BarnCamp 2013 ideas scratchpad
A page to gather together ideas for the next BarnCamp in June 2013.
Overall themes
Overall ideas for theming the event, such as current trends, emerging technologies, etc.
Workshop ideas
These are workshops/talks of between one and two hours in length.
Domain names and email addresses: how do they work?
- Proposer
- adelayde
- Duration
- 60 mins
- Level of technical skill
- Begginner to intermediate
- Nerd factor
- medium, but useful
- Required
- minimum laptop and project, though could do it with just a white board. Maximum, guess it would be fun to be able to use the BW suite so that people can play with whois, dig, etc.
In my day job as well as doing support stuff for social projects, I find that there is a lot of confusion out there about these two essential parts of the Internet. People seem to 'get' what a web site is and that you can have it designed by someone and hosted by someone, and you might have to pay for this. People also get that they can register domains, but domains and web sites don't mean email addresses, and what is a domain anyway?
DNS and email are interesting because they require openness and collaboration on the part of hundreds or thousands of sys admins throughout the world; it's very much a web of trust, with the exception of the TLDs being controlled by corporates and governments, but that's not the point here; this is about how it works and the fact that it works, not about corporate power over the TLDs, though it's worth mentioning.
- Definition: separating out domain names, email addresses, web sites and web addresses.
- Here I fear we're going to have to cover ports and protocols
- Domain names and DNS
- IP addresses and domain names: their relationship - This is the key thing without it the internet would suck!
- How it was in the beginning (why the need?)
- How it is now
- Registrars and registering domains (choice, TLDs, anonymity, privacy)
- Email
- The format of email addresses
- Email servers and how it works
- Different ways to get your email (webmail, GUI-based clients, Elm and that kind of thing)
- A look at the headers of a typical email message
- SPAM
- How to have your own email address on your own domain
- Pros and cons of paying for it, verses free commercial, verses free hacktivist-provided
- Web sites (cover for completeness)
- What are they? (web servers are file servers / HTML)
- Different types: static vs dynamic
- CMS's
- Hosting pros and cons: activist-run vs corporate free vs paid for
- All the above in the context of "Cloud" hosting
Introduction to Aquaponics
- Proposer
- China (to fill in)
- Duration
- Level of technical skill
- beginner?
- Nerd factor
- low
- Required
CiviCRM
- Proposer
- China (to fill in)
- Duration
- Level of technical skill
- Nerd factor
- Required
Why Drupal is the bane of my web development life
- Proposer
- adelayde/haystack
- Format
- rant
- Duration
- 15-20 mins
- Level of technical skill
- intermediate, although it's a rant
- Nerd factor
- medium/high/danger
- Required
- projector for some slides
Home brewing
Details to follow ....
- Proposer
- Duration
- Level of technical skill
- Nerd factor
- Required
Mapping Online Organising Tools
- Proposer
- ???
- Duration
- 60 mins
- Level of technical skill
- none
- Nerd factor
- low
- Required
- wall
10 mins (optional)
Start a quick open discussion on the subject - via a warm up. For example could do a spectrum line one "Online organising and outreach is THE most important part of campaigning today."
10 mins
Give out several post-it notes. The notes are of two colours. Say - orange for activities and green for tools or software to do it. Activities are like organising a demonstration as a group, radical discussion group, publicisting a benefit gig,. Write down as many as possible in 5 mins. During the process help participants get ideas flowing on to the notes and prevent them getting bogged down in details.
5 mins
Draw attention to an imaginary matrix on the wall. I explain what the matrix means. The vertical axis represents ease of use of the tool, how accessible it is, (not how widely it is used). At the top is very accessible. The horizontal axis represents how private or secure we feel the tools is, issues of selling data and surveillance can be introduced here but just lightly, don't get stuck here. The goals is to - Place all notes in the matrix. Place the note to the far left if you think it it is vital. Place it towards the right if you think it is not relevant to the target audience or can’t fit in this course.
5 mins
To start the process the facilitator takes notes at random and asks the group where they should go. Try not to direct this too much with your opinion but chip in with facts if you think it's useful.
10/ 15 mins
Now move to getting up close and personal to the notes, with everyone getting up and involved in placing notes on the matrix. When all notes are placed in the matrix, I encourage people to start grouping the notes into areas and to share the reasons for moving the notes around. The matrix activity starts with people acting individually or as pairs and as it moves to end stages I encourage bigger group discussions. If we get bogged down I move things on to another area letting people know that this activity is just to get a sense of the issues.
15 mins - or to end
Review this as a group. Examine the different areas, activities and tools and invite thoughts, comments or questions. What are people's knowledge of tools like How can those tools interact? What are some possible tactics? ie with cross-posting from anonymous blogs to twitter, FB, to minimise data sharing. This is the time to pitch in with your own thoughts and opinions and tactic. What tools do you use and why? What would you avoid and why? In this last section try to make references to how people can follow this up with their own research and to resources to do that.
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
Longer, half-day hack sessions
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?
Events and entertainment ideas
Stuff to do in the evenings. Llanos is co-ordinating organising the Ents. Current plan:
- Well we have the fireside and poetry, story telling and accoustic music most welcome.
- Thursday night: round the camp fire.
- Friday night: film night in the main Barn.
- Saturday night: open-mic, stand-up, DJs in the main Barn.
Anything else
Anything else you can think of.
Areas for production aspects
(adelayde)
Areas that need sorting I can think are:
- workshop spaces: tables, chairs, pens, flip charts, plug sockets, projectors, screens, laptops, structures
- toilets: straw bales, tarps, structures, lighting, loo roll.
- kitchen: food, tea and coffee, structure, cooking equipment, washing up facilities, crokery and cutlery
- fire: fire pit, wood, fire extinguishers, etc.
- site: flat land for camping, proximity to toilets, fire precautions, sign-posting, transport
- welcome desk: table, chairs, pens, booking system, finance and payments, contact telephone numbers, volunteers
- workshop/barncamp/hack session planning
- ents: stage or no stage, sound system, DJs, campfire entertainment, etc.
- bar: beer, cider, soft drinks, float, cashbox, physical bar space, staffing.
- infrastructure: on-site internet and wifi, ethernet cabling, mains cabling
- promotion: 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.