BarnCamp 2013 ideas scratchpad

Workshop proposals for BarnCamp in June 2013. Book on-line before 6th June.

Next BarnCamp ideas here | Barn Camp 2015 workshop ideas .

Overall themes

Overall ideas for theming the event, such as current trends, emerging technologies, etc.

Microslots (5-10 mins)

Oxford Geek Nights do these 5 minute things called microslots. Propose to have these once, or maybe twice, during the event. Format would be: stand up for 5 - 10 mins with slides if you wish and tell us about your self/project/org/thoughts/need for cash.

Proposals for Microslots:

• Network23: what is it and why you need to run one?
• Why ditch your commercial email provider for aktivix (maybe together with below?)
• Aktivix Email and Email lists
• Call to get involved with FLOSS Manuals community
• Create Booklets like Tech Tools for activism with Book Type software
• About Encrypt your email with PGP course, Open badges & other courses on p2pu.org
• Why Drupal is the bane of my web development life.

Workshops (1-2 hours)

These are workshops/talks of between one and two hours in length.

Digital Technology & the History of Capitalism

Proposer

luddites200

Format

Talk

Duration

60 minutes

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

low (all though it is computer stuff)

Required

to confirm

We have been celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprisings, which were essentially protests against the beginnings of the industrial capitalist system. In our time we are in the midst of a new industrial revolution based on digital technology, and there are major debates about issues such as surveillance and the impact of this technology on people's lives and society at large. What these debates lack, even in radical circles, is that the technology is often taken as given, and there is little understanding of where the technologies came from, in terms of the historical development of the capitalist system. This workshop will take a look at that history in order to help us better understand the current debates.

Your blog and on-line communities with Wordpress Networks

The idea of this workshop is to look at running your own blog running Wordpress' software whilst avoiding corporate providers, such as Wordpress.com. The workshop will have a special focus on a network of Wordpress sites, such as Network23.org, and how to build a community around this. We'll look at the differences between Wordpress.com, the commercial company, and Wordpress.org, the open source software; how to register your domain and set it up; an overview of managing your blog, with a focus on audio, video and networking tools; and finally a discussion and proposals for how to build a better community.

The workshop will be based around both a local install of multisite Wordpress so that people can create and play with their own blogs, as well as the online Network23.org service, where people are invited to bring their own domains with them to see how to link their web site address up to their blog. We'll use the FLOSS Manual pages for Wordpress and have some networked computers available to use.

Proposer

adelayde

Format

Hands-on workshop and discussion

Duration

2 hours

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

low (all though it is computer stuff)

Required

projector, local web server, Bristol Wireless computer suite, internet, bring yourself and your computer, and your own domain if you have one.

Part I: Introduction

• Introduction to Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org and what the difference is.
• What is multisite Wordpress (aka a Wordpress Network) and what is Network23.org?

Part II: Wordpress overview

Covering the main steps to get your site going from a vanilla site, including:

• Site Settings
• Themes
• Pages
• Blog Entries
• Media
• Links
• Menu
• Plugins

Part III: Your web address

• Different naming schemes, using your own domain (e.g. www.mysite.com) vs using a sub domain (e.g. mysite.network23.org) vs using a sub-directory (e.g. network23.org/mysite).
• What is a domain name? What are DNS servers, etc?
• Registering your domain name: registrars, registrants, etc.
• Differences between web forwarding, setting DNS servers, A records, CNAME records, IP addresses.
• Domain mapping in Wordpress

Part IV: Wordpress Communities

Discussion on how we can better create a community around a site such as Network23.org. There are various tools, such as RSS, "Share Me" tools, BuddyPress, and of course mailing lists....

Introduction to Aquaponics

Proposer

Sean

Duration

30 to 60 minutes

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

low, non-vegetarian subject matter

Required

Projector

Urban farming is an experimental phase currently. Talking control of our food supply is almost as important as talking control of our own technologies in safeguarding our future freedom against encroaching Corportisaton in all aspects of our lives. Bristol fish project is a small part off this movement to see if we can close resource loops in urban areas and take steps to provide for ourselves.

CiviCRM

Proposer

Sean

Duration

One hour

Level of technical skill

Beginner

Nerd factor

lowish

Required

Projector

CiviCRM is a free tool to manage an organisation's contact database and it's relations with it's 'clients'.

CiviCRM is also an open source community that involves everyone from the very skilled developers to the completely uninitiated user in a team pulling together to improve communications for charities, community organisations, campaigns and anyone else seeking to organise to make changes for the better in society.

This is a brief overview of how it works to introduce the software from a user perspective.

Home brewing

Details to follow ....

