Rosa after ATNOFS
(shared input)

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next years in Constant: yearly theme; technological disobedience
topical year - techno-disobedience; if we bring this device along in that year what could it add

plan as Varia:
    application for the coming years is in the proces of finishing
    They are including a project virtual tours of different servers
inviting others into virtual homes.
(for reference: During "feminist server summit" tours along servers were organised.
https://areyoubeingserved.constantvzw.org/Summit.xhtml)

Where is Rosa going after this chapter? Do we want to keep them active? For documentation purposes they should be available. 
Rosa can be unplugged after the deadline? At least until end of the project, January 31st.

FHM workshops in Greece; command line introduction with rosa
We could send Rosa on a residency, connected to a virtual tour. Would be nice to see Rosa in a function outside of the ATNOFS project.
sending Rosa on a residency
greece is a good place for a residency! 
write about the different contexts into which rosa functions; finding a travel path 'outside' of the network
Can Rosa find their way outside this network? it has been eu focused because of the nature of the funds but without this constraint rosa could travel further away
Vedettas, Marialab, 
Here are some south american labs that were connected to 'Labsurlab' but it is an old list: 
http://hipermedula.org/2011/04/labsurlab/
It would be nice if there was a workshop in for instance Greece, Rosa could travel there. 
Manual should be very clear and visible, so people can use it without our help, this manual should be somewhere else, not on Rosa.
Rosa now only accessible through Varia, is this something we should assess? 
Rosa could also become a hub themselves.
What if we think of this the other way around. We work with someone on Rosa, hosting others on Rosa. This work/labour can be shared.
This wouldn't work outside media art context, in activist context Rosa is not super relevant (security for instance).

links around feminist servers around (link just found):
https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/


A list of feminist servers 
[see more info about each server in cheat-sheet note 7]
1 Alive projects
1.1 Anarchaserver
1.2 La Bekka
1.3 Cl4ndestina
1.4 CódigoSur
1.5 Fuxico + Feminist Pirate Box
1.6 MaadiX
1.7 Matriar.cat
1.8 Systerserver
1.9 Vedetas
1.10 1984
1.11 Diebin
1.12 ROSA
2 Closed projects
2.1 Kefir.red


Could rosa become a pointer to different practices surrounding them? 
Differnt approaches present on Rosa can be passed on in chunks, instead of a whole (which would be very specific: Debian on that hardware, running x services).
the use of a VPN for rosa could be super useful knowledge for activists groups for instance
idea of having multiple machines; what about rosa becomes the hub for other feminist servers 

singu-rosa-ty: Rosa as hub for other Rosa's that could be hubs for other Rosa's?

Where will Rosa go-oh-oooh!? 
It's also about responsibility for hard reboots and energy costs and internet connection etc.
CAnnot anwer that now without Hypha and Lurk present. 
A feral traveling Rosa? 
Let's leave it here for now :) and take it to Varia on Tuesday.
Can Rosa be borrowed by other people? Winnie would like to borrow it (not the copy) -> yessss



octomode mode
https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/octomode/chapter-publishing-toolings-fhm/pad/
for the html of the publication we can maybe have only one style sheet 

Docu from Olivier; 
different documents from each chapters printed (except constant)
varia was too much to print everything 
lurk was 3 documents
esc



idea is to show the elements, topics, activities that had some transversal quality across the chapters and in the project at large 
add paper magicwords to the documentation 


Playlist for questions and answers:


Questions?

- in what ways did ATNOFS chapters collaborate between each other?

The tools really help in coordinate and facilitate collaboration and discussion. For example rosa is a travelling infrastructure for indexing files and this is also where it acts as an object of study to think through what is a feminist server (as a conceptual tool) and what forms of feminist principles matter the groups; All the chapters use octomode, a collaborative writing tool that is developed by Varia, to write, share and discuss together, but it is also a publishing tool to translate and transform markdown to html and PDF for print publication. The tool also allows new forms of labour division and various temporal forms of engagement. Some participants can focus on developing the content of a publication, while others may work on the CSS and figuring out the source and logic of the program. The whole production process contains various interrelated happenings at the same time.
We practiced various sharing modes, hows and approaches. Whether it meant something practic-technical (how do you tunnel with a vpn) or how to reach out to surrounding activist circles, or how to obtain resources (economic or otherwise) to address urgencies and support the necessary work. This did not always happen in a premeditated know-how-sharing sense, but more as a spontaneous result of sharing spaces and times and situations.
The physical meetings were often used to relay to each other what had happened before and what might happen next, notes were shared, modes of documentation compared and adapted.

