Geert Lovink on Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:12:16 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Winter Camp 09: How Would You Organize Your Network? |
(Dear nettimers, in two weeks we're organizing a networks-of-networks event in Amsterdam called Wintercamp. It looks a bit like Hybrid WorkSpace in 1997 or Temp MediaLab in 1999 but then it is 12 networks gathering at the same time, for five days. Around 150 participants were invited to come to Amsterdam. Like a decade ago it is a mix of artists, hackers, activists and researchers, but the topics are, of course, different -- and so are the people. It's the biggest event so far in the five years existence of the Institute of Network Cultures. Attached are two intro texts and the program. Please note, this not a conference. There are some plenary sessions, though, that are open to the public, in particular the closing session on Saturday afternoon where the results of all the networks and the event as such will be presented. There is a group of bloggers that will post their reports on the main INC website during the week, and video interviews with participants will be posted on the Net. A so-called meta-group is in charge of the plenaries and the documentation. We'll keep you updated! Ciao, Geert) See also: http://www.networkcultures.org/wintercamp Participating networks: Blender, Bricolabs, Creative Labour, Dyne.org, Edufactory, Floss Manuals, freeDimensional Network, Genderchangers, GOTO10, Microvolunteerism, MyCreativity, Upgrade! -- Winter Camp 09 Introduction If we take network technologies seriously, we have to ask ourselves: What’s next after the initial excitement? What happens after we have linked up, found old classmates, become friends and even meet up? Will networking be seen as an additional loose level of social interaction or will the ties become more serious? What do networks do to our culture in the long term? Will we constantly move from one platform to the next initiative, following the global swarm? Do we really wish to carry our social network with us, wherever we go? How do you cope with Web 2.0 hype? Are the constant requests to be linked a plague, and should we see those sites as a modern telephone book or rather as something that fosters new forms of cooperation? Will we return to our busy everyday life after the fashion is over or go for a deep commitment to the virtual? As artists, researchers and cultural workers are drawn into the network paradigm, it seems pertinent to collectively inquire into what happens when networks become driving forces. How can networks maintain their critical edge while aiming for professional status? Doesn’t everyone want to get paid for their ‘free labour’? When a network settles down, and is suddenly not so new anymore, it can be quite a challenge to maintain the level of initial activity. Should a network then transform into a so-called ‘organized network’? Organizing a network does not mean canceling spontaneity and making way for rules and hierarchy: it can provide a place for sustainable knowledge sharing and production. As Ned Rossiter argues in his book Organized Networks (2006), face-to face meetings are crucial ‘if the network is to maintain momentum, revitalize energy, consolidate old friendships and discover new ones, recast ideas, undertake further planning activities, and so on’. This event is therefore meant for those networks and (potential) network members that cry for support to gather in real life, conspire, discuss and make the necessary steps forward. Winter Camp does not have an (academic) educational or training component, even if there is a lot to learn. The political concept of organized networks is clear: the invention of new institutional forms immanent to the logic of networks. The Winter Camp is an exploration in how to do that, what such institutions might looks like, what they might do, how they might operate in different geopolitical contexts, how they are financed, speculate and reassess what their relation is to other institutions and each other, etc. As a meta-network, the event aims to produce an overview of network strategies that hold a combinatory potential for trans-network collaborations. This is the scalar dimension of organizing networks: how can we scale and keep-up, not become introverted and not only invent and innovate but, in the end, use the network form in the implementation of changes that we envision on a society-wide level? With the Winter Camp, the Institute of Network Cultures intends to facilitate this transformation for a dozen existing and new networks around the topic of new media, art and culture. Some have emerged within the context of the INC, such as Video Vortex and MyCreativity, others have existed beforehand (Incommunicado) or are on the verge of becoming a network (Bricolabs). The format is a mix of a conference and workshop with the emphasis on getting things done. We hope to find a balance between intense sessions of groups, plenary sessions, mid- size meetings and lots of possibilities for informal gatherings. The Winter Camp is mainly focused on theorists, artists, producers, researchers, curators, activists and other new media experts and interested people. Winter Camp 09 will be a week-long program of workspaces/workgroups and plenary presentations, in which 12 groups can work on specific current topics. The maximum capacity is 150 