Discussion

On LinuxTag 2007 there were an informal 3h-meeting talking about the future of Oekonux. This page documents this meeting. There is also an interesting podcast from the meeting available (German).

Agenda

The agenda is based on the results of the survey which has been done on [pox] about this topic some time ago. Everyone who takes part in the meeting should have read the results of the survey.

  1. Things to keep

    This section is meant to identify what has proven useful and valuable in the past and therefore should be kept. This should relate to Oekonux as a project as well as Oekonux as a theory.

    Unless completely new points come up this section can be short.

    Input for this section can be found in the keywords about the past.

    The result of this section should be a list of no more than 5 points.

  2. Current problems

    This section should identify the current problems.

    Unless completely new problems come up this section can be short.

    Input for this section can be found in the keywords about the problems:

    The result of this section should be a list of no more than 3 main problems and may be a second list of further problems.

  3. Possible solutions

    Based on what to keep and what problems to solve this section should focus on possible solutions. At least a part of it could be done as a brainstorm.

    This section should get most of the time.

    Input for this section can be found in the keywords about the todos.

    The result of this section should be ideas to solve the recognized problems while keeping what is considered valuable.

  4. Next steps

    This section should end up in some next steps based on the results of the previous sections.

Minutes

Throughout the meeting here and there there were also some interesting side discussions about Oekonux topics. These are not documented here. If you understand German you may want to check out the podcast.

Participants:
  • StefanMn
  • StefanMz
  • FlorianS
  • ChistianS
  • HolgerW (partly)

Things to keep

What should be kept is largely oriented on the keywords about the past with some slight modifications.

Oekonux as a project
  • Meta project about Free movements
  • Knowledge collection and public presentation
  • Valuable and inspiring discussions
  • Participants come from different backgrounds
Oekonux theory
  • Reflection of developments in Free movements
  • Perspective: Whole society, new society, positive future
  • Stands for a new, sustainable political theory
  • Theory based on visible evidence from Free movements

Current problems

General
  • Finding a new focus / common goals
  • Next steps are unclear
  • Deep discussions happen no more
Specific
  • 4th conference doesn't take off
  • Useable theory documentation lacking
  • Virtual infrastructure is not adequate

Possible solutions / to-dos

Oekonux 1.0 vs. Oekonux 2.0

It was generally agreed that in Oekonux there was a phase where a lot of theory building has been done. A lot has been achieved during this first phase and we were quite successful with this.

Though it is still useful and necessary to gather input from other thinkers and empirical evidence in Free projects now we seem to be more in a stabilization phase as far as theory is concerned.

What seems to be needed is declaring something like an Oekonux 2.0 with a new goal beyond theory creation. However, what this goal could be is not clear as of now. The mailing lists should be definitely asked about this and we should take time before such a step.

One idea was to add a movement part to Oekonux. I.e. after reflecting reality in Oekonux 1.0 attempting to change things, get involved, organize campaigns and so on. This could also involve stronger networking with others. Such a change would probably tear Oekonux into two parts. In particular some of the participants had strong concerns with such a move.

Currently behind the scenes there are some attempts to network more. Especially there are attempts to network Oekonux, Hipatia and the P2P Foundation. Oekonux 2.0 could play a role in such a network. For instance a role as a theory consultant could be useful.

Regardless of how Oekonux 2.0 looks like the work for Oekonux 1.0 could and should be continued.

A discussion about this should be done soon.

Internal workshops

One idea was to have more workshops where we discuss theoretical topics face-to-face. This could be an attempt to re-introduce deep discussions.

Workshops could be done during conferences or separately. To organize a workshop is much less work than a conference so separate workshops could be much easier.

To include people unable to attend a workshop there could be a video/audio stream with a back channel so people can participate from remote places.

It could be an idea to have such workshops as part of other events where lots of infrastructure are already present - such as the LinuxTag, the CCC congress or the WOS.

For such workshops external people from whom we can learn something could be invited or participate remotely.

Topics for such workshops could be:

  • Extension of Oekonux theory to material production

    Though there is some theory about extending Oekonux theory to material production several people feel that there should be some more answers.

    It would be interesting to invite interesting people from outside of Oekonux to such a workshop.

