Caracas 2006 TrollParty RoadMap

Here is the central scenario of the story we are preparing to setup. As it's in early design stage, some or many points can change later depending the situation and the will of the participants.

Participants

The Host

It's the organisation that funds the operation and excpects some local impact. This trollparty in Caracas is an idea of Alexander Main, and the host Participant is the SAPI.

Main Objectives

• Promote Free Software in Venezuela :
  • facilitate knowledges transfers to bring more skills into the territory.
  • demonstrate key uses in daily situations where free software fits real needs.
  • use the philosophy of freedom to build a model of society.
  • communicate on free software inside the country and in the world to promote Venezuela in the first ranks of Free Software adoption.
  • gain independance in front of megacorporations, as a country, as well as a culture.
• Make something real
  • setup a workshop in caracas where the Real People can bring old computers and get them repaired and freed by the setup of a free software environment.
  • organize a relevant operation during the World Social Forum 2006
  • establish links beetween worldwide population of Trolls and local technical operators (mostly individuals)

The Tribe

That's an unformal group of people knowing each others by the mean of their craft : they are internet professional, highly waged in specialized companies or reputed freelancers. Their technical skills vary but their interest in the internet is constant. Now after 3 past trollparties the collection of trolls is wide enough so a subset of spanish-compliant specimen can be selected for Caracas. See the chapter named Casting below.

Principal Goals

• Spread the Free Software tradition and philosophy, and not only on technical application but also in social fields
• perpetuate the knowledge generosity : we got all our skills because other people shared knowledge with us without knowing us. As we are grateful about that, we wish to perpetuate the gift tradition and bring knowledge where it's wanted and useful.
• share a challenging and condensed technical activity with peers on high-level technical topics, in a prepared context and with a purpose.
• have a lot of computers around, and do experiments on them, for fun and creative uses, by using only free software.
• spend comfortable time to have fun and make friends in a context with no complicated social rules to follow : the number of trolls has to be enough to create a microcosmos of tribe protection.
• change environment and routine of work and have opportunity to explore new technologies and share experiences with other advanced techies from different contexts.

The Real People

They are what all that fuss is for, even if they are not the real focus, nothing would be interesting to do without them. They are venezuelan john-doe, anyone in the street, you, me. One of the purposes of trollparties is to enhance the quality of communication beetween Trolls and Real People (keeping in mind that Trolls are also Real People).

Legitimate Expectations

• Interact with people having practice and experience in collaborative online tools
• understand how people can work in a collaboration rather than in competition in the Free Software world.
• get some help to install and to use Free Software environment
• if possible, get some old computer rejuvenated with some new parts and setup with a ready-to-use Free Software environment
• participate to experiments involving decision-making systems based on new systems
• learn more about how to implement a community media, like a TV or a radio, with only free software

The Noosphere

It's like a very big whole-spirit composed of millions of spirits of the human civilization, interconnected by the internet. Literaly the noosphere is the plane of the information and knowledge, and is similar in many points to the biosphere and the geosphere : it's a composite gathering of a numerous crowd of various interdependant factors that produces a whole.

Expected Impact

• gain more material in spanish language that spread free knowledge
• get a better recognition as a whole
• enable remote participation on workshops from people in distant countries

Background and logistics

The Host invites the Trolls to participate to an event involving social responsibility and use of technologies, in other words, involving free software, access to the networks, and availability of computers. In exchange and by gratefulness, the trolls fulfill some technical duties that are helpful for the Host and for the Real People. That's the really short story.

The tribe of trolls is composed of a core group of 15, plus 5 to 15 other people joining on site. They come from several different countries : it's also an occasion for friends working together remotely to gather physicaly and share more knowledge and tips. Most of the trolls will speak spanish, at least half of them decently. They all have in common some interior feeling that Free Software is more than just about doing software. It's more about building knowledge.

Agenda
A trollparty is an event with several different aspects, technical, logistical and social. It's good to have a group of trolls scouting some time before to prepare the context and make it easier when under fire. This scouting and pre-setup can last several days. Then, a time is required before the event for the actual setup of the network, and the heat-up of the trolls, the 22th and 23th january. See the WorkShops program.

Location
The best for such event is to prepare a 24 hours per day activity list. The participation of online world breaks the time patterns and constant rotating activities have to be planned and made easy. This brings the need of having beds and a kitchen open and useable all the time with minimal travel.

Food
Trolls have different types of diet, but there are several vegetarians in their ranks, food will be better if prepared when needed with a kitchen. Restaurants are no good because they break the immersion in the flow of hacking. Food has to to be consumable anywhere there is a computer. Soft drinks are welcome, but water is usually fine, aslong as there is a running supply of coffee and tea.

Connectivity
The place where things happen has to be covered by a correct conectivity. Trolls can handle the setup of the total local network using wires and wifi but the hardware required has to be available, and its detail will depend on the location and places to cover. See NOC for more details.

Online tools
The Tribe already has his own server facilities and plans to use them for handling the online part of the event. But it can be pertinent if somme local people want to pursue the work afterwise, and want to provide one or several servers to the project. Especially for broadcasting, the more the servers the best. But collaborative tools can as well be hosted on a server managed locally for long-term use of the tools.

Workshops

Side topics of interest

Some topics are smaller than the previously cited, but can give some opportunities of interaction on-site that are not expected, or that can be stimulated. They are :

• Free Software telephony
  How to use computers networks to interact with phone networks. Peer to peer telephony. Asterisk setup and tuning.
• Cartography and visualization systems
  webmapping, territories collaborative building, data licensing in cartography world
• RDF, ontologies and semantic web
  knowledge databases, interoperability
• Tikiwiki software
  many trolls are involved in that software development community. Many developments onsite will be based on this application (but not only).
• Wireless Networks
  Social impacts of self-operated networks. technologies available. on-site intensive use.
• Debian uses
  most (if not all) the trolls are debian users.
• Free Software philosophy
  model of organisation. Fruits of collaboration vs competition. gift economy paradigm.
• Linux Terminal Server Project
  Allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications typically run on the server, and accept input and display their output on the thin client display.

The Tribe :
Each member of that group has his own reasons for being there, and their homepages are expected to detail them. But here below you'll find some of the main focuses. This list is not complete, it's only the result of a first consultation of our natural network, using friends from past trollparties, as well as mates from the Tikiwiki community that intersect quite boldly with the preceeding, plus members of the Hacklab of Madrid. See People page for details.