wiki:dakar2011/mfpl-report

May First/People Link Report on Dakar 2011

Context

Power cuts are are frequent throughout Dakar. Electric generators are needed for consistent up-time, although connection is more stable than most at the University (as well as hospitals and some hotels).

Having four comprise the May First/People Link team has made the trip a uniquely successful international trip. Our productivity, despite the power cuts and other difficulties, is a magnitude greater than any previous trip because we can leverage our experience as a team, divide responsibilities, and share resources.

World Social Forum

Find the full report submitted to the Communications Commission of the WSF International Council here: dakar2011/tech-report

Working directly with the WSF staff, we received admin level access to the Drupal site and svn commit access to the repository containing the code. We still don't have ssh access to the live server, so we're relying on the Chuva, the expensive and not particularly responsive Brazilian consultant firm, to push our changes to the live site. Mallory, Ross and Joseph worked to fix elements of the site that prevented simple, content updates, particularly due to a broken translation workflow. In two days, huge progress was made on this front essentially tearing through a month-old document that outlined important structural changes to the site that the developers never finished.

MF/PL also provided help with infrastructure. We hosted the PDF of the program on MFPL servers, behind a varnish proxy server. can we get a report on the number of connections to this throughout the week?

During the forum, we were asked to post the various programs to the web site. The documents were typically received on the morning of the program, in proprietary spreadsheet format, rather than the more readable PDF version of the printed programs. Despite the fact that it has been estimated that 80% of the workshops the first day were cancelled simply because the schedule that was released had incorrect locations in it, users were able to access the program online, each day of the forum event.

Changes to the fsm2011.org website were done in conjunction with Chuva, Inc. We obtained access to the site documents and code via a revision control repository. However, we never obtained ssh access to the live site, which created a huge obstacle for us, specifically because we could not affect our changes to the live site on-demand.

We worked closely with wsftv.net to integrate live streaming as well as fsm2011.org with the wsftv.net, however we and the wsftv.net technologists were unable to find the time and resources during the forum to realize our vision.

We worked with the Communications Commission to organize media activists to attend press conferences, cover important events, and collaborate with wsftv.net, Ciranda, and others within the commission.

The Assembly on Communications listed MFPL as an official sponsor. We organized at least two dozen participants to attend the assembly with a an agenda that we caucused around in preparation for the event. A document was created from the assembly.

We attended the two day IC meeting on Saturday and Sunday, February 12 - 13, 2011. The International Council accepted May First/People Link as a member.

Convergence Center

From the beginning of our arrival in Dakar, our team was tasked with housing for the IMC house. This task wasn't anticipated but, due to delays in Sphinx arrival we took it on. After several days of looking, we signed a contract for the IMC media House plus two extra apartments to accommodate more than 50 people. The costs were about $3500. The negotiations were a group effort on our part. It went well - although there was some grumbling. The "mattresses" are 1 inch foam pads, so things are pretty cramped and a bit un-comfortable. We're returning tomorrow morning and will have a better sense.

All participants met twice daily (morning and evening) and organized one another into committees on finance, program, welfare - which was later sub-divided into food committee and infrastructure committee - and, conflict resolution. The first two days were dedicated to organizing and smooth operation of the house. Molefi from South Africa was the chair and Joseph worked really hard, taking responsibility for the finances and the trips to the market. He's been setting his alarm for 7:00 am to receive the bread every morning, and skipping activities to go on the purchasing trips to the market. He's also provided diplomacy and stability to the committees.

During the first week on Thursday and Friday we did workshops in the house, ranging from general reporting workshops to our workshops on posting to the imc-africa.mayfirst.org web site, a workshop taught by Ross and Mallory. The imc-africa.mayfirst.org website was developed by Ross for initial use during our trainings. However, it became our main production site for the house during the forum and was a huge success thanks to link sharing by many of our allies. The imc-africa site has very well-received among the delegates and seems to have been a big hit with people watching from afar. It's been extremely useful as a unifying point for the house, and source of excitement and pride. The site was a bit controversial from an IMC stand-point because typically there is a formal process for creating an official IMC site that we didn't follow, but we haven't received any concrete critiques.

In addition, Jamie taught a workshop on video streaming and posting videos to the wsftv.net web site, which led to several videos being posted.

On Saturday, Mallory chaired the Goree Island field trip committee. Goree Island was the last port in Africa for the slave trade.

We organized one convergence center event at the IMC house on the topic of alternative media, which included participation from many people at the IMC house.

USSF

Jamie and Mallory helped to host a web cast report back for Tuesday night, 7:00 pm EST with Detroit to Dakar representatives at a nearby hotel. The NPC was notified and various people attending Dakar from the USSF were consulted about the format and participation. The web cast went off well with a good crowd from Detroit asking questions remotely. We were successful despte the fact that the hotel had no Internet. We used a cell phone 3G modem loaned by the IMC Africa house. The biggest challenge was our poor lighting and sound issues. We mitigated the low sound by using transcription in the chat box of the live streaming page.

Collaborations

Our main goal was to use our unique position as organizers with the USSF, WSF, and IMC to both create new relationships and strengthen ongoing relationships. In this regard, I think we were very successful.

Mallory conveyed the importance of the IMC convergence center to the WSF communications committee extremely well, leading to a large group from the communications commission to come to the house Saturday night, where she expertly facilitated a meeting of over 50 people translated into three languages resulting in a commitment for the IMC Africa to partner with Ciranda (one of the WSF associated web projects).

The next day, during the march, Ciranda and IMC'ers together carried a banner proclaiming the right to communication, a politically unifying point that was mentioned by Ciranda at the IMC meeting with the WSF Communications Commission.

The fact that IMC'ers were posting videos to wsftv.net was also acknowledged several times by Antonio from wsftv.net, which was another successful linkage that would not have happened without our intervention.

And, through Mallory's organizing at the IMC convergence center, we had a sub-group to discuss what we wanted to bring to the communications assembly. Amazingly, we brought more than a dozen people from the house to the assembly, and had about 4 or 5 people from the house testify at the assembly, a fact not missed by the communications commission.

And, we met with the GGJ delegation before the social forum, and conducted a web cast of the event they organized on the Tunisian uprising.

Last modified 9 years ago Last modified on Mar 9, 2011, 1:38:45 PM
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