Overview: A Proposal

The connection between the current, global progressive movement and the Internet was made manifest in the success of the World Social Forum process. A sustained convergence of this scope would never have been possible without the Internet. Yet, as global crisis depletes the resources required to sustain geographical convergences of large numbers of people, the possibilities available with the Internet ensure the progressive movements' continued collaboration world-wide.

At the same time, the converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committess have brought humanity to a point of urgency and the Internet, a community of more than 1.4 billion people world-wide, is one of its responses. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive. That's what's happening today with the Internet.

In that context, the role of technologists becomes critically and centrally important. Techies are the leaders of the Internet because we run its technology and lead the work on its software. Progressive techies have a very special role to play: our political perspective prioritizes the use of the Internet and development of its software for organizing (rather than merely commerce); our commitment to Free and Open Source Software makes us central to a struggle that is fundamental to the Internet's future; the fierce opposition we have long had to controlling and interventionist government policies help assure the Internet's essential independence and freedom; and our politics gives the progressive movement a leadership position within the Internet.

The impact of our work, and the importance of the Internet, has never been clearer. It has drawn together all kinds of organizations (the Association for Progressive Communications, for example) and has driven the World Social Forum to its current situation. And, as the progressive movement has outgrown the Forum structure, an expanded format to the Forum process, first used at the Belem, Brazil WSF, is emerging. At Belem, organizers from all corners of the globe were encouraged to participate in the Belem Forum from their local communities via Internet media.

Simultaneously, a new concept in collaboration on-line became popular: used all over the United States and at various world and localized Social Forums. The "Collaborative Democracy Workshop" was first used at the first United States Social Forum in 2007 where technologists collaboratively developed a progressive approach to maintaining the Internet as a secure and open platform for movement building.

These two processes have merged into what is known as a Techie Congress, an open virtual space led by and involving progressive technologists. The ultimate goal of the Techie Congress is to discuss and establish some principles about progressive techies responsibilities toward our movement, our rights in relationship to that movement and the social and political rights of all Internet users.

Because of the traditional isolation techies have had within the movement (and from each other), this type of gathering has been very infrequent and an international movement of these gatherings is unprecedented.

Principles: Create accountability. Respond directly to the causes of global crisis enabling fully collaborative and democratic problem-solving in response to late-capitalism crisis. The format and nature of social forum versus civil responsibility. Fortify the movement in the face of deepening crisis, severe rationing of resources, and reducing costs for communications and convergences.

Vision & Strategy: International Convergence with a focus on women and the global south lead by ICTs

Action Approach: An international convergence of technologists creates a network of access. The Techie Congress is an ongoing project, which builds sustainable open virtual space. The building process begins with core activists able to mobilize networks of techies all over the world. Dovetailing with open, simultaneous convergences of technologists, the growing network aims to empower politically-engaged technologists to embrace principles for implementing open virtual space. While growing the scope of the techie congress, focus is given to increasing access to technology in as many regions of the world as possible. Increased access carried out by empowered community leaders enables for an open online convergence with the highest degree of democracy ever seen in humanity's history.

The tools developed for the Techie Congress will be free, open, and available for application in all social forum, and forum-like events. While growing our own network and building our campaign, we will be enabling, technologically, for similar movements to use our tools to connect activists and communities across the globe.

Open weekly meetings are being held between Social Forum activists to plan Principles & Goals, Vision & Strategy, and building open Tools for expanded formats. A year's campaign will begin with the First Congress in Paris for early sponsorship and capacity building of the project. The first major, global Forum-endorsed event will then be held at the Social Forum of Alternatives in Mexico, City. The Techie Congress of the US Social Forum will be a major event centered in Detroit, Michigan. A few more events will be scheduled in 2010 with the current stage's final event at the 2011 WSF in Dakar, Senegal. Each event will grow stronger networks of progressive technologists globally with one another and locally between techies and the movement.

Movement Building, Sustainability, & Ongoing Vision: After this initial campaign, next year will bring the focus to empowering the Techie Congress network to lead and stage an international movement towards problem-solving global issues on various scales with simultaneous collaborative moments.

First Convergence, Paris Meeting (April 2-3, 2010)

1. Principles: Collaborative Democracy Workshop
2. Vision: Strategies for use of technology in any social [forum] movement
3. Action: Skill-share, project exchange, and building together

Second Convergence, Thematic Forum on Alternatives in Mexico (May 2-4, 2010)

Our proposed seminar for the Thematic Social Forum on Alternatives highlights a crucial aspect of our movement today: the Internet. With over a billion people engaging in a collective activity, today's Internet is one of humanity's largest social movements, reflecting the kind of social interaction and collective achievement activists like us struggle for world-wide: fundamentally collaborative, democratic and based almost entirely on tools and software that has been produced collaboratively, developed by large, democratic communities and distributed freely. It is truly international and resilient against constant attempts to control its direction and curtail its positive growth.

Seminar Description Politically progressive techies from all over the globe will gather together to develop a set of "principles" describing our responsibilities and rights to our movement and the responsibilities and rights it has towards us. Our goal is to publish and distribute these principles through our networks and submit them as a document produced by the Social Forum process. On that basis, we will begin to build the kind of relationships inside the movement that will move us all forward.

Logistics The main session will be a collaboration between Seminar attendees and international participants via the internet. Using a internet-connected laptop and web browser, small groups of 3 - 4 will work face-to-face in a larger, collaborative session. For 2 hours, 10-15 minutes for an introduction, 45 minutes for a collaborative online session, 30 minutes for review and global discussion, and 30 minutes for local discussion and wrap up. Materials needed that can be provided by seminar organizers include enough laptops (supplied by participants or rented) for all groups, projector, microphone, camera, and speakers. Requested support from forum organizers: internet connection.