The collaborative nature of the project extended to the process of application writing, where Constant shared their knowledge in making budgets, cooperation agreements, and queer administrative operations.



- what can be said about each chapter's documentation; are there different strategies or similarities? How are these differences/similiarities made legible?

A shared strategy was to start documenting immediately on the Rosa server during each activity. This was done using the etherpad software that is installed on Rosa. This early and continuous way to document allowed for keeping traces of conversations, exchanges and discussions that were sometimes quite ephemere and are typically lost in a process of retrospective documentation.
It is clear from browsing this publication, that some chapters decided for keeping their documentation as coherent as possible, and others found ways to stay with the multiscalar, trans-practice quality of the activities. The fact that each chapter not only wrote their documentation, but also took responsibility for its design, makes this publication reflect both in form and content some of the different atmospheres that ATNOFS traveled along.
Translation in different languages was a desire for one chapter. This affects the documentation practices. Live traslation and transcription helped to have already audio and text material that can be used for the documentation later. The process becomes slower because of dual languages and priorities are changing because of limitation of time. Tranlation allows for accessibility from local contexts

- what were the implications of the received funding for the network? Did it get stronger, larger, more complex ... did it change anything?

ATNOFS contributed to simultaneously strengthening and diversifying the network. As far as links that already existed inside the networked organisations who have initiated ATNOFS, the project has strengthened connections. This was the result of ATNOFS allowing to spend time together to co-operate, think, experiment, exchange and learn from each others practices. On top of this, ATNOFS also made new connection possible. Before the project started, part of ATNOFS organisations had less capabilities to reflect on servertechnology and how this relates to their artistic and activist agendas and activities. This was due to several reasons, for example lack of funding opportunities in there countries, or an mission that does not centralise the type of DIY, open source, non commercial tools, community developed communication tools that plyed an important role in ATNOFS.
During the meetings that were developed in the project, ATNOFS reached out to affiliated local communities and groups, which created new points of attachment for future collaborations. In this way, not only the network between partners, but also their grounding in local contexts was strengthened and stabilized. People that used to be satellite to projects worked closer with the existing network from other localities. Diversifying local networks of education, institutions and activist groups. Providing resources to enrich local context and knowledge.


- which counter-efforts to centralized, commercial infrastructures became more present through the project?

One of the chapters (LURK) took the management of a mastodon server as their main focus. This was maybe the most direct way that non-centralized, non-commercial infrastructural tech were made present in the project. But also the way this introduction was written (on an etherpad installed on ROSA, collectively), designed (using OCTOMODE), or how the communication between partners was facilitated (an email list, ....) were done using Free, Libre and Open Source tools, sometimes developed or alterated by participants and sometimes not. 

In Greece there is an oligopoly of private, commercial funding insitutions that tend to monitize the arts. FHM chose to organise the chapter with an artist/activist run space in the center of Athens that do an effort to stay autonomous. 

- the project was a proposal to consolidate/strengthen existing projects/initiatives. How did that happen? In what way will this consolidation continue, if at all?

Each chapter introduced their own way of working and we also saw interchange throughout the projects emerge. Varia put in practice a lot of ways of working that already existed, such as collective writing, different approaches to consent, documentation practices, combining tools into new platforms (like the resonance board which is a patchwork of different tools)(anything concrete that can be said? an example?). We could learn from each other
A lot of different pieces of software where installed on Rosa in oder to facilitate the work, resulting in a unique configuration (say something from the discussion following from here: what will happen next to/with R.OSA). 

It was important to have different 'generations' of projects involved in ATNOFS that are each caring for feminist serverhood from different commitments in time and space, each with their own relation to changing technological contexts, and their political, social and economic impact. Some of these projects are already existing for many years, some are just in the process of forming themselves. It has been super helpful and refreshing in both directions, because more established realities can both share methods and strategies that have worked so far to make practices sustainable, but are also questioned by newly emerging issues and put in relation to different contexts.

ATNOFS created the space to listen and grasp local urgencies. Our praxis with decentralized and open source tools and methodologies could respond to these urgencies. For example, future workshops could be planned more concretely interwined with the local context.


- did anything unforeseen/surprising appear/emerge?

