[HacktionLab] Exciting news from HacktionLab

[M3shrom]

Hi everyone there's only a few of left here and our last job is to send
an email to the list.

We had the 10th Hacktionlab at Bradford this weekend at the legendary 1
in 12 club. http://www.1in12.com/

Here was the agenda -
http://hacktivista.net/hacktionlab/index.php/Winter_2012_Hacklab
and
the minutes
http://hacktivista.net/hacktionlab/index.php/Winter_2012_Hacklab_Minutes

It was an intimate and low key gathering where we didn't really focus on
the tech but more on the strategy of how the projects we are involved
with interact. Also, how can we build on what we've done for the
future.  We took pretty minimal minutes but made some key steps that are
detailed below.

We got feedback from alan on the Social Contract for Communications
Providers <http://and.nothingtohide.is/policy/>
and we agreed that it was a 'good thing' and that we wanted to be active
in this process.

We talked about the tools we offer. There was some blue sky discussion
about consolidating our projects into a more coherent legal entity to
better represent the projects.

We talked about what we really wanted to achieve and came up with some
broad areas including,

* better legal support for those running the services
* finding funding for the resources (ideally membership contributions
but maybe some bigger handouts)
* a more accessible and clearer presentation of the tools/ services we
are promoting
* better interaction with other groups (campaign, advocacy)
* clearer roles for and engagement with to help us out running and
promoting the services.

We agreed that we didn't want to plan an overblown solution to all of
this but wanted to slowly move towards achieving these goals, tweaking
what we do and not breaking things that kind of work.

We came to the conclusion that we would propose a framework to link
existing projects in which the people in the following projects are
involved; aktivix, hacktionlab, network23, indy.im.

We still have more work to do to decide exactly how we organise and make
decisions and criteria for who is involved and how they are involved. We
are going to have an irc meeting about this in three weeks time more or
less.

We are excited to say that we also made the following decisions.

Set up a new website at techtoolsforactivism.org which lists 'Tech
Tools' that we provide. There is a demo of what this would be here -
http://pxr5.hacktivista.net - this is a work in process. This
effectively replaces the proposed new hacktionlab website. 

To set up an informal working group to gather information about the pros
and cons of becoming a legal entity with a focus on legal protection.

We decided to work together to raise money for infrastructure costs,
focusing on a grass-roots approach to fundraising but not excluding
possible hand outs.

When talking about HacktionLab on tour, No-one came forward to organise
a BarnCamp but we are up for doing workshops at other events. 

We also thought it was great that LARC may be able to host a HacktionLab
as we can do some workshops there but we don't have the time to convene
and organise the practicalities. Over to you, London! ;)

We are really happy with with the Tech Tools for Activism booklet cover.
It looks great. Some of us also expressed that it would be great to have
a second cover style which we would appeal to fluffier groups, ngos etc
as it is quite hardcore! Maybe some kittens that are masked-up? I'm up
for convening an irc meeting or asking Ben to do it to take the next step.

Sorry for briefness of this, but some of us need to rush off.

this was jointly written by 5 of us
sorry if it in anyway isn't totally representative of the people that
left early



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