[HacktionLab] Picnic table zoom

Mon Apr 20 11:05:48 UTC 2020

An interesting statement here is "The rule that tech groups only talk about
tech and never tech as a social relationship" - whose rule is this? I'd say
a basic premise of groups like HacktionLab is considering the social
aspects of tech. In my experience, even mainstream tech workers have
awareness and practices, albeit to varying degrees. I think this more
demonstrates the bias against technologists.

brent

Ps. On a slightly related note, a friend's looking for second-life type
alternatives, for therapy-oriented group work ("immersive worlds rather
than VR). Is second life still a thing or any suggestions?
https://hubs.mozilla.com/ looks ok.

On Sun, 19 Apr 2020 at 14:52, Michael Reinsborough <m.reinsborough at qub.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Hacktion,
>
>
>
> How is lock down treating you?
>
>
>
> I wondered what kind of comments people had about software and use of
> software for online meetings/discussions/organizing
>
>   Or even online organizing (!!break the rules! The rule that tech groups
> only talk about tech and never tech as a social relationship)
>
>
>
> I think at first the lockdown has shut down the left, or certainly
> curtailed much of activity that was based on face to face meetings.
> Although in some other ways things have taken off, like Facebook mutual aid
> groups.  Momentum, for example, was already mostly an online organization
> before this and is now organizing workshops about online-organizing (zoom,
> whatsapp, slack, airtable).
>
>   I do think it is pretty important that our
> anarchist/lefty/feminist/eco-or-whatever types of stuff that we do, doesn’t
> just take a hiatus.  The entire economy is shutting down, small business
> and independent contractors first, the handouts designed to hold capitalism
> in place (placeholder) til it can get back to normal except worse (greater
> acceptance on online surveillance aka public health protection, greater
> state role overall at the same time as fiscal policy of Tories will want to
> be claiming back as much of their placeholder expenditure, austerity?).
> Economic crisis like 2008 or worse.  Within 6 months of that autumn 2008
> crisis beginning to reveal itself we had 10,000 people at the Bank of
> England (in a different type of lockdown- a kettle, but the governors knew
> people were mad and organized and willing to break the rules).  We’re
> potentially looking at 18 months of lockdown before a vaccine.  Confronting
> the total inability of the economic system to deal with civilization
> threatening climate change has been shelved in favour of the more immediate
> life-threatening inability of the economic system to care enough about care
> workers (or service sector/renter/lowly economy) to protect us from
> death/generational eclipse/gera-cide/genera-cide of the 60s
> generation/pre-babyboomers.  Yet at the same time the transition from
> automobile manufacturing to ventilator manufacturing by factories at short
> notice shows clearly that (if the social relationship dictates the
> technology then) we can have socially useful production: A green new deal
> of the titanic proportions necessary to confront climate collapse is
> possible!
>
>   But this isn’t going to happen by itself, especially with BoJo coming
> back to life on Easter Sunday to do a sermon on the mount about Tory
> reverence for NHS workers.
>
>
>
>   Physical distancing, social solidarity
>
>   So practical question – what types of software, training, practice etc.
> do we need to provide as techies to support online organizing?
>
>       Are there relevant
> security/privacy/cooperation-when-you-aren’t-face-to-face trust issues that
> we could solve?
>
>       Is it better to emulate geography in virtual organizing, i.e. do
> “local” organizing that can both now (mutual aid groups) and after lockdown
> (square off against austerity round-two) translate to the streets?
> Streets are always local, local to someplace.  Or do we have meetings that
> are people from every-anywhere?  Or mixed?
>
>       How does the British direct-action community deal with lockdown?  Is
> there a special type of lock down organizing for this (our) community or
> does it just play scrabble (online) for 18 months?
>
>       Should we be trying to build new software that better does what we
> need or do we work better with what is out there already?  Remember in
> organizing you can bring the people to the mountain or the mountain to the
> people.  Wouldn’t most of us say it worked badly trying to bring
> millennials internet 2.0 kids to the encryption/secure communication
> mountain? Or is there still debate about what went wrong with our
> abstentionist strategy?
>
>       So, here is an example of what a tech conversation might be able to
> answer: How would we do picnic table zoom?  The direct-action community has
> in the past used large scale (200 people or so) consensus process meetings
> [or consensus/dissensus - in most circumstances there is no need to agree
> about everything (‘diversity of tactics’) in order to participate in mass
> action against capitalism/capitalist globalization/militarism etc.].  And
> one social innovation (social technology!) to do this was using picnic
> tables arranged in a circle with a swivel chair in front of each one,
> facilitators at the centre of the circle, and each group at the picnic
> table was an affinity group.  There were proposals with lots of time for
> each picnic table to discuss among themselves, then all people still
> sitting in place turn their attention from their picnic table conversation
> to the circle of picnic tables and a feedback session begins.  Each picnic
> table has a person in the chair at the front of their picnic table who
> speaks from their table in the circle of tables conversation.  So 200
> people in a 20 picnic table circle has only 20 persons in the speaking
> circle doing a facilitated conversation about specific proposals- but
> everyone can hear, tables can talk (quietly) among themselves, advise their
> speaker, or even swap out who speaks from their picnic table (so its 20
> persons in speaking circle at any given moment but not necessarily the same
> 20 persons throughout). If a new proposal or synthesis comes out of the
> circle of 20 speakers (plus facilitators, scribes, notetakers, etc) the
> tables can go back to individual table conversation to discuss among
> themselves before returning to the circle of picnic tables conversation to
> finalize what the group of groups agrees/disagrees.  After which all can
> enter the mass action knowing what others will be doing (although not
> necessarily controlling what others will be doing).
>
>   I know zoom and other software have a ‘breakout groups’ function.  Is
> there a way to adapt this for picnic table zoom or would we need different
> software?
>
>
>
>   Picnic table zoom is an interesting example.  But just more generally:
> what types of software, training, practice etc. do we need to provide as
> techies to support online organizing?
>
>
>
> Social Solidarity and Autonomy, (physical distancing),
>
>   Michael 😉
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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