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Changes between Version 3 and Version 4 of ussf_book_chapter

Timestamp:: Sep 19, 2008, 4:33:24 AM (16 years ago)
Author:: Josue Guillen
Comment:: --

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 A particularly challenging task for that website was registration. This was a lot more than just signing people up.
 While individuals could register simply, organizations were allowed to register large numbers of people (from the moment they registered to during the actual Forum). This meant that the program had to be flexible enough to track who an organization had registered, allow additional registrations and allow for changes and deletions.
+While individuals could register simply, organizations were allowed to register large numbers of people (starting from the moment they registered to during the actual Forum). This meant that the program had to be flexible enough to track who an organization had registered, allow additional registrations and allow for changes and deletions.
 To complicate things further, registration cost money and that money had to be collected on-line during that registration process. When you realize that this was being done for over 10,000 people who needed to be confident that the data on participants and payments was being collected flawlessly, you get a picture of how daunting this was.
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 The logistics committee then needed a system to schedule those events and to display the event schedules before and during the Forum.
 Working in teams, the ICT workgroup did all that and the way we approached it allowed the various other workgroups to be as open as possible with approvals and sensitive to particular event sponsors' needs in doing scheduling and venue selection.
+Working in teams, the ICT workgroup did all that. The way we approached it allowed the various other workgroups to be as open as possible with approvals and sensitive to particular event sponsors' needs in doing scheduling and venue selection.
 The ICT team developed other features like a ride board for people seeking and offering transportation, a section for housing and numerous other resources.
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 As much as the Internet played a critical role in organizing the Forum, its major role was during the Forum itself. All the organizing falls flat if the event doesn't run smoothly.
 When you get 10,000 people together for over 900 events in a five day period, the array of logistical and organization issues is stunning and here is where the collaboration of techies nationwide paid off.
+When you get 10,000 people together for over 900 events in a five day period, the array of logistical and organizational issues is stunning and here is where the collaboration of techies nationwide paid off.
 Under the leadership of Atlanta-based techie/organizer Aaron Roscetta, the ICT team borrowed nearly 100 computers (from many different sources around the Atlanta area), installed Linux operating systems and other basic software and then networked those computers into several connected networks that were also connected to the Internet.
 Aaron himself led the "machine run" to pick the boxes up and then did the wiring and installations in the huge "main area" (the scene of registration). Over three dozens computers were wired in about a day and Aaron did most of that himself (and ran the team that did the rest). "It was," he says, "one of my proudest moments."
+Aaron himself led the "machine run" to pick the boxes up and then did the wiring and installations in the huge "main area" (the scene of registration). Over three dozen computers were wired in about a day and Aaron did most of that himself (and ran the team that did the rest). "It was," he says, "one of my proudest moments."
 The on-line registration system handled over 10,000 registrations, check-ins and other interactions by participants. It's important to remember that this was happening on a server located in New York -- it was all done over the Internet from Atlanta.
 -- The program and scheduling sections of the site, used by participants throughout the event, allowed event organizers to post vital information and then edit and amend it...all on line..
+-- The program and scheduling sections of the site, used by participants throughout the event, allowed event organizers to post vital information and then edit and amend it...all on line.
 -- Participants blogged the USSF providing both commentary and reporting on their own activities and experiences and, since blogging had been going on way before the Forum's opening, blogging about their local and regional activities (both pro-Forum and in their various struggles).
+-- Participants blogged the USSF providing both commentary and reporting on their own activities and experiences. Additionally, since blogging had been going on way before the Forum's opening, they were sharing their local and regional activities (both pro-Forum and in their various struggles).
 -- A particularly difficult challenge was the Media Justice Center. Our tech team worked for three days straight setting up nearly 40 computers for use by media people in on-line writing, video and audio storage and transmission, and many other media-related tasks. Over 350 media workers registered at the MJC.
+-- A particularly difficult challenge was the Media Justice Center (MJC). Our tech team worked for three days straight setting up nearly 40 computers for use by media people in on-line writing, video and audio storage and transmission, and many other media-related tasks. Over 350 media workers registered at the MJC.
 To make this happen we had not only to connect all those computers in networks that were Internet connected but install various pieces of special software to make the video storage and transmission work possible.
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 That's when the techies started flooding in.
 People with tech skills from all over the country began presenting themselves: stopping ICT members as we were buzzing around the venues, tracking us down in the Media Center, emailing and cell phoning us -- all offering their support and asking what we needed done.
+People with tech skills from all over the country began presenting themselves: stopping ICT members as we were buzzing around the venues, tracking us down in the MJC, emailing and cell phoning us -- all offering their support and asking what we needed done.