Third Convergence, USSF Techie Congress: Workshop Proposal

Politically progressive techies from all over the United States and from several countries of the world will gather together to develop a set of "principles" describing our responsibilities and rights to our movement and the responsibilities and rights it has towards us.

We will then distribute the principles to everyone at the Social Forum and propose them to the USSF's People's Assembly for ratification. On that basis, we will begin to build the kind of relationships inside the movement that will move us all forward.

Local outreach events

• Non-profit Technology Network - Atlanta (nten.org)
• DrupalCon - San Francisco (drupalcon.org)
• Debian Development Conference - New York (debconf.org)
• ​more

Techie Congress Description

In this gathering, "techies" (the progressive movement's technologists) will join together to examine and discuss strategies for growing one of the largest, most important and powerful human movement in recent history.

With over a billion people engaging in a collective activity, today's Internet is one of humanity's largest social movements, reflecting the kind of social interaction and collective achievement activists like us struggle for world-wide: fundamentally collaborative, democratic and based almost entirely on tools and software that has been produced collaboratively, developed by large, democratic communities and distributed freely. It is truly international and resilient against constant attempts to control its direction and curtail its positive growth. Techies have been fundamental to this movement and will continue to play an increasingly important role in the progress of humanity.

Even more inspiring, the Internet has grown in this progressive way against considerable relentless opposition by powerful forces that don't want a "better world" for most of us. As such, it represents one of the progressive movement's most significant and important victories. An international Techie Congress seeks to strategize against this growing opposition.

In this gathering, we seek to hold an open space for technologists to collaborate on a set of "principles" for organizing the Internet. Modeled after the Collaborative Democracy Workshop at the first US Social Forum, this event integrates virtual participation with organized in-person events in local venues. At each location, the audience breaks into groups of 4 - 5 people. Each group will speak with one voice via a "scribe" who will be tasked with entering the group's proposals into a web-based system. A dynamic, projected display of the current state of the document is viewable by participants in the room and anyone in the world with access to our website.

All ideas belong to the group: any group can edit any proposal, whether they wrote the original version or not. All revisions of a given proposal are stored, but only the most recent edit is projected to the group as a whole. The group which creates a new version automatically endorses that right, but otherwise holds no special connection to it.

Each group also has the ability to endorse any proposal that seems worthy. When a proposal is edited, existing endorsements are cleared, which requires solicitation of new endorsements for the new version. Proposals with more endorsers float to the top, while the proposals with fewer endorsers sink to the bottom of the projected list.

To keep the document direct and concise, only 10 distinct proposals can exist at a given time. If 10 proposals already exist, the only way to add a new idea to the document is to edit an existing idea, which requires engaging other groups in a dialog to ensure an adequate number of re-endorsements.

A Call for a Techie Congress

Never has our work been more important.

A system struggling for its own survival, at the expense of humanity, greedily seeks to turn every idea into a distorted profit-making caricature of what it originally was.

The Internet humanity has built, under our collaborative leadership, is now threatened by a morass of profit-making schemes, rabidly self-protective proprietary software, and repressive laws that obliterate the spirit and letter of the First Amendment from on-line activity.

With their avalanche of limited, glossy and ultimately entrapping social software, corporations are profiteering on human communication while fencing it into a superficial, choiceless chorus line of faces and self-descriptions.

All the while, the human race continues to make and change history by using the Internet for the reasons we created it: the massive communication of our ideas and knowledge and the collective, collaborative search for the truth of our world and its future.

And it continues to look to us for alternatives, information and leadership.

But, while our importance has never been greater, we are also often alienated by the progressive movement's dismissal of our politics, thinking, perspectives and experiences.

In addition, much of the movement doesn't respect our work choosing to under-pay us or to hire large, flashy companies whose work doesn't build the movement.

Finally, most of the movement has no respect for the principle of Free and Open Source Software.

As a result, too many of us shy away from movement work. "Burned out" is now a common condition among prgoressive techies. And our political work has now been divided from our tech work.

And the movement loses the political thinking and leadership of a group of people who are the leaders of the largest mass progressive movement in human history: the Internet.

Now is the time to change this.

We want to build a set of principles that we can all share and that the progressive movement will agree to live by. We want to write and ratify an "agreement with the progressive movement" that is a commitment the entire movement will live by.

And the entire movement will be together, in one place, in June, 2010, at the United States Social Forum in Detroit.

So we are making this call to all techies who support the principles of the Social Forum to gather in Detroit at the US Social Forum for a four-hour Progressive Techie Congress that will wrap up a four month process of discussion and thinking on-line around these principles.

After each Congress, we will distribute the principles through our networks and to the Social Forum process as a consensus document. On that basis, we will begin to build the kind of relationships inside the movement that will move us all forward.

Needs

• Contracted software development: includes website, collaborative democracy software, server maintenance $5,000
• Coordination staff: Two, part-time organizing positions for 1 year $60,000
• Travel: includes fees and travel/accommodation to outreach events as well as travel/accommodation for 6 major Techie Congress events in Paris (April), Mexico (May), Detroit (June), Palestine (October), India (December), and Dakar (January 2011) $8,000
• Equipment: ongoing costs for rentals and purchases at events $4,000
• Advertising and networking $3,000

Sponsoring Organizations

• May First/People Link
• Alternatives
• Social Watch
• Agaric Design