Proposer

Laura

Duration

Level of technical skill

Nerd factor

Required

Overview of Online Organising Tools

Proposer

Mick Fuzz

Duration

60 mins

Level of technical skill

none

Nerd factor

low

Required

wall & projector & net connection

This quick workshops maps the online organising and networking tools people are using, and begins discussions of easy of use, inclusiveness, security and data ownership issues in an accessible way designed to encourage us to try out new tools and share knowledge of well trusted ones.

Possible resources=== techtoolsforactivism.org & leaftlet hacktionlab.org https://www.tacticaltech.org/ - security in a box aktivix.org

Android Device Hacking

Proposer

acesabe

Duration

60 mins

Level of technical skill

Beginner to advanced

Nerd factor

medium

Required

Projector (ideally) laptop and Android device to play with (optional for attendees)

Loads of us have Android devices now so lets find out a bit more about maximizing their potential, limiting the security pitfalls that come with them and learn more about just what useful things we can get these mini computers to do! It is unlikely we will do much physical rooting/flashing of devices as each device requires different methods/tools and needs careful reading up about first, but the theory and demonstration should be helpful.

• Rooting your device to enable full control and install all those useful apps that require it
• Installing ROMs like AOSP, CyanogenMod
• De-google'ing your Android
• Recovery
• Share which useful apps people are using
• ADB the Android debug bridge
• Flash? brick? ROM? Kang? WTF?! Explanation of terms

Linux Command Line (Beginners)

Proposer

Woodsy

Duration

60 mins

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

medium

Required

laptop (for attendees)

Mark & myself did this as a two-hander a couple of yours ago and I was thinking of repeating the workshop along very similar lines.

• Basic navigation
• Finding help (man pages)
• File/directory management
• An introduction to command line programs, including:
  • Web browsing
  • Document/text editing
  • IRC
  • Command line media players
  • Command line games

Cryptoparty

Proposer

Martin

Duration

Depends on needs, We could do an hour or possibly a longer session, will discuss

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

medium

Required

laptop + net connection

A workshop based on cryptopartys that have been going on around the world. The idea is to make people aware and comfortable with the various encryption technologies we can use to protect ourselves from monitoring. The format is more of a discussion of the needs of people there and how to best use privicy tools for their needs

How to build your own telephone system

Proposer

John Cahill

Duration

30 minutes

Level of technical skill

none

Nerd factor

Medium

Required

Projector

Description

How to set-up a telephone system using free and open source software.

• Until a few years ago a handful of companies controlled the telephone system in both the UK and the rest of the world.
• Telephone calls went over a pair of copper wires from your home to an "exchange" where electronic circuits switched these

calls depending on the phone number you required.

• The numbers were issued and controlled by the same monopolies who owned the wires and the exchanges, with the blessing of governments.
• The ability to make calls over the internet, (similar to skype), has thrown something of a spanner into the works.
• It is now possible to build telephone systems entirely from free and open source software.
• Because these systems are built to open standards they can talk to each other. i.e we can federate them.
• I will demonstrate such a system and give a summary of how it works.

A people's bank

Proposer

John Cahill

Duration

45 minutes

Level of technical skill

none

Nerd factor

Medium

Required

Projector

Description

A proposal for the establishment of a people's bank.

• The mision: To establish a people's bank based on the principles of community, co-operation and mutualism.
• I'm planning to kick off a project in May, (in Oxford) , called oxcred (see: oxcred.org.uk).
• It is inspired by the TEM project in Volos, Greece. I will show a short documentary about this project.
• It will use the free and open source cyclos banking software, (see cyclos.org).
• I will discuss how this system will work in practice and demonstrate the cyclos banking software.

Get Evangelical with Ardour

Proposer

DJ One-Eye and MC Two-Hats

Duration

60 minutes

Level of technical skill

none

Nerd factor

None

Required

Projector

Description

An early evening workshop to demonstrate how to use a laptop, soundcard, ardour and audio mixer, guitar and bongos, kazoo, turnups, jumpers to create evangelical music with "Free Software about Free Software".

Please bring poems and tunes to contribute.

Learn to speak Vim (Beginners)

Proposer

Charlie

Duration

60 mins

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

medium

Required (by participants)

laptop (ideally with Vim installed on it (you can download Vim at http://www.vim.org/download.php ))

Required (by facilitator)

Projector and screen, ideally internet connection

Increasingly we all need to deal with text on computers, whether we are writing a revolutionary communiqué or a leaflet for our local allotment. Wordprocessors are great for layout but clunky as hell for manipulating text. Programmers have known this for years and have developed specialist tools for manipulating text called text editors. Along with emacs, Vim is one of the world's most powerful text editors. Learning Vim is like learning a new language. This workshop will help those who haven't spoken Vim before master the basic grammar and some simple (but powerful) Vim phrases.

Notes:

• This workshop is not aimed at convincing you that Vim is the best editor (no because Emacs obviously is ;-P)
• I don't think it will be suitable for advanced Vim users, but you never know.

