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:
  • https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/raci-list/2024-January/000271.html

• 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
  • https://radar.squat.net
  • https://events.rebellion.global

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: File:public-version-nlnet-curating-climate-justice-events-Proposal.pdf
• February 2024, OFFDEM:
  • https://pad.public.cat/offdem-tetra-oxygen-notes-fediversity
  • https://event-federation.eu/2024/02/10/fediversity-at-o₄ffdem/
  • https://oxygen.offdem.net/pub/fediversity

Ideas

Edithon

• Place: Technologia Incognita hackerspace, Amsterdam (Louwesweg 1)
• collaborative meetup / hackathon / discussion about events calendars & Climate Justice in Tech

Possible Grants

• https://greenscreen.network/en/catalyst-fund/
• NLNET
• deadline 29.2. https://recharge-culture.eu/processes/RechargeNext
• deadline 29.2. https://culturalfoundation.eu/open-calls/culture-of-solidarity-fund/
• The Just Transition Platform (JTP) has launched three calls for applications for new editions of support services
  • JTP Groundwork – open until 1 March 23:00 CET. Apply here!
  • JTPeers Exchange – open until 1 March 23:00 CET. Apply for individual or joint applications!
  • JTP Working Groups – open until 1 March 23:00 CET. Apply here!
  • https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funding/just-transition-fund/just-transition-platform_en
• https://www.euki.de/en/project-funding/
• https://wiki.techinc.nl/MeshNet#Funding

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 
- https://events.todon.eu/

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://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-barnes-mimi-identity-arch/

• 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 Participants

• DRxCJ mailing list;
• E-impact list
• HSNL
• UnCiv