Report from Mallory Knodel
National Technology Coordinator for the US Social Forum (USSF)
March 1 - 31, 2010

ADMINISTRATIVE & ONGOING

Ongoing work includes answering, organizing and creating support requests on the ticket tracking system of the ICT. Answering tickets such as changes to the website and improvements in functionality of the various online tools, for example. Also, facilitating support requests via email or phone often means that I will then create a support ticket in order to collaborate and communicate with the ICT. And finally, it's very important that I and others continue to organize the tickets so that our goals can be met in a reasonable amount of time as well as facilitate a strategic and prioritized approach to using our energy collectively. Other ongoing work includes many email communications, phone calls, conference calls, and other support requests submitted in conversations and collaborations and bimonthly ICT meetings.

There has been ongoing effort to fund our technical projects, especially hardware and infrastructure for the forum event. Talking with funders and other groups with proposals, budgets, and so on is work that has proven to be extremely diffcult yet necessary for the work of Detroit Expanded, the Media Center, logistics operations and so on. I've generated a budget for the ICT beyond core costs and also for the People's Media Center and Detroit Expanded.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES & PROJECTS

In support of the International Solidarity Team, I helped to edit the registration form to include links to requesting an invitation letter, needed for many visa applications. I am also managing these requests by periodically checking the online submission results and sending out an approved letter of invitation and welcome email to the USSF from the IST. We've received about 60 requests for letters of invitation so far.

I continue to be the primary facilitator of Detroit Expanded workshops and also support Oya Amaski, Culture co-chair, in the expanded format for cultural events. We've recently had a meeting at the last Organizing Committee meeting and will move forward with many of the necessary steps towards reviewing Dex workshops and Cultural submissions. We've added some folks to the process recently as well.

The Media Center of the USSF has been organized through bi-monthly meetings and an increasingly active mailing list. The second PMC meeting in March brought consensus to a proposal that the Media Center be organized primarily by alliance organizations. Outreach has already begun to groups that have a particular experience and reach in their own medium. We collectively generated a budget for the necessary infrastructure and also determined the physical location of the center in Cobo Hall with the help of the Logistics working group. Our next step will also be to configure the wireless mesh network planned for the space and surrounding area.

ICT-SPECIFIC PROJECTS & SUPPORT

An online training wiki page has been launched to members of the ICT working group with plans to launch the full weekly training schedule to the NPC within April. Organizing this process has included writing small guides for the trainers, asking members of the ICT to be responsible for online/phone training sessions at least once before June, and coordinating the first of such trainings. I worked in conjunction with Mark Dilley, who has been offering periodic wiki trainings for over a year now.

Helping with the development side of the technology work, I have helped the ICT team to make changes to the organize website via online meetings with individual ICT developers. Co-working is one way that ICT has been successful in implementing important changes to the functionality of the sites. It is not as powerful a technique as group sprints, but co-working allows for two pairs of eyes on a project, minimizing errors and maximizing creativity.

The ICT recently coordinated a weekend sprint in New York to address changes to the registration and workshop/culture submission forms. I worked primarily on the ABCs site, while also coordinating the work and filling in as an assistant developer when needed. I support Jamie as addressing any online support inquiries for workshop proposals and registration, as agreed by the local logistics office. I offered a training for other organizers and support calls, strategy with program and culture and other working groups, although this approached needed reassessment to alleviate the burden on the local office.

RELATED PROJECTS & OTHER AREAS OF SUPPORT

In preparation for the Organizing Committee meeting of March, I helped the national coordinators by making the registration form online and with the agenda and facilitation team while also preparing the ICT presentation and hopeful collaborations with the Communications working group.

There have been many local meetings centered on and related to the USSF in the New York City area. I helped to address and plan for four such meetings in March: Brecht Forum appearance, Bluestockings ongoing info session and fundraiser, a Gender Justice working group meeting, and representing the USSF at the Left Forum.

Outreach for increasing the participation of technically skilled activists in the ICT requires me to travel and make remote connections through networks such as the Drupal, debian, and other development communities at conferences and forums. I've written many people related in these circles in an effort to draw more participation as well as contacted tech blog authors to increase alternative media's attention to our work. My participation in other social forum events includes Paris in late March, Bolivia in April, and Mexico in May, none of which is actually funded by the USSF, although my representation of our process is included in my purpose for attending these events over the course of the next few months. This month, my travel to Paris was to support the global project such as Cochabamba and WSF at Mexico and Dakar to outreach and connect with international participants. Many of the tools used in these other contexts are directly applicable to our situation in Detroit.

The ICT as a working group has submitted a workshop proposal to the Allied Media Conference. We would like to work as a team to showcase our particular skills, bring more volunteers into the USSF set-up process in the second week of April and build as a core collaborative team on a non-technical project in the lead-up to the social forum event. I helped to propose and write the proposal submitted to the AMC.

In an attempt to generate more media around the forum and USSF process, I wrote an editorial article intended to be circulated by the Communications working group. The articles were going to be bi-monthly writen from the perspective of the ICT in order to bring in a diversity of interests, from political activists using technology to technologists hip to social movements as well. Unfortunately, the article was collectively decided to be unfit for publication during the current process and further articles are possible but not yet planned. Also, my role as staff and simultaneously an editorial writer was questioned, as the agreement between Communications and ICT was informal. This decision I also agreed with. However, time was spent on such a project during a period in which it was understood that it was part of my work as the technology coordinator.