How processors and logic chips work & how they're made

Proposer

Kriptick

Duration

1 1/2 - 2 hrs

Level of technical skill

beginner

Nerd factor

low, a very basic knowledge of electricty would be handy

Required

Flip chart, Projector would be handy

Suitable for anyone at all who's curious to know at a simplified level just what's going on inside the silicon chips in their iphones etc. This will include an introduction to binary logic and arithmetic, a potted history of the development of computers and their components, how these amazing little flecks of silicon are made starting from beach sand, why they have such a large environmental footprint and what would be the likelihood of any hacktivist types ever developing our own open source processors free from the tyranny of intel (boo, hiss).

Sugar CRM Email campaigns

Proposer

Marsbard

Duration

40 mins to 1 hour

Level of tech skill

low to medium

Nerd favor

low, to a bit more nerdy in the last 20 mins

Required

projector, one laptop per 2 people

Sugar CRM is a customer relationship management system built in PHP. It has excellent email capabilities which will be covered in this session. Additionally for more advanced users with some PHP programming capabilities I'll show the extension points for adding custom logic to the system.

The following items will be covered:

• Installing Sugar CRM on a web server. If you have your own web server you may install it directly to there, otherwise a temporary server will be set up for you, for the duration of the workshop.
• Adding custom fields to the standard modules.
• Creating a custom module.
• Adding contacts and then creating an email target list from those contacts.
• Creating an email campaign
• Creating a couple of email templates representing emails to be sent during a campaign.

The final 20 minutes will be more advanced, participants who do not wish to be involved in the advanced section may skip this.

• Database structure of inbuilt modules and customisations thereof
• Database structure of completely custom modules
• The complex joins to get at emails
• Logic hooks - (the community edition does not include workflow but you can do all the workflow you need using logic hooks)

Innovations in loudspeaker design

Proposer

Phil

Duration

1 1/2 hrs

Level of technical skill

Beginner

Nerd factor

medium, a basic knowledge of how a normal loudspeaker works would help (magnet, coil, cone etc).

Required

Laptop (two or three sharing per computer would be ok)

Download and install software prior to session to save time: http://www.hornresp.net/ http://www.randteam.de/_Software/AkAbak/Download-AkAbak.html

Discuss shortcomings of traditional full-range and sub-bass speakers

show a couple of DIY loudspeakers designs that bring top quality sound at a fraction of the cost of conventional equipment.

Briefly look at Hornresp design software

Use Hornresp to generate text script as basis of more advanced design in Akabak

Discuss issues around 3D design using software such as AutoCAD

Dynamic modelling of economic systems

Proposer

Phil

Duration

1 1/2 hrs

Level of technical skill

Low

Nerd factor

Medium

Required

Laptop (sharing will be ok)

Download and install software prior to session:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/minsky/

You will get more out of this session if you do some reading beforehand:

http://keenomics.s3.amazonaws.com/debtdeflation_media/papers/9780230_203372_10_cha09.pdf

http://keenomics.s3.amazonaws.com/debtdeflation_media/papers/Keen1993UseValueDemiseLabourTheoryValue_JHET15pp107-121.pdf

Critique of conventional neo-classical economic theories and of Marxist labour theory of value

Introduction of key principles of dynamic systems modelling

How does dynamic modelling of the economy work – double entry book-keeping, stocks and flows, endogenous money.

Demonstration of Minsky software

Discussion – what can this tell us about capitalism, can it be predictive, is it useful in any sense other than critique, can it be used to model non-monetary systems, will society always have some measure of value that will form a dynamic system?

Longer, half-day hack sessions (3-5 hours)

Sessions to be held on the Thursday or Friday that are 3-5 hours in length.

• Anyone want to do an Android and/or Raspberry Pi hacking session? The latter may be more accessible. Perhaps up to 4 hours.
• Mike could wheel out the old audio, streaming and internet radio workshops; but are there any takers?

Forest School

During Saturday and possibly Friday, we hope to run a Forest School on site for children and adults alike. The School will cover such things as making fires, building shelters, cooking food, tying knots and could culminate in a wild food walk where we forage for food.

More info on Forest Schools at http://www.forestschools.com/

Open Media Network Hack Sess

Re-building the open web Hack Session: What is the Open Media Network and how do we distribute it? (1.5 hours)

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of "stupidly simple" open standards, open databases and working practices.

We are building some hubs to flesh the OMN out. Currently there are over 20 sites in the network. A discussion on how web projects can get involved and develop different networks. In a nutshell we are looking at tools to aggregate and embed radical news and video players in partners websites in an easy to use way.

After outlining the concept we invite you to help us to build the tools needed. This hack session is aimed at people with some coding or scripting skills you can get involved to see what already exists, to test it and to hack around with it. We will run another outreach based session later in the gathering.