participants. Experiences with temporary media labs go back to the 1990s (for instance Hybrid WorkSpace/Documenta X and Temp Media Lab/Kiasma). The Wintercamp 09 format was inspired by the special card box architecture, built by Paco Gonzalez for the 10th edition of the Zemos98 festival in Sevilla, Spain, in March 2008. Here, unlike the Hybrid WorkSpace, where groups showed up one after the other during a three months period, in Sevilla 10 groups worked for 5 days in groups of 10 participants under the guidance of a 'professor' (workshop leader) on contemporary web 2.0/ new media topics, accompanied by a plenary program. The Winter Camp is framed around parallel workshops that convene once a day for (public) lectures and debates. The outcomes will vary from code and interfaces to research proposals and manifestoes. Plenary sessions will be held during this working conference as contextualization as well as a dialogue or debate about the limits and possibilities of the networks at hand. For the moment it is not completely clear what that will be like. The program will probably end with a public session where results of the workgroups will be presented, varying from wikis to maps and interventions, and from radio stations to performances. Crucial to the concept of the Winter Camp is the intention of 'antagonistic encounters'. Existing and emerging networks will be challenged and interrupted by polemic contributions from outsiders, either online or in real-life. Self-referential ghettoization is the last thing that has to happen. The preparation and programming stage of this event will develop a collaborative database that adopts negation and difference as a productive principle. In this way, we begin to contour the borders of networks and in so doing establish the materiality of collaborative potentials. There is no single model for networks to become sustainable. To get all the options on the table is a first necessary step in order to move to the next step. Networks, Get Organized! Given the constraints of participation – limited numbers – the format of the Winter Camp places an immediate organizational challenge upon networks: who participates? The issue of ‘governance’ and openness is one that each network at some stage has to address. The process of building a network of networks thus begins well before the time of the Winter Camp meeting, and will be incorporated into the discussions before, during and after the event. Along with a great curiosity about how networks do what they do, one of our key motivations in putting this event together has been the question of institutions. Whether we like it or not, institutions are part of our daily life. Just as economic globalization has massively transformed the world on a seemingly annual basis, so too have institutions as we usually understand them – those whose foundations are built from concrete and steel, bricks and mortar – been subject to considerable change in the age of electronic networks. While many primary institutions of social and political life (the state, firms, unions, universities) have struggled to adapt to changing circumstances, they have nonetheless made recognizable and frequently substantive changes. Indeed, many have reinvented themselves as ‘networked organizations’. Having said that, the prime focus of Winter Camp 09 is not on those established organizations and how networks are used to increase, and optimize, inter-institutional exchanges. While it could be said that such institutions have undergone a crisis – both in terms of legitimacy and ontology – it would be a serious mistake to suggest their hegemony has diminished. Counter-sites of power are needed to contest the assumption that once a dominant institution becomes networked it somehow operates in a more soft, benign mode. Network surveillance through data-mining and user-profiling is only becoming more sophisticated as a biopolitical technology of control. At the same time, and particularly with the advent of the neoliberal state over the past 30 or so years, space has been created for new institutional players. Witness the renewed role of religious organizations in the management and provision of social services, or the rise of NGOs and community organizations. Civil society has not so much ‘withered’, as Michael Hardt once put it, but rather proliferated due, in part, to the economic logic of outsourcing. Where, then, does all this leave the culture of networks? This, in many ways, is one of the guiding questions that has shaped the organization of this event. It seems perfectly sensible and strategic to us that the organization of networks is a process of instituting new social-technical relations that have unique and special capacities to do things in the world, to effect change and transform subjectivities. How might networks take advantage of this new institutional condition, retaining their strengths – which include the culture of free distribution and sharing – while securing (or, more likely, inventing) the possibility of real sustainability of social and economic life? Organized networks move between informality and structure, and it is this yet unexplored terrain that Winter Camp would like to investigate. There could be events that are totally ‘structure’ free but for us that would defeat a central purpose of this meeting, namely the cross-pollination of ideas and practices across the various networks, most of