 There was no shortage of work and our job of assigning people in an organized way was made easier by the willingess of dozens of technologists -- some of whom had actually hitchhiked across the country -- to do whatever was necessary. They improved software, testing computers, wired rooms and always participated in the planning and evaluation discussions that are always a major component of any wiring project this size.
+There was no shortage of work and our job of assigning people in an organized way was made easier by the willingness of dozens of technologists -- some of whom had actually hitchhiked across the country -- to do whatever was necessary. They improved software, tested computers, wired rooms and always participated in the planning and evaluation discussions that are always a major component of any wiring project of this size.
 These "volunteers" ranged from progressive techie veterans like Michelle Murain -- "...mostly I volunteered at the Forum, primarily helping to set up the servers for the Media Center" -- to young techies from as far away as Hawaii.
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 Thanks to these people, we got everything ready.
 During the days before the Social Forum (with Jamie McClelland now on the scene) team members met, divided tasks, discussed eventualities and felt we were ready for anything. We also noticed a potential problem.
+During the days before the Social Forum (with Jamie McClelland, MF/PL co-director, now on the scene) team members met, divided tasks, discussed eventualities and felt we were ready for anything. We also noticed a potential problem.
 A couple of days before the Forum was to launch, we noticed that the website had slowed down appreciably under pre-event registration and began a discussion of what that meant. This site would crash under the load it was about to take on.
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 Our tech team worked all night right before the Forum to split the database portion of the Drupal installation from the site itself: a solution that returned the site to peak performance. There was no recurrence of the latency throughout the Forum.
 If I'm an indicator, we thought our problems were over although we were conscious that nightmares could arise. We had no idea that our worst one was about to occur.
+If I'm an indicator, we thought our problems were over, although we were conscious that nightmares could arise. We had no idea that our worst one was about to occur.
 Protecting the Forum
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 On the morning of the Social Forum, about a half hour before registration was to commence, the website went off-line. Clearly, that kind of problem would not only have crippled registration at the Social Forum but it would have cast the kind of pall no event of this size needs.
 With cell phone communications ripping back and forth between Josue and techie Ana Willem at the registration area and several of us at the Media Justice Center (where we were still setting up), we worked against an impossible deadline to figure out what was wrong.
+With cell phone communications ripping back and forth between Josue and techie Ana Willem at the registration area and several of us at the MJC (where we were still setting up), we worked against an impossible deadline to figure out what was wrong.
 Jamie McClelland realized that a router operated by Bell South, which was handling traffic between the social forum and the Internet server running the registration system in New York, was misconfigured or malfunctioning and was dropping all traffic. In short, the computer networks at the Forum were effectively blocked by Bell South from reaching the registration system.
 While we have no evidence about why this happened, at least some of us noted the coincidence of a huge problem arising right before the event occurred, caused it seemed by a giant corporation. While we'll never know if this was intentional or incompetence, it was clear that something had to be done and we couldn't rely on this corporation to do it.
+While we have no evidence about why this happened, at least some of us noted the coincidence of a huge problem arising right before the event occurred, seemingly caused by a giant corporation. While we'll never know if this was intentional or incompetence, it was clear that something had to be done and we couldn't rely on this corporation to do it.
 Working with techie Daniel Kahn Gilmor, Jamie came with a radical idea: why not reroute all Internet traffic around the faulty Bell South router?  MF/PL had a server in Delaware that was reachable without going through the broken Bell South router, but the question was how to do it? Not only is it something none of us had ever seen done but it's downright heretical to try it: effectively it's creating an error to make connection possible.
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 Daniel came up with the solution and worked, under intense pressure, for the next 15 minutes to make it happen.
 When they were finished all traffic to the Social Forum website stopped being sent directly to New York. Instead, it was rerouted to our Delaware server as if that server was hosting the site. That server which wasn't hosting anything related to the Forum, transparently forwarded all requests from Delaware to New York where the site actually lived.
+When they were finished all traffic to the Social Forum website stopped being sent directly to New York. Instead, it was rerouted to our Delaware server as if that server was hosting the site. That server, which wasn't hosting anything related to the Forum, transparently forwarded all requests from Delaware to New York where the site actually lived.
 So, during the first hour and a half of the Social Forum, registration staff in Atlanta were going to the wrong server looking for the website and being bounced from that remote location to NYC to get the site. We circumvented Bell South completely.
 I dwell on this because this was, for me, a moment of great pride in the ITC team. We were there to make sure that event could use the Internet and, when confronted with the power of a corporate system effectively blocking that, our people figured out a way around it.
+I dwell on this because this was, for me, a moment of great pride in the ICT team. We were there to make sure that event could use the Internet and, when confronted with the power of a corporate system effectively blocking that, our people figured out a way around it.
