[VBbuilders] Was the Workshop useful? reply to Markus - part 2

[Franz Nahrada]

I continue my answer to Markus. In a mail to him I reminded us of our
roadmap.

***************************************************************
Franz:
We can only do it step by step. IF we can create national projects, THEN
we will go for a joint meeting and a GRUNTVIG network.

IF we do a Gruntvig Network, we CAN create

a) a technical handbook for Videobridging plus training activities
b) pattern research 
c) shared content (one by one or one to many and all in-between)
d) places of access and learning around Europe
e) a fair use agreement and a generative structure for content (a clearing
hopuse, an organisation)
f) a content repository (a kind of video wikipedia)
******************************************************************

Markus wrote 

>ITS TRUE - STEP BY STEP, AND this is exactly what people want to see. We
>had a big mix of these elements in the workshop and no roadmap (one
>destination and next destination that leads to an end point).

Franz: The workshop was there primarily to get aware of all the involved
dimensions. it brought together people from different angles and we needed
to understand the state of technology, the experiences in communities etc.
The steps above were roughly what I had in mind.
>

>a. So there is no manual being developed on a wiki-book format. yet?

Franz: No, we had to postpone that goal. In my idea this would have
hapopened during the workshop, but there was so much eagerness to dive
into particular questions, to experiment with particular tools, to digest
the plethora of content that we did not really rech that point. The wiki
profiency was much lower than expected, so we created the diary exersize
which unfortunately did not really take up before the weekend.

>b. Pattern languages are disconnected from anything useful in most
>participants minds. And those that do understand the concept want to
>apply it to everything, rather like teenagers seeing cool band names in
>everything. 

Franz: Pattern Theory CAN be applied to everything and I consider it as a
breakthrough method that will revolutionize our attitude towards
knowledge, but of course I wanted to see it applied to our particular
subject. I feel that pattern thinking is greatly helpul in writing manuals
and curricula, because it gives more freedom to discover and recombine, to
design and to integrate. Patterns are nothing but proven or likely
solutions decribed in context, and we need to find solutions in many
dimensions at once. Maybe the number of dimensions was confusing. 

>c. There is some shared content, but its more shared co-operations; lets
>see which way thats going and what relevance it has to GIVE objectives.
>apple looked promising, but the nokia apple war will shape how open that
>is.

Franz:  Well I think content is not about apple or nokia, but about the
things we want to learn in community learning networks by using the best
available capturing and realisation technologies. One content idea that I
thought would be compelling was the "Findhorn Lectures", a series in very
practical approaces to improve local possibilitiues in producing energy,
enhance material cycles, improve our perceptiveness for community life and
so on. In our upcoming Waldviertel project we use the Mantra: "Content
development is local development, local development is content
development."

I am in touch with John Rogers about the idea of doing a videobridge from
a Findhorn Seminar on alternative currencies. It is this type of
activities - looking for the things we really want to learn about - that
make an essential condition for videobridging.
>

>d. places of access and learning - well dunno quite how that relates to a
>devolved content of everyone with an android phone and a skype enabled
>laptop believing they meet this objective. Nor how this relates to other
>learning places such as the European Telecentres or various other
>initiatives co-opted or shoe horned into Lisbon agenda things.

Franz: In an older proposal Steve Thompson called these places "village
hubs". I think that useful and interesting educational content evolves
best in live conversations at real living places, -->> thats the core
dogma of the videobridge idea if you like <<--.

Videobridging is therefore the art of capturing LOCAL content in a way it
can be immediately shared at other localities and produce added value.
Local conversations can often be extended, and our whole work revolves
around how to extend them best.

Steve put it very nicely in his old proposal and I share again the basic
idea with all of you:

" In anecdotal fashion this is what the project would propose to do:
 An event is taking place at location A.

This could be a public meeting, an arts event, a training event, anything
that draws in the community.

Locations B, C and D wish to participate but the distances and rurality
preclude this. We therefore use technology to stream the event to B, C and
D and build in a degree of interactivity. "

The only thing that we added was the fact that this interactivity could
include simultaneous conversations with remote people BEYOND text chats.
We dont know how this inclusion of live bidirectional video will really
play out - we will have to experiment.

>e. fair use - would be nice, its a real mess now - but is being led by
>the pirate party and usa legislation and business with various agendas -
>none to me really about enabling fair use on a free basis, as say public
>libraries were set up to do with books or Project Gutenberg does with
>scanned books. But is this really what we should be working on - I think
>not.

Franz: Again I think we are talking about fair use of the content that we
produce OURSELVES. So if location A produces an interesting lecture with a
Novel Price Laureate or a weird but smart and successful local
practitioner, it is expecting to get equally rewarded with three lectures
or events from location B, C and D at other occasions.

So if we have 365 places in the network, every day there is a hot event in
the village learning center, although we would have to bother only once a
year to produce our great thing!

We ARE totally focused on our own content and ask for reciprocity to
create a sustainable system of education and entertainmant in our
villages....

>f. content repository? - well we have that through torrents and
>individuals laptops, but again legislation is taking that away from us.
>And commercializing it.

Franz: Of course I am again talking about the content we produce
OURSELVES, in a Peer2Peer fashion, between participating localities and
regions. One major problem is to store this content and keep it available,
because of high bandwidth issues.

So one of the goals of capturing live conversations and lectures if of
course to have an ever growing repository of really useful and
instructional thoughts and ideas.

----------

Thats how I think possible elements of a roadmap could look like. We will
focus in the coming months to realize this in a new Austrian case study,
but if you all deal with at the same time these questions nationally and
come up with creative answers and we can inspire each other, then I think
our Workshop was useful.
 
Giuseppe, Abdullah, Jakub, Julija, Laura,  to name a few: I know that you
have been working in these directions. Let us know on the country pages in
the Wiki, so we all get encouraged!

http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?VideoBridge/CountryPages

all the best

Franz