BarnCamp 2013 ideas scratchpad

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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.

Microslots (5-10mins)

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 (poss 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?
  • Aktivix

Workshops (1-2 hours)

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
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
Required
Projector

Civicrm is 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.

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

Building your own basic web site from scratch

Proposer
adelayde
Format
workshop
Duration
2-2.5 hours
Level of technical skill
beginner to intermediate
Nerd factor
medium
Required
projector, some computers, web server

I can see how there's an enthusiasm for using Content Management Systems (CMSes), such as Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla!, but a lot of people have very simple web sites and CMSes can often be rather overkill. If one does any development, or even themeing/skinning, then learning their idosyncratic APIs can present a learning considerable learning curve. In addition CMSes can produce very unoptimised websites that perform literally hundreds of database queries to render a page and use a nasty web of nested HTML. With Drupal, often the case is that people place the sites behind a caching proxy, such as Varnish, in order to speed them up.

I'd like to do a workshop presenting the case that for simple web sites of say 6-10 pages, including a blog page, that learning some HTML, CSS, JQuery and PHP, oh and a decent editor that indents and highlights syntax, really is a good option, and it helps you understand how the web works.

With this in mind, I'd then like us to produce a simple web site using some of these technologies (obviously I'd need to provide some skeleton templates for this). We can each put up our own site on the local server and show it off at the end.

As a final comparison, we can look at the load on the server and the speed of the site when driven by a heavyweight CMS, and as static HTML.

Sensibly speaking this workshop may need to be up to 2.5 hours in length in order to produce anything.

Someone also suggested some other more lightweight software that may be of interest/relevance:

Home brewing

Details to follow ....

Proposer
Duration
Level of technical skill
Nerd factor
Required

Mapping 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.

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/

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. Please get in touch with Llanos if you'd like to play any short films or documentaries that night. It can be anything not necessarily political as long as we agree on it to be relevant or worth showing.
  • Saturday night: open-mic, stand-up, DJs in the main Barn: DJ Marcus (Village Disco, Dubrovnik..) confirmed. 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.

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.
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