whom do not know each other, and who the organizers also do not know. The study of network cultures is, as the name already indicates, the core business of the Institute of Network Cultures, the initiator and organizer of Winter Camp 09. It is in this light that we would like to gather both practical and conceptual knowledge from networks themselves, document these ideas and make them accessible to an ever-growing range of groups and individuals that have started to work under the ‘network condition’. There are many more questions to ask, critiques to be made, and agendas to be tested. No doubt, this will be the stuff of the Winter Camp and beyond. For now, we just wish to register the connection between the culture of networks and the need for new institutional arrangements in which networks can play a vital role. -- Framing Thoughts by the Winter Camp Meta-Group The Winter Camp Meta-Group is responsible for the programming and production details of the event. This group of researchers will report and reflect on the Winter Camp project, and the network dynamics that unfold during the event. The Meta-Group is responsible for producing a comprehensive documentation in the months following the Winter Camp so that those who did not attend can also benefit from its outcomes. The research of the Meta-Group revolves around the two aims of Winter Camp: giving existing (online) networks the possibility to come together and work on their own issues and collectively developing sustainable network models. The group will facilitate the collective debates and further theorize the pitfalls and possibilities of the 'networked condition'. In addition to critical concepts such as organized networks (new institutions), the Meta-Group would like to address a range of practical and theoretical issues along the following lines: • Scaling up or down: To stay active and vibrant, should a network scale up? What does growth mean to the core of dedicated contributors? Sometimes, for no obvious reason, networks remain too small. But is expansion always the answer to a stagnated network? What procedures and policies should groups institute, if at all, to integrate new participants? What role do conferences and face-to-face gatherings play in allowing networks to scale? Sometimes networks just need time, often years to find their productive synergy. One of the reasons for this might be the early age of the topics we're dealing with. However, the massive involvement in Web 2.0 platforms and social networks indicates that the critical mass is reached much earlier, compared to five or ten years ago. Internet culture is now mainstream culture. Social mobilization is done so much easier these days. Networks can be fooled by the erratic ruptures of today's online engagement. Is the size of 150 members still the ideal size of a network? Are networked conversations in which more than 500 users participate doomed to fall apart, as stated in the past? Would 'small is beautiful' be the right response to the Facebook masses? • Dealing with Conflict: Networks can get caught up in recurring instances of social conflict between participants (flamewars, territoriality, etc.), which can lead to the collapse of the larger network. How do we overcome such obstacles? Is it enough to let time pass? Is it a good idea to bring in new people, in the hope of over- ruling the ongoing differences? What role might codes of conduct or other procedures play in mitigating these types of interpersonal conflicts? • Collaborations: How do these organizations form alliances and collaborations with other like-minded groups? What coalitions are possible? How to relate to the brick and mortar institutions? Is membership an option? How does this relate back to the question of finance and legal structures, but also the modes of relation that define the network? • Let's talk financial matters and legal structures. Suppose you take your network VERY seriously. It's fun and you all develop the right vibe. There are tonnes of plans. Would writing a grant proposal be the way to go? But for that you need to become a legal body. Most networks do not have a legal structure, but in order to enter the money economy or funding systems, this might be necessary. Online networks also have to deal with money, even if it’s just site hosting and the cost of a domain name. It is a farce to believe everything can and will be for free (meaning gratis). What, then, are the most suitable legal forms for distributed collaboration? What if you don't want a board, or a director? Or on the contrary, what if you are tired of the 'terror of the casual'? Is the legal road a way out or the perfect recipe for disaster? Are there ways out such predicaments? Would it be possible to operate as a parasite institute? Piggyback on an existing NGO? Or even snatch a (dead) legal body? Perhaps there's unexpected opportunities in the society of fakes? • What role might culture – conceived loosely – play in the constitution of networks? F/OSS emerges from and helps consolidate geek culture, whose history precedes this mode of production and which may account for the strength of these particular networks. Are similar dynamics at play (or not) with other networks? Then there is the related question of the political culture of these networks, which range from anarchist/left to liberal/reformist. How do these political philosophies shape the constitution of