Here are some perceptions (2022Firenze) that bear on the significance of infrastructure for organisers. ---
Perceptions to be explored in a workshop might include . . What is infrastructure? > Cultural infrastructure, economic infrastructure. Why is infrastructure pivotal? Why does the 2022Firenze community need infrastructure? We must *infrastructure* our common practice - make material provision for other times and other locations - to give it legs, to give it scope, to make it durable, to make interconnection and weaving possible with some degree of ease and coherence.
What is digital infrastructure? > A distributed constellation of digitally mediated spaces . . Platform spaces, media spaces, venue spaces. Perhaps also, digital means of economic exchange and value(ing) (aka currencies or credit). Spaces
Who is doing infrastructuring work? What organisations build commons of digital-mediated spaces? > Platform coops, regional media-production federations, facilitator-hosts of discussion spaces and exchanges, campaigns and interest groups, community organisers, cultural projects. Etc.
What are the infrastructures required for formación? Formación = - producing & sustaining formations of activists - capable of producing altered economies and altered regimes of diverse, multistakeholder governance on the ground (aka the coop-commons?) - ‘beyond the fragments’ of our movements and regions. > Some thoughts on requirements for collaborating are here (articulated in the context of federated wiki): wiki for collaborators
What makes a commons? - Provisioning of commoned means - Stewarding of means, and of commoners’ practices; and - Enjoying (mobilising) means in the commons and celebrating the practice of commoning (Bollier & Helfrich). Thus, practices of stewarding are foundational. Self-aware enjoying/mobilising of commons is foundational. Focused provisioning of means is foundational. > Is this more than ‘democracy’? Yes! Is this more than ‘coops’? Yes! Is this more than ‘civil society’ or ‘social economy’? Yes!
What’s the economics of commoning digitally mediated spaces? Contribution economy, political economy. Political economy of digital infrastructur(ing) > What contributions to infrastructure need paying for - ie wages? What limitations and privileges are there in expectations of 'free' contribution (in movements, in open-source software)? How far can self-provision of infrastructure go at the single-organisation level, how much hosted infrastructure do we need, and how do we weave them together? How can coops be used to do this? How much infrastructure lives on users' devices, how much is on platforms?
Which organisations shape and exploit our infrastructures, if we don’t? Why does this harm and limit our movements?
DOT FROM preview-next-diagram STATIC strict digraph { rankdir=LR node [style=filled fillcolor=lightyellow] "Toolstack" node [style=filled fillcolor=lightblue] node [style=filled fillcolor=white] "Toolstack" -> "Trinity and extended trinity" "Toolstack" -> "Infrastructur(ing)" "Toolstack" -> "Spaces" "Toolstack" -> "Commoning of spaces" "Trinity and extended trinity" "Trinity and extended trinity" -> "Tools for peer-to-peer collaboration and coproduction" "Trinity and extended trinity" -> "Trinity" "Trinity and extended trinity" -> "Stack" "Trinity and extended trinity" -> "Specials" "Trinity and extended trinity" -> "Extended trinity" "Infrastructur(ing)" "Infrastructur(ing)" -> "Perceptions of infrastructuring" "Spaces" "Spaces" -> "Platform spaces" "Spaces" -> "Big Blue Button" "Spaces" -> "Discourse" "Spaces" -> "FLOSS" "Spaces" -> "Media spaces" "Spaces" -> "Discourse" "Spaces" -> "Federated wiki" "Spaces" -> "Venue spaces" "Spaces" -> "Circles"}