A sort of dialect/language/accent/mode of speaking and use of language emerged within rosa - commands were given new names, common spaces such as pads were made more friendly by intervening into their habitual techno-solutionist language. It became a different way to inhabit the space inside the server together, through naming and renaming.
Rosa became a point of conversation during the AMRO festival in Linz, an unexpected added location in their journey. The conversation was about collective hosting practices, and rosa was presented alongside other groups/organisations/practices with longer histories, in different countries.
A bit of a different 'personification' of rosa throughout chapter; some attention to its/her/their pronoms; their language; her name; its potential multiplicity; ... 

People of the local educational system who participated were seeking for knowlegde support that is not provided by their institutional and academic local spaces. This need brought unforseen possibilities of collaborations that through ATNOFS can be further sustained and create a long term community.


- how did rosa evolve beyond a computer connected to the Internet, running a website and file storage?

Rosa became a concept of togetherness in the sense that it is a hub for collaboration and learning. Rosa is constituted by a multiplicity of processes, soft structures and relations. In one of the conversations that took place while organising the overall project, a member of ATNOFS reminded us that as caretakers, also the people traveling with the servers could be themselves considered servers of the server. It became a moving repository of reflections on the norms and rigidities that computing enact, practically enacted in the filesystem ( changing error pages in a proactive direction to the browser, making intervention on the language of the command line, ... a physical device that helped discussing conceptual questions; ATNOFS' embodiement of political thinking around technology and the practices around it. As a space for learning and experimentation, rosa made us think of the ways we wanted to engage and how to be together around a constant negosiated code of consensual practices written collectivly during one of the first gatherings. Perhaps rosa becomes a figure, creating desires to know or question more about the naming, history, technical wiring, normative soft/hardware divide, and material-semiotic phenomena. 

- what did rosa experience while traversing the ATNOFS activities?
Rosa is logging when on. The antropomorphization of microhardware leads to attribute human senses to hard and software. So see? read write execute. 
To know who accessed last Rosa, execute :  $ last. [...]
A lot of backpacks bottoms, a comfortable self-determining pillow, 
Rosa travelled with a new coat, and later found a voice to speak. Rosa has a nice reddish/pink cover for a better ventilation
Unstable pads where to share words, with folds to hold us together and a welcoming gossip space
Rosa experienced the inside of a kitchen cabinet, some dusty shelves, a social space that needed things to be unplugged while everyone was on vacation
Rosa also moved hardware, from one borrowed RPi to another second-hand RPi, as it was getting slowed down by the ongoing processes
Rosa encountered different conditions of connectivity, from unstable electricity, to SIM card internet data, to hotspots. Rosa made contact with internet and electricity infrastructure in 6 different locations (they also took a short trip to AMRO)

- how did the project allow participants to engage with new tools? What can be said about the modes, practices, ways that were discovered/shared/invented to do so?
One tool that became central to the documentation of the project is octomode, a publishing tool developed within Varia. The tool allows design and editorial practices to blend together and happen simultaneously.
Rosa was the read threat (red thread? red threat! <3 hihi) across all chapters which stimulate technical experiments with it; whatever one's technical knowledge
Self-hosting, Decentralization, Federation where new concepts for some, for others a way to describe what they already where doing in praxis.
Rosa was a first touch point to server technologies and working in the command line for some participants. The friendly and welcoming community around Rosa made it possible for people to connect with the project without much prior knowledge. 
everyone who had the desire to go deeper was given sudo access to rosa, which is not something that happens easily in other collective server practices (due to different urgencies, sensitivity of information, different needs towards stability and reliability)

The introduction of decentralized social media such as peertube and mastodon presented alternatives for local communities which are otherwise vulnerable in mainstream social media.

- what changed as a result of connecting local spaces? what resources could be collectivized? which ones stayed local?
Exchanging not only about tools and tool making practices, but also about organisational tactics and stories. What stays local is the politico-economic context; the generous exchange of practices, strategies etc was crucial but there's some ways of organising, some sustainnability structures that cannot function across all the partners; it's important to be realistic about it.
To have discussions around themes and concepts which may be sort of 'established' in certain regions but in others not at all; it's an opportunity to form localised imaginations around those concepts. Conspire together how to bring practices/resources to sites where they are more scarce/difficult..


