chat with karrot and mattdowse
date: 2024-08-14
present: butze, nick, vas, jay, matt
notes: everyone
Matt: post-doc researcher at center for sociodigital futures, uni of bristol (ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures – Research Outputs — University of Bristol), has a lifespan of 5years, only recently finished phd, started as a music teacher, inclusion work, crime prev projects, child protection, left the council, got into 3rd sector, running a homeless charity in bristol, then did a PhD, after doing an MsC, not a kind of full blown academic, about the centre CENSOF is trying to explore the sociodigital (HCI) through an interdisciplinary setting, bristol school is more critical, non-capitalist-ish, mix of people in CENSOF, interesting convos going on between social scientists and technicians, what is value?, language is difficult among an interdisciplinary group, work in a team which is the organising domain, 4 ppl, (shut the business school ( Shut Down the Business School ) from one of colleagues), another book resisiting AI ( Bristol University Press | Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, By Dan McQuillan )and…, my job is to run projects, initial piece of reseach on community tech, RQ: what is community tech?, Nick was part of the first round, semi-stuctured interviews, interested about trust, how you create trust between yous?, interested in the commons, practice theory: that’s me!
Vas: vasilis. sounds familiar topics, studied business previously… then different paths, ended up in newcastle, submitted phd last month, hci, sociotechnical design, openlab newcastle, topic was alternatives to sharing economy - sharing for community, not profit or charity. met with nick, bruno, butze, for a cscw workshop during covid, got chatting, ended up being a full fledged member of karrot, over last 3.5 years. community tech part of interest definately. different notions of literature about community. read promising trouble report on community tech. submitted phd, expecting date to come to the UK and do defense. move to a small village in greece, co-ordinating a community maker space. got some funding in 2018 with greek organisation, also do hci, degrowth, “design global, manufacturer local” paradigm with full equipped maker space. jobless at the moment, looking for a postdoc that can be combined with makerspace in the countryside. got into karrot as a researcher, negotiating hats… after have a call with a researcher about digital civics… some questions about communities we engaged with. karrot became like a family, sometimes feel lazy but join call, feels good. a trust topic. people developing karrot, and people using karrot.
J: got involved in karrot through Nick via a local foodsharing group, briefly involved in fs locally, masters in the field of AI, whithin Karrot plan is mainly to contribute through programming, but got involved in the meetings as well
Nick: when ppl live on a boat, boat becomes the core identity! Nick lives on a boat then. stewarding the tech part, main developper, wasnt the original dev, have been part of it all the way through, conistent part of my life, commons, non capitalist approaches, critical perspectives in technology, reached a point wehtere i should go more tech or more sociological/philosophical, kind of enjoy existing in this emergent space, karrot quite precarious and quite resilient, working on how to weave it with my boat life, sort of want to use karrot as a basis for other projects to avoid dublication, on community tech: with these many definitions…in the gathering was a lot of high-end conversations, practiioner and the theorist of practice, is there a difference between the theory/analysis and practice?
butze (nickname): 12y ago when finished masters, how can I contribute to the world? got connected to foodsharing, big ideological dreams back in these days where I met Nick (wuppdays), there dif projects emerged and one of them was karrot.world, then I disengaged, analogue world sharing, then thought to go to local place and found ppl in HCI (plural economics), got connected to HCI ppl interested in food and tech and sustainability, working now in siegen and made my way to academia commbined with activism, I feel like ’ a community steward’, organising regular cooking event, adopt a chili plant, community gardens, have published papers, 2months ago submitted my thesis, at the moment supported Karrot (nordiCHI), sigen concentrated didnt have capacity to contribute to karrot but met nick again in foodsharing festival (lux). Dont do any specific task atm, like the philosophy, karrot is at the forefront of community tech, Community sypported software, similar reseach in fs (DE), where users participate in the desing of the platform, now I need to set my compass again, I often start projects but hight ideological stakes and sometimes I get frustrated, try to get in serenity, quite lucky, just got another contract for the next 3 years, intersted in the g-local
matt: I am a trombonist 
← sorry only trumpet emoji
wonder about framing what to do next, rather than delve into all the interesting topics right now. made the mistake before, not in the right place to capture everything said. then having to rework conversation.
