific community represented in this case, just me. I might however be interested in getting some Fediverse people involved and participating. How open are we here to inviting new people here?
I’m waiting for Daniele to come aboard before we can open to a larger team. I guess Fediverse people would organize through https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks since this is the platform the SocialCG chose. It’s currently in pre-launch phase but closing in.
This is to setup the team to make the event happen, and keep in touch with interested parties.
Hey!
Thanks!
Last year apparently there were between 50-100 people in the meetup, estimated from memory.
There was an announcement about it from a main track talk so there was momentum from that for sure.
Considering that if we can know a location/date/time beforehand, that would allow people to plan better for it, so I would say similar?
Greets!
I had Daniele on the phone yesterday, he will be checking this soon, and we can go on with the process. @rysiek if you want to invite people you can.
We’re going to meet the people at Les Casernes next week to see what kind of space we can get and the price tag it entails. From there we can envision how to deal with the costs, and what activities we can do there. What’s coming from current discussions is that we would have no program (no track) and a couple of rooms for groups to convene without bothering or being bothered by others, plus beer and music…
@brabo I met Gus and Alex at FNF, also @vasilis. We confirmed interest and are looking for some official support from the Tor project. Gus mentioned someone, maybe Sarah (Stevenson) whom I should reach out to regarding possible funding to rent the L building.
@anon99384609 please read the topic I invited you to, and the one linked from it. We don’t do speakers. We don’t do CFP. Just read and understand where you’re stepping, please.
Ah yes, indeed it’s not clear. The idea is to create a meeting point, not to fill the place with more schedules. The only thing we accept is meeting points for groups, e.g., a dedicated room for the Tor Relay Operators Meeting or the SocialHub. But there are not many rooms, and we do not intend to make FOSDEM 2. The proposition is different and not to be packed with more FOSDEM.
Unexpected, in the sense of: nothing like FOSDEM, but rather stuff involving non-technicians. This is not an extension to FOSDEM, this is OFFDEM, where hackers meet non-hackers, share common time. I think this should become clear. There is no schedule and no track.
Hi @how 
I think it’s important to break the CFP / speakers-star-system thing, but that person (that deactivated their account now apparently) seemed to genuinely want to participate to the OFFDEM spirit and was maybe frustrated with a somewhat blunt answer!
For example I think having people talking about “self-organized sessions” (which is a big word for writing a topic and an hour on a whiteboard), as that person proposed, is not fundamentally at odds with the OFFDEM spirit (since it can be interesting to have some topic to start a discussion, even if it’s not connected to a room and formally structured). What do you think?
Hey @how !
Nice to hear! Considering we have the Decentralized Internet and Privacy devroom on sunday @FOSDEM, we’d like to ask if it is doable to have the Tor Relay Operators Meeting on saturday?
Greetings!
brabo.
We’re trying hard not to fall into the same processes over and over again. It’s certainly important to have a diversity of participants, and we can only have such diversity if we orient the topics in a way that does not reproduce FOSDEM (and other tech conventions) settings.
In the coming weeks we’re going to work on formulating topics that will not necessarily come from a technical perspective, but rather from an intersectional perspective – hopefully.
Yes I agree both things are compatible, but its important to keep the space welcoming. One thing we have started to realise, by asking the few people around we know from different disciplines is that they are intimidated by the developers conferences and would not see any appeal to come because they do not see how they would be concerned.
We should also make sure in the format that we are open to question technological practice along with people from other disciplines. From different converstaions we have had it appears that to bring along people from different background we should announce ahead of time that we will dedicate moments to talk about things that actually concern their practice.
Maybe a couple sessions approaching problematic of the commons, or ways of sharing information between activists (not only security concerns but also open practices), would be welcome.
Hi, I intend to participate and possibly host a small gathering/discussions around p2p/collaboration topics.
I would also be interested in having discussions about p2p topics; Including implications in modeling social systems using p2p principles.
Hello!
We’d be interested to discuss LibreHosters. Between hosters and with users. I have no idea about the appropriate format.
Between hosters, would be nice to have a 2h slot. and with users also I guess. But then content still would need to be defined.
Should I open a dedicated thread?
Please do. Also I’d like to have a Librehosters/InfraRED meeting, but I didn’t tell InfraREDyet
Couldn’t make it to PAF but I will be there for OFFDEM.
I’m expressing interest for these topics and if there are enough people interested can prepare texts and other resources to conduct a debate/talk/workshop:
A) the radical critique of technology as seen through the motivations of 19th century luddites all the way to the destructive actions of the CLODO in the 70s. This goes through a mix of Marx, anti-capitalism and practical resistance.
B) helping to push further the raising awareness from inside the hacker/system administrators communities of the ecological impact of tech, from smartphones to datacenters
C) poking at the underlying models supported by the likes of repository-based social-media-influenced systems like Docker, Ǵ̷̙i̵̧͐ṱ̶̚r̵̬̈́u̴̯̐b̶̬̅ (and, yes, also Gitlab), NPM, Kubernetes, etc. This hopes for a more abstract approach, looking to feed on information and techn/ology/ique philosophy; while still aiming at a very political conslusion :))))))
Will also make a separate thread, I should have a few visuals to propose shortly to go along proposition C.
Hi @Fergus, welcome!
I think topic A could be addressed as posters or some conversational format. If you already have materials for print we can prepare A3 or A4 posters. This is only a suggestion: you do as you wish
Topic B is very welcome. I would support it in priority.
Topic C sounds interesting, but it focuses on the other side. OTOH, it would probably fit with a more general conversation among independent ISPs that I’m trying to set up between Librehosters and InfraRED.