- who else finally joined the network, besides project partners? how did they engage with ATNOFS?
The Georgian feminist collective who joined the LURK workshop,(I guess all the participants to LURK workshop?)(would this be the same for the other chapters too? all those who joined outside of the project partners?)Greek feminist academics, such as the Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices, Athens Graphic Design department, feminist local activists, researchers, artists, some people joined the mailing list made by LURK (ATNOFS) where other related projects were announced, a general ATNOFS mailing list where participants that have been different chapters are in touch, informal anti-eviction network of bucharest, 



- what can be said about current and future shared urgencies for A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers?
the context and local conditions mainly in term of financial support and infrastructure is somthing to take into acoount and to take action on to repair and redistrubite resourses fairly.

Some urgencies that the involved organisations share, were not foregrounded in this project. Examples are: experiments with decolonizing technologies, concerns about the (ab)use of natural resources involved in the production and operation of digital infrastructures and hardware, ecological impacts of modes of operation that are bound to server practices. From these common concerns, some seeds have been sawn during the project for possible future collaborations.

Languages within rosa and people. how to stay contected and include more folks when we speak different languages (from Greek to English, Python or Bash, or the language of non-violent communication)? how can we think of a language that is not exclusionary, ableist, racist, binary, colonialist? 

continue to ""expand" - make more horizon - to decentralize an have an active network of mutual support for feminist servers and feminist pedagogies.

ecological concerns about the travelling aspect of the network, how to continue the intensive thinking together without depending on intensive travel logistics.. and decentralized organisational efforts.

https://alexandria.anarchaserver.org/index.php/You_can_check_some_of_their_services_in_this_section


- have our expectations been met? would we do it again? how would we do it differently?

There are no regrets in how the project has taken shape, it was a fruitful and energising series of activities. But while we carried out the project, realisation emerged that we had probably been too optimistic about the time and resources ATNOFS has made possible. We are contemplating a follow up phase in which some of the desires can be further developed.

There are things to be reconsidered regarding the travel aspect. While crucial to the project, due to budget and time restrictions it became quite difficult to imagine traveling across Europe for a 2 day program, considering all the environmental implications for instance of having to fly for such a short period of time, not having sufficient time to actually hang out with each other outside of the 2 planned days, etc.

More active use of Rosa in order to emphasise their central role in the project – Rosa now mostly is a hub for the exchange of resources, but it would be nice if it had been easier for people to use it beyond that and also between the chapters taking place.

The concept of the chapters works really nicely and complementary. From the beginning a round-up session should have been planned, now taken up by the Constant session.

Chapters may reflect and give feeback on each chapter's organisational plans. The ATNOFS visitors of each chapter could have more active role in each chapter by bringing critical perspective in the local discussions, through questions ad constructive dialogue, and supporting with the practicalities of each chapter. For example in the Eclectic Tech Carnival, the international existing community supports remotely to organise the local event and take care of the emerged needs during the event.



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Initial application text with added comments/questions (preparing conversation to feed introduction)

Please summarise your proposal and how you plan to strengthen a European public space in max. 5 sentences. (Max 80 words)

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project (how did you collaborate?) formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies, and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner (what can be said about each chapter's documentation?). 

Please describe your proposal in more detail: What issue would you like to address with your project and what is the urgency? What activities and methodologies are you proposing to achieve these? What are the tangible outcomes your project is expected to deliver? What is the project’s geographic focus, i.e. local / regional / European / digital? (max 300 words)

Many organisations atin our network and beyond have been forced to transition their activity entirely online, all the while receiving no external support in this process (what were the implications of the received funding for the network?). This has led to a growing reliance on centralised, proprietary, commercial infrastructure providers which brings to the forefront several issues such as lack of privacy and agency, monopoly, misinformation. A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) is a project that aims to bring visibility to counter-efforts (which counter-efforts were made visible through the project?) and provide them with a framework to consolidate (how were existing projects consolidated? did anything else/unforeseen/surprising appear/emerge?) existing projects, help structure their cooperation, and inspire others to create new or join existing initiatives.

To achieve this, ATNOFS proposes to organize a series of events and a publication, in which a network of 6 EU-based partners explore how to share and broaden the usage of their existing open source digital infrastructure of self-hosted feminist servers and services.

In order to capture what will emerge from the series of events, document them, reflect on them across the different partners, as well as making public the diversity of generated material, we will make use of a travelling server. By that we mean a computer that can be connected to the Internet, running a website and file storage (how did rosa evolve beyond a computer connected to the Internet, running a website and file storage?). It will be passed from one partner to another, as both a tool and witness of our activities (what did rosa see while traversing these activities?).

