HACKMEETING IN SEVILLE
anap | 13.11.2004 23:44 | Culture | Education | Free Spaces | London | World
HackAndalus, the fifth edition of the Hackmeeting, took place on the long weekend of 29th, 30th, 31st of October and 1st of November, in the neighbourhood of Pumarejo, in Seville, Spain.
All was free, including the accommodation and the workshop sessions in Casas Viejas. As for the food (and what food! - vegetarian, recycled, healthy and delicious) donations were proposed to cover costs.
Probably every participant at the hackmeeting would give a different definition of it, and all definitions would be valid: a nomad annual meeting of people who use technology as a tool for social change, a space where reality is hacked, a hackers' gathering, an annual celebration of daily hacking, a space where knowledge is shared, a political space, an alternative space...
Although the hackmeeting is open to whoever can go, it helps to be involved in a hacklab near you (see hacklabs.org), and/or to participate on the list used for its preparation,
HackMeeting@listas.sindominio.net. Various organisational aspects of the hackmeeting have been prepared on this list since various months in advance.
One of the greater joys of these gatherings is that they are an unique opportunity for people who only know each other by an email address to see each other's faces, or to meet again with people that you know from previous editions of the hackmeeting, or from hacklabs of foreign lands.
Those of us who know each other a little bit are, more or less continuously, in this and other networks of groups dedicated to the struggle for social change: alternative media, self-managed occupied social centres... It may be for this reason that I see the hackmeeting as a gathering point for these struggles, and also as a celebration of them. It is as if, year after year, our lives wanted to melt with each other for a few days to celebrate their happy defiance which, latent for the remainder of the year, needs this special weekend to manifest itself in its full splendour, and to recover energies.
The social centre Casas Viejas started to receive people on Thursday. People from very far away arrived a week before. By Friday there were people all over the place, even on the roof! From there, you could get the “privilege” to see a misery that is not so obvious at street level: the building where the majority of us slept is only one part of a squatted complex, and the “other” part of this complex is occupied by very poor groups and even families. The squatting/hacking collective had provided them with electricity and water so that they could live in a little bit more dignified housing.
During daytime, the hackmeeting consisted of four days of workshops and mainly talks, where a person shared her know-how on themes more or less related to technology.
A different activity was prepared for each night : Friday 29 there was a copyleft concert, which more or less means that nobody can accuse you of theft if you record it for non profit purposes, on Saturday it was the Big Brother Awards presentation night, where people and companies that have been prominent in the violation of privacy this year were awarded, and Sunday saw a tecno-pagan festival with no precedent or explanation.
After these organised events, an apparently chaotic sessions of image and sound took place until the small -and not so small- hours of the morning. These are called 'pure data' parties . This more or less consists of an orgy of real-time improvisation of image and sound, produced from one or two computers.
General meetings took place throughout the whole of the hackmeeting, in order to organise the different aspects, like the projectors, the spaces for the different activities or the recording of the chats. The last day, before cleaning, we had the final assembly where they were put in common the good and the less good things about this hackmeeting, improvements for the next one were proposed, and many and very juicy thoughts.
Some said that there must have been about a thousand people at the hackmeeting this year, between those who have been every day and those that have passed for just a day, or a chat. Each one of these people could probably tell a different account of the hackmeeting. Mine is of a political space where principles like horizontality, equality and social change have been put to work.
Some people may see technology as a neutral tool. However what is perceived in the hackmeeting is that technology, like knowledge, is not neutral: it is either free or it has an owner, it is either shared or exchanged for a profit, either open closed.
A feeling that was shared in the last assembly was that the hackmeeting is not a neutral space, but a political one, where we use free and open technology that is made available to all, where we practice the model of society that we propose, where we do not compete with each other but rather collaborate with each other, where there is equality not hierarchy, where there are comrades not bosses, an open space to every person whatever skills or knowledge level they have, and with a clear option for respect for all.
Probably every participant at the hackmeeting would give a different definition of it, and all definitions would be valid: a nomad annual meeting of people who use technology as a tool for social change, a space where reality is hacked, a hackers' gathering, an annual celebration of daily hacking, a space where knowledge is shared, a political space, an alternative space...
Although the hackmeeting is open to whoever can go, it helps to be involved in a hacklab near you (see hacklabs.org), and/or to participate on the list used for its preparation,
HackMeeting@listas.sindominio.net. Various organisational aspects of the hackmeeting have been prepared on this list since various months in advance. One of the greater joys of these gatherings is that they are an unique opportunity for people who only know each other by an email address to see each other's faces, or to meet again with people that you know from previous editions of the hackmeeting, or from hacklabs of foreign lands.
Those of us who know each other a little bit are, more or less continuously, in this and other networks of groups dedicated to the struggle for social change: alternative media, self-managed occupied social centres... It may be for this reason that I see the hackmeeting as a gathering point for these struggles, and also as a celebration of them. It is as if, year after year, our lives wanted to melt with each other for a few days to celebrate their happy defiance which, latent for the remainder of the year, needs this special weekend to manifest itself in its full splendour, and to recover energies.
The social centre Casas Viejas started to receive people on Thursday. People from very far away arrived a week before. By Friday there were people all over the place, even on the roof! From there, you could get the “privilege” to see a misery that is not so obvious at street level: the building where the majority of us slept is only one part of a squatted complex, and the “other” part of this complex is occupied by very poor groups and even families. The squatting/hacking collective had provided them with electricity and water so that they could live in a little bit more dignified housing.