how might we curate a particular space where we can talk about some of these things, presumably online, given where everyone is, and slightly more faciliated space? e.g. defining community tech…
initial proposal to nick, was that him and I spent 2 days, funding the time (now understand how karrot finances work), if we might all be available for 2 days online, faciliated, what we might want get out of that. want to make sure the products of our thinking might be useable, including outside of the university.
see if you 4 would be interested, and what we might produce from it. this initial focus I had on trust, came out of the conversation I had with nick, but chimed with me a lot. (aside, congrats for handing in phds). in thesis, included about trust, on collaboration in the 3rd sector in the uk. “theory of collaboration”, trying to disrupt it a bit by introducing vulnerability. so have a particular angle on trust. maybe something to talk about in relation to trust.
not quite sure how we go about having them right now, maybe experience of how trust is developed as a community, what it means, particularly interested in the act of generating open source tech, how it engenders trusting behaviours, if it does… what sort of trust is produceed, what does trust do. started to call “community tech” a practise rather than a thing. how does trust change/shift that. you have trust, so what difference it make.
question is: would be interested in that? and if so, what kind of financial support can I extract from the uni to put towards karrot’s pot. understanding a different between money karrot in, and money out. understand being in a rich institution. what might we produce from it, would be interested in writing a paper about trust in collaborative tech
Vas:
about trust: also touched on it in my phd. started using it a plural way, trusts. different levels. I would be down to spend 2 days and chat about trust, sounds like a good proposal. on the money thing… I know unis have money, it’s good to get some money for karrot, don’t know how much. should there be some preliminary work before it from our side? so maybe bring our own agenda. the data that comes out is going to be very karrot-centric in a sense.
find it interesting with trust in karrot, a lot of interpersonal trust, and vouching mechanisms. everyone met nick somewhere. more relational trust-building with groups that use karrot. interesting trajectory where one group built their own instance, and noticing different types of trust emerging there.
would be super happy to spend some time with you, brainstorming, etc.
Jay:
I find the topics super interesting, how trust is formed, what does it entail, how it affects the community, would be super interested in participating. also very thankful for the money contributing offered, even though we’re not money-based, supporting people who are contributing is also a way to make sure the community is stable, less dependentant on other external variables (e.g. whether we have a job or not), always appreciated.
Nick:
would just say YES, for the money basically, we dont expect it, optional bonus, one bit is how do I make a voice for the practice, acutally doing the shit, yet-another-report, having a foot on each thing, getting the language but doing the praxis/practice, good solid flow of developlement, how we take the wisdom of doing hands on after having a view from the valley…go back and start chopping wood and doing things…building houses. Community Supported Software model came up, if that fits in, trust between ppl using software and developping, part of it is to announce a term.
Butze: defo up for it, for me I need to travel to see different places, ofc trust has been a topic, looking into negotations on what it means to trust and be fairn, did a quick a seach on what there is on community tech and trust, what is the state of the art on community tech and trust, trust in tech, trust among people, two dimentions, overall definatelly down/up for it.
Matt: I d much prefer to do sth in person, we support travel, not sure if the budget, thinking of some ‘stipend’ for karrot,
a) how about I check funding? b) future thing: develop a contact with detroit community tech ( Community Technology — MOTHER CYBORG ) trying to get some funding for them to come to the university for 3 weeks
in terms of how we might do sth, nice thing they did in the community economy, tons and tons of reading, engaging with writing, take half a paragraph, and explained what it meant to you, was actually really great way to engage in convos, GK ‘post capitalist politics’ for example, revealed different perspectives with a bit of writing.
), and other time can be alone, could also invite people from the centre.