Our priority is to create a public debate around the following questions: how to engage with digital tools that we may not have tried before (file sharing, forums, web hosting, federated social media and collaborative note taking) (how did the project engage with new tools? What can be said about modes, practices, ways to do so?), how to potentially develop new tools that could emerge from the series of exchanges, including community related resources for self-organising, decision making, trust building, knowledge exchange etc, how to strengthen existing bonds and create new ones. All while keeping in mind the different local urgencies of each partner (what can you say about current and future shared urgencies?).

Please reflect on your project’s relevance to the theme and criteria of the call: How will it reinforce solidarity and contribute to open and democratic European digital and other media spaces? How is the cross-national, European dimension demonstrated? How is the sustainability of the outcomes ensured and what is the longer term impact your project intends to generate? How is diversity and inclusion addressed in your proposal? (max 400 words)

Due to limited access to funding, and no formal structure or organisational network, the question of autonomy and sovereignty in relation to network services, data storage, and digital infrastructures is difficult to engage with at a European level. In practice, it rarely goes beyond the scope of local hacker and maker spaces, DIY and self-hosted websites, isolated media and cultural associations, and online communities. However, it is not for a lack of knowledge and willingness. There is an urgent need to develop interelational connections across Europe, making use of existing small scale infrastructures, knowledge and skills. 

ATNOFS is responding to the need for continuity, interrelation and support for existing efforts in The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and to the lack of self-hosted and self-organised infrastructures in Romania and Greece, from lack of physical spaces to the lack of long-term support for administering their existing structures  (what changed as a result of connecting local spaces? what resources could be collectivized?). ATNOFS will connect several partners from these countries around collective practices of developing, hosting and implementing tools and methods that reflect their needs, interests and cultural environment. By collectivizing these, the different partners in the network can give and receive support within it and subsequently share it further within each partner's respective community and local cultural network.

We aim to build a sustainable network across European borders, within which the sharing of resources and knowledge can continue beyond the scope and timespan of this particular project.

Our goal is to achieve a long-term collaboration framework within a growing network of federated self-hosters which follow feminist, intersectional principles. This work is especially inspired by the tenets of the Feminist Server Manifesto[1]. The network can subsequently grow after the completion of the project, supported by the shared resources and infrastructure that will be established throughout it (who else finally joined the network, besides project partners?). Through the Culture of Solidarity fund we also met many initiatives, such as transcending!nSOLIDARITY, or The Co-Operative Cloud, which show a similar attention to infrastructural politics and with whom we would like to find ways to collaborate.

The organisations partnering in this project already have practices addressed at increasing inclusivity in technological processes and work to support marginalized and underrepresented groups in their respective context. For example the Feminist Hack Meetings, which respond to the traditional underrepresentation of people who identify as women/queer/nonbinary in male-dominated hacker spheres. Our subsequent interventions within this project will give particular attention to such groups and work within values of intersectionality, diversity and inclusivity.

Please describe your partner(s), their role in your project and indicate how you’re planning to work with them to ensure the project is successful (have your expectations been met? would you do it again? how would you do it differently?)? (200 words) *

Each partner will create a series of 2-day live events that will be documented in a chapter of the publication.

Varia will be coordinating with the help of Constant. Marloes de Valk, PhD researcher (LSBU/UvA), will research the environmental impact of these digital alternatives. Marthe van Dessel will be an external advisor.





Constant chapter
pressing pause and reflecting.
read -n1 -r -s -p "Press any key to continue..." 

MAPPING

Inspired by Open space, to animate groups
The principle is to make physically available the corpus, by printing it out, displaying on the wall. The informaiton created becomes tangible, can be read simultaneously, annotated by multiple persons.

We get the horizontal dimension, a kind of timeline by making a display on the wall.
Eacht physical location of the timeline has been tagged, in this case by green post-its. We added different colours, each tagging a different relationship between each item.
The first easy link was the pink post-it, related to Rosa and the technical aspects.
Green: documentation strategies
Yellow: feminist pedagogy
Blue: communities
Orange: pointers & flu/flux/flow links
Purple dot: speculative aspect
Light blue, lin: items related to language



---->>> Heartbeat of the server
load average
htop

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