these networks? • Ownership and copyright: While there are current alternatives to copyright (such as copyleft licenses and those of Creative Commons), what are the limits, pitfalls, and problems in using these or any legal solution for creative and knowledge production? The core lies at the level of the individual participant, and the ownership over his or her ideas. If the network accepts the idiom of intellectual property, what are models of IP that allow personal attribution as well as recognition for the group effort? Is it is a major conflict for the network to have legal discourses inscribed upon their mode of production? • Software and the Technology Fix: What are suitable tools for collaboration? What are the limits of current communication protocols (email, mailing lists, web pages, social networking sites)? What new tools are being created to address these needs? How to keep the network together without getting caught up in difficult or differentiated channels of communication? How does a network of non- experts learn a new language of programming? Is this an opportunity to expand the network, invite in the experts, or is this an occasion of getting down to the labour of acquiring new skills? Perhaps both are necessary. Either way, it seems the software question has to be addressed for those networks wishing to enter the world of open source cultural production and political invention. • Dissemination: What type of publications and series can be developed? Without much trouble, networks jump into the grey zone between print and online publications – what are the opportunities here? • Winter Camp's overall aim is to strengthen the network(ed) form of organization. It might also be important in this context to go back to basics and to ask how an (organized) network defines itself. What could a network institution look like? What are its dynamics and how might it become a source of power vis-à-vis the production of new standards and social relations? What forms of self-reflexivity and translation are part of these modes of relation? How does the network learn to institute sharing, democratize its own production of expertise, establish collaborative forms of decision-making and address the question of borders? Meta-Group: from Amsterdam: Margreet Riphagen (INC, producer) Minke Kampman (INC, assistant producer) Sabine Niederer (INC, producer & researcher) Anne Helmond (INC, blogging coordinator) & 6 bloggers Annet Wolfsberger (external member, Virtual Platform, Amsterdam) Geert Lovink (INC, researcher) from elsewhere: Ned Rossiter (external member, Ningbo-Shanghai/China) Soenke Zehle (external member, Saarbruecken/Germany) Gabriella Coleman (external member, NY/USA) -- PROGRAM WINTER CAMP 09 Monday 2st of March WHOLE DAY ARRIVAL GUESTS / STAYOKAY 17.00 – 19.00 COORDINATORS MEETING / HOGESCHOOL VAN AMSTERDAM, RAADZAAL Tuesday 3rd of March WHOLE DAY ARRIVAL GUESTS / STAYOKAY 11.00 – 13.00 META GROUP MEETING / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 14.30 – 17.30 REGISTRATION, Q&A / STUDIO K INFORMATIONPOINT 14.30 – 17.30 PREPARATION WORKSHOP ROOM / WORKSHOP SPACE 18.30 – 20.00 DINNER / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 20.00 – 22.30 OFFICIAL OPENING BY GEERT LOVINK, INTRODUCTION ‘ORGANIZED NETWORKS’ NED ROSSITER, INTRODUCTION NETWORKS BY MODERATOR / STUDIO K / SK1 Wednesday 4th of March 08.30 – 09.30 REGISTRATION / STUDIO K INFORMATIONPOINT 08.30 – 09.30 COFFEE AND TEA / STAYOKAY 09.30 – 13.00 WORKSHOP, 1ST ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 14.00 – 17.00 WORKSHOP, 2ND ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 17.00 – 18.30 PLENARY SESSION / STUDIO K / SK1 18.30 – 20.30 DINNER / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 20.30 – 22.30 EVENING PROGRAM / CINEMA / STUDIO K / SK1 Thursday 5th of March 08.30 – 09.30 DOORS OPEN, COFFEE AND TEA / STAYOKAY 09.30 – 13.00 WORKSHOP, 3RD ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 14.00 – 17.00 WORKSHOP, 4TH ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 17.00 – 18.30 PLENARY SESSION / STUDIO K / SK1 18.30 – 20.30 DINNER / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 20.30 – 22.30 EVENING PROGRAM Friday 6th of March 08.30 – 09.30 DOORS OPEN, COFFEE AND TEA / STAYOKAY 09.30 – 13.00 WORKSHOP, 5TH ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 14.00 – 17.00 WORKSHOP, 6TH ROUND / WORKSHOP SPACE 17.00 – 18.30 PLENARY SESSION / STUDIO K / SK1 18.30 – 20.30 DINNER / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 20.30 – 22.30 EVENING PROGRAM Saturday 7th of March 12.00 – 13.00 LUNCH / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 13.00 – 13.20 UPGRADE! / STUDIO K / SK1 13.20 – 13.40 GOTO10 / STUDIO K / SK1 13.40 – 14.00 MYCREATIVITY / STUDIO K / SK1 14.00 – 14.20 GENDERCHANGERS / STUDIO K / SK1 14.20 – 14.40 MICROVOLUNTEERISM / STUDIO K / SK1 14.40 – 15.00 FLOSS MANUALS / STUDIO K / SK1 15.00 – 15.30 BREAK 15.30 – 15.50 FREEDIMENSIONAL NETWORK / STUDIO K / SK1 15.50 – 16.10 EDUFACTORY / STUDIO K / SK1 16.10 – 16.30 DYNE.ORG / STUDIO K / SK1 16.30 – 16.50 CREATIVE LABOUR / STUDIO K / SK1 16.50 – 17.10 BRICOLABS / STUDIO K / SK1 17.10 – 17.30 BLENDER / STUDIO K / SK1 17.30 – 18.00 PLENARY CLOSING DEBATE / STUDIO K / SK1 19.00 – 21.00 DINNER / RESTAURANT STAYOKAY 22.00 – 01.30 PARTY / STUDIO K BAR Sunday 7th of March WHOLE DAY DEPARTURE GUESTS # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org