    This would be part of Oekonux 1.0.

  • Extension of Oekonux theory to politics / government

    Though there are some thoughts on the OHA topic this topic is far from well answered. This could also be an interesting topic for a special workshop.

    This would be part of Oekonux 1.0.

Theory documentation / book

The body of theory developed in Oekonux is not well documented. Especially for people new to Oekonux it is very hard to access the Oekonux theory.

There is the introduction which currently is a list of bullet points. Though it is good for a quick overview this is not very accessible for complete newbies.

There is a lot of theoretical material which could and should be collected and written down. It would be good to end up in a book. Such a book should be done as a uniform text which is probably done best by a single person.

Another form could be an FAQ. This would be similar to the bullet point lists and contradicts typical reading habits. May be the material for a book could be re-organized for an FAQ.

Such an effort would be part of Oekonux 1.0.

Web sites

Currently the Oekonux web sites have to main functions:

  1. Host the mailing list archives
  2. Offer some texts

It has been discussed whether a general overhaul of the web sites would make sense. To answer this question we need to identify (possible) groups we want to target with the web site and check out what the requirements of these groups are.

A CMS could be used to manage a web site.

Blogs

Blogs have some advantages but as of now we were not able to identify advantages relevant for Oekonux. What could make sense is to gather blogs from Oekonux affine people - when they come into existance.

Wikis

People mentioned that the current Wiki is quite unstructured. The German Wiki certainly is unstructured for the most part. The English Wiki, however, has been cleaned up and reorganized by StefanMn. Everyone is asked to check the English Wiki and to tell whether

  • they can recognize a structure
  • if so whether the structure is fine

It should be clarified what the goals of the Wiki could be. Some ideas were

  • medium to write the book
  • place to document results from the mailing lists
  • place for the introduction
  • place for reference texts about standard questions where people can be referred to
  • place for other projects according to the garden plan idea

It should be considered whether closing the German Wiki makes sense. Currently nobody seems to be interested in the German Wiki - while StefanMn has been working in the English Wiki. The interesting parts could be frozen or moved to static web pages.

Wikis are no good facility to discuss.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists are good facility to discuss but a bad facility to collect and persist knowledge won.

It has been considered whether [ox-de] finally should be closed down. The reason for this is that still nothing much happens and now there is no hope that this will ever change. The external image of this list is bad.

Before such a step [ox-de] should be asked for what the German list is useful for them and what they are ready to do on the list. May be there is some result.

An idea could be to merge [ox-en] and [ox-de] to an English speaking, general Oekonux list with the subject tag of [ox]. This could also be a quite natural way to change the mail addresses of the lists so the spam amount can be reduced by new, non-harvestable mail addresses.

Repository of Free projects

This has been discussed a bit. It was not clear who creates entries in such a repository: Some maintainer or the projects themselves. If a project can enter itself there needs to be some approval process to maintain quality.

If relevant projects enter themselves the question is how those projects learn about such a repository.

Such a repository could be done as a database application.

It could be an option to ask P2P Foundation whether they are ready to maintain such a repository. Problem would be that Oekonux wants to limit the sort of projects according to Oekonux theory. One solution could be to create categories.

It would be useful to have some platform which defines boundaries of what is ok and what not.

4th conference

What we need most for a 4th conference is

  1. Raising funds
  2. Location

    There are two locations outside of Germany where a 4th conference could take place: Manchester and Rome. It is not clear how many local support there is actually.

    Another option could be to have the 4th conference in Germany again. It could be an option to have a cooperation with another similar event like

    • CCC conference

      Probably not a good place because the content is quite different and the time between the years is bad.

    • LinuxTag

      LinuxTag could be an option but it is huge compared to the Oekonux conference.

    • WOS

      If Volker agrees this could be a nice option. The content probably matches best the Oekonux topics.

    Such a cooperation could lower the organizational effort needed very much.

    To have a conference in parallel to another needs organizational considerations.

We want to have the 4th conference next year - though the next LinuxTag is already quite close in time.

Oekonux/Project/Future/Meeting2007 06 02 (last edited 2007-06-12 16:03:37 by StefanMerten)

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