During daytime, the hackmeeting consisted of four days of workshops and mainly talks, where a person shared her know-how on themes more or less related to technology.
A different activity was prepared for each night : Friday 29 there was a copyleft concert, which more or less means that nobody can accuse you of theft if you record it for non profit purposes, on Saturday it was the Big Brother Awards presentation night, where people and companies that have been prominent in the violation of privacy this year were awarded, and Sunday saw a tecno-pagan festival with no precedent or explanation.
After these organised events, an apparently chaotic sessions of image and sound took place until the small -and not so small- hours of the morning. These are called 'pure data' parties . This more or less consists of an orgy of real-time improvisation of image and sound, produced from one or two computers.
General meetings took place throughout the whole of the hackmeeting, in order to organise the different aspects, like the projectors, the spaces for the different activities or the recording of the chats. The last day, before cleaning, we had the final assembly where they were put in common the good and the less good things about this hackmeeting, improvements for the next one were proposed, and many and very juicy thoughts.
Some said that there must have been about a thousand people at the hackmeeting this year, between those who have been every day and those that have passed for just a day, or a chat. Each one of these people could probably tell a different account of the hackmeeting. Mine is of a political space where principles like horizontality, equality and social change have been put to work.
Some people may see technology as a neutral tool. However what is perceived in the hackmeeting is that technology, like knowledge, is not neutral: it is either free or it has an owner, it is either shared or exchanged for a profit, either open closed.
A feeling that was shared in the last assembly was that the hackmeeting is not a neutral space, but a political one, where we use free and open technology that is made available to all, where we practice the model of society that we propose, where we do not compete with each other but rather collaborate with each other, where there is equality not hierarchy, where there are comrades not bosses, an open space to every person whatever skills or knowledge level they have, and with a clear option for respect for all.
anap
e-mail:
anap at riseup.net
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
geeks-non geeks
14.11.2004 00:49
Yes there is some kind of invisible barrier between hackers/geeks and other political activists. This barrier is some times more clear and some times more blurred, and some people may even feel right on the edge of it. There seems to be some kind of resentment between the two groups at either side of this barrier; but the blame is not to be put on any one of them only.
I do know a few “techie” people and I tend to have good relationships with them. But I know from other people's experiences that this is in no way the norm - people you wouldn't call geeks have real difficulties in communicating with people who may be called geeks and are more used to communicating with a machine than with other humans. It is not the norm to be rude but I know of at least one case where a non “techie” woman entered a chat room looking for help and the responses were so rude she ended up in tears.
Yes people from the non-geek side of the barrier treat geek people as some kind of service providers. But this is not only with geeks. Whoever is good at something, is asked by default to volunteer for that task. In this case, if you resent being asked to do the same thing all the time, it is your duty then to say 'no, I fancy doing this other thing instead'. It is a skill you learn, and it is not that terrible to say no ;-)
Then there is the issue of mutual incomprehension. For instance, a non geek cannot understand how come, after travelling hundreds of miles to come to a hackmeeting or any other gathering, people just open their laptops and isolate themselves from the life around them. By doing that those people are putting a barrier that the rest simply can not break. It needs to be up to the person with the laptop to close it and try to interact with others face to face,.
No there is not too much presence of 'non geeks' in demonstrations about issues that affect "geeks" (e.g. RIP Act, EUCD, the current Patent debate in the EU). In a demonstration Brussels against software patents September 2003, there were only about 60 or so people there, pretty much all what you would call geeks.
Yet when some [other] political issue comes up, geeks are asked to support it. So there is this kind of resentment - nobody helps geeks, but geeks we are asked to help all the time. Particularly some Free Open Source Software programmers feel that they already give so much, yet are asked to give more.
Demonstrations are a separate story on themselves. People start organising with months and months in advance. Postings in as many sorts of media as possible, email cross-posting, meeting announcements, benefits to raise funds, leaflets and stickers to go everywhere. Most of this work is done face to face and running around, not in front of a computer.
We all need to make the effort to see what the other people around us are doing. You may find other people, maybe every one! feels the same as you – that they are doing all the work, that no one is helping them. To get a media centre, for instance. Finding the computers, transporting them, ensuring the building is all right... To get an autonomous zone, for instance. Finding a building, occupying it, clearing up the broken glasses, the rubbish, getting the water, the electricity in place, the food...
Multiply that for every single social space, occupied or rented. They all take a huge amount of boring, dull, even dirty jobs of which we don't even get a glimpse if we just visit them at weekends. Some of these jobs are done by people who don't even have a home, or an income, let alone a computer, and who, far from complaining because no one else cleans the toilets, prepare theme evenings, parties, gigs, meetings, film screenings, to welcome all kinds of people, including the geek who only turns up to have a look at the computer they rescued from the skip ;-)
At the same time, it is felt that everything needs to be a two way process – “non-geeks” also need to get in touch with what is affecting ICT (information and communication technology). Workshops, themed weeks in local social centres would be a central activity for “geeks” to get involved in. This would not only improve the somewhat difficult communications between “geeks” and “non-geeks”, but it would put “freedom of information” issues at the same level of other freedoms, and without this freedom of information we would not have sites such as this.
I think a workshop on this would be a great idea for hackmeetings, pga and similar gatherings.
ana
spanish version
14.11.2004 07:55
ana