 Registration opened and proceeded flawlessly and, after 90 minutes of that, Bell South's router suddenly reconfigured and we returned to normal functioning.
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 In fact, when people notice systems most is when they fail or don't meet expectations. But at the Social Forum, the idea was not for the technology's seamlessness to hide it but to reveal its power and potential and allow it to deepen the Forum's democratic culture.
 The key to that was to deepen and increase the interaction people had with the system. For example, if someone walked in and wasn't registered, the registrar immediately sent him or her to one of the banks of registration computers through which people would self-register. With the help of a techie assigned to that area, people went on line and registered themselves, spending a fraction of the normal time, avoiding lines, learning a bit about the Internet and getting some self-confidence in its use.
+The key to that was to deepen and increase the interaction people had with the system. For example, if someone walked in and wasn't registered, the registrar immediately sent him or her to one of the banks of registration computers through which people could self-register. With the help of a techie assigned to that area, people went on line and registered themselves, spending a fraction of the normal time, avoiding lines, learning a bit about the Internet and getting some self-confidence in its use.
 "Watching the huge line of attendees move smoothly thru the registration process because of an online system that WE built was exhilarating," Josue Guillen remembers, "The tech team was AMAZING! So many people contributing so much of their time, their expertise, was remarkable."
+"Watching the huge line of attendees move smoothly through the registration process because of an online system that WE built was exhilarating," Josue Guillen remembers, "The tech team was AMAZING! So many people contributing so much of their time, their expertise, was remarkable."
 All participants were able to arrange their schedules, get information about events and resources and generally communicate with each other through that website and its various sections and pages.
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 Critical to raising Internet consciousness was, of course, doing that among the event's organizers. There is no question that Social Forum organizers deepened their understanding of technology's critical role as they saw what it could do and how it was, in the end, an organizing project in and other itself.
 This was no small task because our movements' culture in this country continues to rely on the face to face work that has been the mainstay of organizing for this country's entire history. In that culture, it's easy to view the Internet as just another tool and to take it for granted. Nobody who worked on the United States Social Forum will even take it for granted again.
+This was no small task because our movements' culture in the U.S. continues to rely on the face to face work that has been the mainstay of organizing for this country's entire history. In that culture, it's easy to view the Internet as just another tool and to take it for granted. Nobody who worked on the USSF will even take it for granted again.
 Says Daniel Kahn Gilmor: "Initially, the leadership seemed to want a typical "contractor" relationship to the tech -- the tech team saw it as more of an mutual organization activity.  Since the whole theory of the forum was "another world is possible," i was pleased that the leadership seemed to mostly come around to seeing the merits of approaching tech work like they'd approach any other communication opportunity.
+Says Daniel Kahn Gilmor: "Initially, the leadership seemed to want a typical "contractor" relationship to the tech -- the tech team saw it as more of an mutual organization activity.  Since the whole theory of the forum was "another world is possible," I was pleased that the leadership seemed to mostly come around to seeing the merits of approaching tech work like they'd approach any other communication opportunity.
 "I felt that by the forum itself, the tech team got good respect from leadership and other forum participants, in spite of the tension and stress inherent in the process."
 …
 What It All Means
 The United States Social Forum was, of course, a phenomenal success in many ways. Its use of technology is certainly among those.
+The USSF was, of course, a phenomenal success in many ways. Its use of technology is certainly among those.
 An event of this type is part of history and part of the historical development of a movement, a country and, in the end, an entire humanity. Humanity is always moving forward. It's sometimes difficult to perceive that forward movement but, in the cracks and crevices of culture, in the fabric of social relations and in the often smokey environment of our movements...if you look close enough, it's there.
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 Perhaps the greatest measure of success for an event of this type is how well it is able to perceive that forward movement, capture it and create an environment that rarifies its reality: that peels away those things that blind us to how well we are doing and brings our successes and our strengths into relief.
 One of our greatest strengths is this thing we call the Internet, this remarkable movement we've created based using this simple and powerful technology and the US Social Forum certainly demonstrated its power and importance.
+One of our greatest strengths is this thing we call the Internet, this remarkable movement we've created based using this simple and powerful technology and the USSF certainly demonstrated its power and importance.
 By that measure of success, the United States Social Forum was among the most successful events in modern U.S. history.
+By that measure of success, the USSF was among the most successful events in modern U.S. history.
 As Daniel put it: "We can have a world where our ability to communicate with one another is controlled by a few profit-minded corporations, or we can work to build a community-engaged communications network that brings people together with goals of justice, equality, and liberty.  That other world is possible, but if we just go with the default options offered by the large infotech corps, we won't get there.  So i think the role of tech in future USSFs is a large one."