More info http://springofcode.org/organise/-/wiki/Main/OMN

Network23.org Web community hack in

Network 23 is an anonymous Wordpress blogging network. We invite you to join us to make the site look a bit better. To update the information on the front pages to make it clearer, to think about how we can encourage more peer to peer interaction to create more of a community.

All welcome, no tech skills needed, but some background knowledge of Wordpress and the project would be useful.

Themeing Wordpress & Moving your existing site to Wordpress

Proposer

adelayde

Duration

2 hours; up to 3 hours

Level of technical skill

Intermediate (some awareness of what HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP would be useful; previous use of Wordpress too)

Nerd factor

medium; it's not so much nerdy as geeky this one

Required

Projector, server laptop, LTSP suite or own laptops (suggest work alone or possibly in pairs)

A beginners introduction to how Wordpress themes work and how you can take an existing non-Wordpress site and move it to a hosting platform such as Network23.

Bring your non-Wordpress website along if you have one!!

Covers:

• Does the site even justify using a CMS?
• Discussion on using existing themes, child themes, barebones themes, or starting from scratch.
• Overview of how Wordpress themes work and the files involved.
• Overview of the Wordpress APIs (http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress.org_API) and those bits that are relevant to getting your first theme going.
• Setting up a new site in multisite Wordpress and making a custom theme for it.
• Using wget to fetch a static version of an existing site.
• Chopping it up and making it into a theme
  • Headers, Footers, Sidebars, Styles
  • Menus, Breadcrumbs
  • Other stuff

To do the above, we'll have a talk and demonstration for the first 20 minutes to 1/2 hour then a hands on practical working on terminals or our own laptops to convert an example web site (or a simple web site that anyone has).

DIY solar panels and 12volt workshop/discussion

Proposer

Martian, Llanos, Mike.

Duration

3hours

Level of technical skill

Low

Nerd factor

Low

Required

Big table, soldering iron, silicon, cells, old double glazing windows, spatulas, tapping wire, coating (q-sil)

Description

We will show people how to build a small solar panel (less than 10w) which we can later use for solar powered night lighting or maybe even charge your phone. The idea being that once you've learnt the method to make a small one and understand how it works you can build a bigger one by using a bigger window, more cells and a more powerful battery. This will be only a demo, however people might be able to get hands on with soldering, wiring etc.. but bear in mind that there will be only 1 panel to build.

We will be getting cells from Demand Energy Equality and following their tutorial.

12 volt sound systems

Using this page as a guide - http://mbharris.co.uk/12-volt-sound-system-battery-calculator/ - we'll look at what kit you'll need for your all night rave.

We'll be showing and demostrating how a solar 12V systme works, how to set it up, devices to use and more important understanding what it can do and not.

Split-charge relays

Little things you put in your live-in vehicle, van or caravan to help handle charging your batteries.

Events and entertainment ideas

Stuff to do in the evenings. Llanos is co-ordinating organising the events. Current plan:

• We'll have the fireside and poetry: story telling and acoustic music most welcome.
• Thursday night: round the camp fire.
• Friday night: film night in the main Barn. Add your film or documentaries ideas to the list here.
• Saturday night: open-mic, stand-up, DJs in the main Barn. Please get in touch for any requirement you might have if you are thinking on performing and we'll do our best to get you setup.
• Table tennis table, bats a balls confirmed from Thursday to Sunday courtesy of Bristol ping pong Parlour.
• FreeJamming with Ardour
• DJ Marcus (Village Disco, Dubrovnik..)
• Raveoke

Food

More on BarnCamp 2013 food planning.

Anything else

Anything else you can think of.

Areas for production aspects

(adelayde)

Areas that need sorting I can think are:

• workshop spaces (acesabe): tables, chairs, pens, flip charts, plug sockets, projectors, screens, laptops, structures
• toilets (farm): straw bales, tarps, structures, lighting, loo roll.
• kitchen (becky/sam): food, tea and coffee, structure, cooking equipment, washing up facilities, crokery and cutlery
• fire (woodsy): fire pit, wood, fire extinguishers, etc.
• site (farm): flat land for camping, proximity to toilets, fire precautions, sign-posting, transport
• welcome desk (adelayde/patrice): table, chairs, pens, booking system, finance and payments, contact telephone numbers, volunteers
• workshop/barncamp/hack session planning (m3shrom)
• ents (gorditazz): stage or no stage, sound system, DJs, campfire entertainment, etc.
• bar (higgsy/marsbard): beer, cider, soft drinks, float, cashbox, physical bar space, staffing.
• infrastructure (acesabe): on-site internet and wifi, ethernet cabling, mains cabling
• promotion: (adeladye/m3shrom) graphic design and concept, flyers and posters, web site, distribution of materials, mailing to lists, promotion at other events, getting the word out there generally.