User:Becha/climate-justice-in-tech-events-calendar
Curating shared calendar of Climate Justice in Tech events
Project
Summary
This project proposal is about establishing temporary role of a curator of the events calendar focused on Climate Justice in Tech.
Contemporary computing research, network operations & Internet Governance are intertwined with human rights, ecological limits & climate justice. There are many events working on these crossroads: academic, technical, hacking, civil rights, social sciences, engineering... and they would all benefit from knowing about each others' content, and being cross-connected.
My short-term goals are to populate existing calendars with Climate Justice events, cross-connect the communities, and make the sharing of information easier - by spotting the opportunities cooperation and fixing the bugs.
My longer-term goal is to improve the existing solutions in such a way that my role becomes un-necessary; or, failing that, to make this role & project so successful, that it will attract further funding to keep it running.
I am already involved in doing this, in multiple ways, for several years. However, to do it properly requires dedicated time & effort, so I decided to ask for help. By granting me the funds, you would give me the means to take a sabbatical from my regular work, and focus mainly on this project.
I am a Community Builder by vocation, and this is my passion too; therefore, I am perfectly suitable for this role and for this project.
There is a technical side of the project too, but this proposal is about the human side: personal dedication, (re)using existing technology & giving life energy to what maters for the future of the Internet - within planetary limits and with Climate Justice.
Personal Prior Experience
Experience : I have been involved in many ways:
- maintaining collections of events on wiki pages : https://wiki.techinc.nl/Sustainability#Events & https://wiki.techinc.nl/User:Becha/events2023
- sharing the information on many mailing lists, in the communities I am involved with ; e.g. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/e-impact/OpFhaw08aEkmZ4jeqcyKkIDHSAU/
- organising events to try to establish the federated calendar platform: https://wiki.techinc.nl/Open_Data_AI_Climate_Justice_Calendar
- reporting back from the relevant events : https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/computing-within-limits-2023/
- speaking at events as part of my work : The Environmental Impact of Internet: Urgency, Degrowth, Rebellion https://ripe86.ripe.net/archives/video/1001/
- in general, maintaining a community called UnCiv since 2014, both as a mailing list & as series of events: https://lists.puscii.nl/wws/arc/uncivilization/2024-01/msg00015.html
Existing collections
- Digital_Rights_&_Climate_Justice
- monthly newsletter shares some of the events : digital-rights-climate-justice+subscribe@groups.io
- Just Sustainability Transition: https://groups.google.com/g/justsustainabilitytransitions/about
- Climate Cultures: https://climatecultures.net
- academic events are shared on several other lists:
- there are open calendars for technical events, but they do not accept "climate justice" as fitting into their acceptable use.
- ripe.net/events
- nsrc.net/calendar
- pch.net/calendar
- https://foss.events/
- And the there are activist calendars that do not cover technical events
What my project would bring as a cross-connection between these places / platforms, and hopefully reduction of duplicated effort on their sides, thus leading to better use of our common shared resources (time, personal energy , and even money).
there are also commercial services such as Meetup.org &EventBrite, which are not in the scope of my project for now.
Challenges : These are are a mix of human/social & technical challenges: they will not be solved by my little project, and still I am hopeful to contributing towards the solutions: coordinating humans is a hard job "search" technology is a multibillion $ business... multiplication of standards -> https://xkcd.com/927/ not-invented-here factor
Surrounding System
Actors involved are: Climate Justice communities & their event organisers, existing mailing lists, developers & maintainers of federated software / ActvityPub and of plug-ins for exchanging that data with existing calendars; hackerspaces and hackers events; Internet Governance & Standardisation organisations (IETF, RIPE, IEEE, IGF, Wikimedia... ).
I am already embedded in many of these communities, and I would be contributing to their existing work, serving as a multiplier, enabler & connector.
I will attend their meetings (for example, CCC congress, DeGrowth conference, IETF) and "do my magic" communities closer together.
History
- November 2022, DRxCJ workshop in Berlin in: "we" realised that a shared calendar of events would help us to facilitate cooperation between movements & organisations -- we could learn from each other, exchange experiences, and meet more often: https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/towards-climate-justice-in-tech/
- March 2023, TechInc / Open Data https://wiki.techinc.nl/Open_Data_AI_Climate_Justice_Calendar
- July 2023, NotACamp TBD: : https://OpenMeetup.org Signal Group https://cryptpad.fr/code/#/2/code/edit/2ky-MS-kYiGm26dHUjm1derA/
- November 2023, catalyst fund File:november 2023 - federated events calendar for climate justice events grant funding proposal.pdf
- January 2024, funding request:
- February 2024, OFFDEM: https://pad.public.cat/offdem-tetra-oxygen-notes-index?both
Ideas
Edithon
- Place: Technologia Incognita hackerspace, Amsterdam (Louwesweg 1)
- collaborative meetup / hackathon / discussion about events calendars & Climate Justice in Tech
Possible Grants
Example Calendars
Existing calendars : global
- ripe.net/events (& https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/calendar) - nsrc.net/calendar (Education Outreach and Training (EOT) Calendar for Internet Development) - pch.net/calendar (Calendar of Internet Governance Meetings in 2023) - https://radar.squat.net - https://events.rebellion.global - https://foss.events/ - https://gettogether.community -
Local:
- https://amsterdamalternative.nl/agenda - https://amsterdam.jekuntmeer.nl/sociale-kaart?s-kaart=1&s-answer%5B7%5D=0&s-search=satirius&admin-limit= - https://buurtgroen020.nl - https://extinctionrebellion.nl/events/page/2/ - https://mobilize.berlin/
Platform Requirements
- funded by ethical sources (to be agreed later on what does that mean) - FLOSS Free/Libre Software, Open Source (not proprietary) * that means other groups can also use this software! - Open Data * there's no need to log in or have an account to read the calendar - global - federated! * information is added once, then automatically shared with multiple other calendars * hosted on multiple "instances" (like Mastodon) - searchable - sortable - open for contributions AND moderated - easy to "parse" / export by API / RSS / (nnn?) - show past events - add review? - show all this on the (OpenStreet) map - find a way to ensure maintenance in the future - if possible: extend existing software, instead of "reinventing the wheel" - nice to have: export to ISC calendar entries - nice to have: subscribe to it by mailing list (for specific categories / tags) - --nice to have: hosted on a memorable (short) URL => - isoc.org? apc.net?--
Open Data Sources
- radar.squat.net - ccc events - meetup.org - eventbrite - Wikipedia - personal collections , e.g. https://wiki.techinc.nl/User:Becha/events2023 - https://climatecultures.net/get-involved/receive-updates/ - https://www.digitalrights.community/events
Existing software
- https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon - LibrEvents https://libr.events/ - https://libr.events/mobilizon-poster/ - https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether - FRAB?
Federated
- https://info.graz.social/projects/ Event Federation Plugin for WordPress , funded by NLNETLABS
- https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/events-in-activitypub/999
- ActivityPub for Interoperable Messaging (ietf draft) https://bifurcation.github.io/mimi-aim/draft-barnes-mimi-aim.html
- https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub/Primer
- https://spritely.institute/news/introducing-ocapn-interoperable-capabilities-over-the-network.html
Possible platforms
- wikipedia - Fediverse? - https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
Potential Particpants
- DRxCJ mailing list;
- E-impact list
- HSNL
- UnCiv