Our Spring 2014 Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu) has begun. This semester, we’re experimenting with a few new pieces:
- Surveillance theme – all of our partnerships are with partners who are organizing and creating around issues of surveillance
- Distributed partnerships – partners this semester are not just Boston-based
- DiscoTech/Hackathon – we’re supporting a distributed DiscoTech (discovering technology) event, which is a sort of “inclusive” hackathon.
Partners!
As always, our partners and students are amazing. Here’s a link to the recorded live stream of all of the partner presentations.
DiscoTech
Copying some of this text from codesign.mit.edu/discotechs.
The Codesign Studio team is organizing, hosting, participating in, and supporting several countersurveillance DiscoTechs (short for “Discovering Technology” events) and hackathons during the spring of 2014, mostly on March 1st and 2nd. A DiscoTech is a workshop for people of all skill levels to learn about a set of technologies.
Countersurveillance DiscoTech Locations
- Boston/Cambridge, MA. (March 1st-2nd, at the MIT Media Lab; click here for more info about the Boston/Cambridge event).
- San Francisco, CA (March 1st-2nd, UX Spring for Security & Privacy Tools, with OpenITP. Click here for more info about the SF event). This event is part of RightsCon.
- Ramallah, Palestine (March 1st, at Birzeit University. Click here for more info about the Ramallah event).
- Mexico City, Mexico (March 1, at Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS); click here for more info about the Mexico City event).
- Bangalore, India (March 1, at the Centre for Internet and Society. Click for more info about the Bangalore event).
- Buenos Aires, Argentina (at Garage Lab, dates TBA. Click here for more info about the Buenos Aires event).
- Lisbon (to be confirmed, March 8 or 15. more info on Lisbon event here.)
- New York City (March 1st, at Neo, more info on NYC event here)
- Additional locations TBA; check out http://surveillance.hackpad.com if you’d like to organize a local DiscoTech, and contact us if you’d like us to add a link to your event here!
Our DiscoTechs follow the model developed by the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition:
A DiscoTech is a community-based, community-organized, multimedia workshop and fair. At a DiscoTech, participants learn more about the impacts and possibilities of technology, and take part in fun, interactive and media-based workshops. Discotech workshops are designed to demystify technology and create a space where we can inform and engage our community […] A Discotech utilizes the unique skills and expertise within each community, and morphs to adapt to changing needs. [See this “How To Discotech” Zine:http://detroitprojectarchive.com/client/DDJC_amc2012.pdf.zip ]
I’ll be joining the San Francisco event, a UX Spring for Security & Privacy Tools, with OpenITP and Willow that is the opening weekend of RightsCon.