[p2p-research] call for input: P2P Media Ecologies and Collaborative Platforms for Social Action, Open Design and Distributed Manufacturing

[Michel Bauwens]

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)


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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