Subject: [gaia] CFP: Community-Based Telecoms Workshop in Vienna and Cape Town - June 2019

From: Melissa Densmore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 11:59:32 +0200

*Call for Participation*

*Workshop on the Artful Integrations of Infrastructures by Community-Based
Telecoms *

*3 or 4 June (to be confirmed), 2019*

*[summary]*

The University of Cape  and OVCOMM Dynamic will be co-hosting a workshop
concurrent with the a workshop in Vienna at the C&T conference
<https://2019.comtech.community/>. All communities and researchers working
on community-based telecoms (e.g. wikipedia deployments, community
networks, community radio) are invited to participate and share experiences
about how we make things work. If interested, please apply here
https://forms.gle/7tdBeG7G4KA6bzGSA or email [email-masked] by 20
April 2019.

*[long version]*

This one-day workshop will be hosted both in Vienna and online during The 9th
International Conference on Communities and Technologies C&T
https://2019.comtech.community/ 3 - 7 June 2019. It focuses on the
experiences of communities that own and operate their own telecoms systems,
such as local Wi-Fi networks and radio. We will consider what communities
do to tackle the infrastructures, or taken-for-granted arrangements, that
affect deploying and adopting telecoms.

ICTs involve many infrastructures that arise from and support social,
technical, political, legal, administrative, methodological and
institutional structures and processes. Infrastructures can be physical
(e.g. cables); software (e.g. code); methodological (e.g. standards);
organizational (e.g. engineering professions); institutional (e.g. academic
structures); and, many more. Communities often devise ways to compensate
for constraints and weaknesses of infrastructures in their local telecom
projects. Communities have, for instance, tackled policy infrastructures,
because laws do not support their telecoms, and integrated their own social
infrastructures to align with their community values.

*Workshop Activities *

We will facilitate conversations between members and users of
community-based telecoms, researchers, practitioners and activists. These
conversations aim for these different groups to:

   - • learn from each other's experiences in responding to
   infrastructures;
   - • recognize the ways infrastructures affect community-based telecoms;
   - • identify how community-based telecoms can influence future
   infrastructures;
   - • form relationships to enable ongoing sharing of experiences around
   infrastructure.

We will use video-conferencing to connect directly to community-based
telecoms. A community network in South Africa has already agreed to
participate remotely, and we invite other community-based telecoms too (see
2. below).

*How to Participate *

We invite participation by members and users of community-based telecoms,
researchers, practitioners and activists involved/interested in local Wi-Fi
or GSM, hyperlocal radio or other local telecoms. To indicate your interest
please submit by *April 20 2019 *responses to the questions below.

You may respond using the online form https://forms.gle/7tdBeG7G4KA6bzGSA or
by emailing your responses to: [email-masked]:

1. Your details (name, email, project)

2. Your participation – if you will participate in Vienna, Cape Town, or if
you propose to host a workshop or participate remotely. If you propose to
host a workshop or participate remotely, please use the questions in the
form to guide you in providing details about how you will facilitate it.

3. Include a short file, which can be:

• Media about a community-based telecom, e.g. a short text or audio
description of an initiative

• Art depicting interactions between existing infrastructures,
community-based technologies and future infrastructures

• A 2-page academic-style, position paper about infrastructures revealed
by, or created for, community-based telecoms

• Something else that pertains to the workshop topic and is accessible to
both practitioners and academics

You will be required to sign into Google in order to upload your document.
Please submit up to one file (document, PDF, image, audio, video, zip) of
up to 100MB in size. All submissions must be in English.

We will select participants based on how their submissions contribute
diverse experiences in ways that are accessible to diverse perspectives.

*Organisers *

*Nicola J Bidwell *International University of Management, Namibia

*Melissa Densmore *University of Cape Town, South Africa

*André van Zyl *OVCOMM cooperative, Ocean View, South Africa

*Sarbani Banerjee Belur *Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India

*Nicolás Pace *Association for Progressive Communications and Altermundi,
Argentina

*Nic Bidwell *is founding mentor of Groot Aub CN, Namibia, a mentor on
Afchix’s gender-sensitive CN project and, in 2018, conducted multiple
case-study research on CNs in six countries in the global south. In 2013
she was awarded IFIP’s inaugural award for interaction design for social
and economic development for research that was a pre-cursor to Zenzeleni
CN.

*Melissa Densmore *is a senior lecturer in UCT’s Centre in ICT4D, South
Africa. Her research explores community-based digital content creation for
CNs, and has previously included studying telecoms adoption in an NGO in
Uganda, and wireless infrastructure deployments in Ghana, India, and DR
Congo.

*Sarbani Banerjee Belur *is a senior researcher on Gram Marg’s rural
broadband project, India, winner of Mozilla’s Equal Rating Innovation
Challenge. Since 2015 she has facilitated connectivity to remote villages.
Her research focuses on gendered use of connectivity and seeding CNs in
Indian villages.

*Andrè van Zyl *is a Computer/IT Teacher at Ocean View Secondary School,
and a Director of the OVCOMM cooperative that administers a community
network in Ocean View, a town-ship in Cape Town, South Africa.

*Nicolás Pace *is the Movement Building Coordinator for the Association for
Progressive Communication’s Local Access Networks initiative. He supports
CNs around the world, is part of AlterMundi, that develops models and
technologies for CNs, and REDES AC, that supports CNs in Indigenous Mexico.

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