Aug 7-11, 2024 ✵ Camp Navarro, CA

Project Examples

Projects Proposed for DWeb Camp 2019

Research Library Services

 
Project type: Service Project
Suggested DWeb Camp Spaces: Science Fair (indoors); The Forum (outdoors)

Research Library Services will provide local access to the "scholarly record": research papers, books, notable blog posts, etc. Participants will be able to check citations and dig into knowledge a layer deeper than an encyclopedia. The project, proposed for the 2019 DWeb Camp by Brian Newbold of the Internet Archive’s Fatcat (https://fatcat.wiki) project, will also provide a convenient content set / corpus for people experimenting with distributed storage and communication systems on-site.

Research Library Services proposes:

  • A catalog of about 100 million papers, with fulltext copies for 10-20 million of those
  • a small wired front-end server (4 cores, 16+ GB RAM, 2TB+ SSD) to provide HTTP access to the catalog, with metadata (but not fulltext) search
  • A fileserver with about 50 TByte of disk storage laser printer with consumables to print about 200x 5 pages hard copies
  • single-seat workstation (raspberry pi and a monitor?) attached to printer
  • available over wired ethernet, bridging to whatever mesh/wireless or dweb tunneling folks are interested in
  • A booth will offer designated service hours to help folks look things up and discuss distributed libraries.

 

The Fire Pyramid

 
Project type: Art Installation, Gathering
Suggested DWeb Camp Spaces: Grow Room (outdoors), Meadow (outdoors)

The Amber Initiative, a multi-disciplinary community working towards an inclusive digital economy, plans to host perspective shifting Fireside Chats under The Fire Pyramid at DWeb Camp. Their vision: to align those who want to leverage the power of technology to solve real world challenges around freedom, education and sustainability.

Games, Games, Games!

 
Project type: Community Building Games
Suggested DWeb Camp Space: The Meadow (outdoors), The Dance Floor (indoors)

“Play hard, play fair, nobody get hurt.” New Games, Blue Games, Junkyard Games, Token Games... Games can help to support problem-solving and connection… We invite you to host a game — all kinds of games are fair game, the sky is the limit!

Examples from DWeb Summit 2018

The Distributed Web of Care

Project type: Participatory Activity, Happening
Suggested DWeb Camp Space for this type of activity: The Meadow


Artist Taeyoon Choi presented a participatory activity, The Distributed Web of Care, to open the Decentralized Web Summit in 2018. Choi directed roughly 200 participants to cooperate and create three types of networks: centralized, decentralized and distributed. Each participant became a node or network, and collaborated to resolve the new challenges that arose with each iteration. Participants were asked to communicate without speaking and move their bodies with their eyes closed, using only the strings to communicate with others and have a sense of place. The activity was designed to open up room for humorous improvisation and joyful play, and an opportunity to take agency on becoming the networks we want.

 

Internet As A City

Project type: Workshop
Suggested DWeb Camp Spaces for this kind of activity: The Meadow (outdoors), Grow Room (indoors)

At the Decentralized Web Summit in 2018, this hands-on workshop led by a group of students and educators at MIT, collectively known as Studio Pas Mal. The Internet As A City workshop examined decentralized forms of networking through the lenses of cities, urbanism, and architecture. In small groups, participants were provided with “urban” elements to construct landscapes that teased out models of decentralization and governance for the “Internet as a city.”

The first part of the workshop consisted of warm-up exercises that helped attendants think (and draw) websites as buildings, and map a browsing experience to a walking trail. They were then divided to groups of about five people, and provided with “urban” elements, a variety of 3d shapes constructed out of cardboard. Participants collaboratively built landscapes that tease out models of decentralization and governance for the “Internet as a city,” and were also assigned roles, ranging from the state to the anarchist. Each team took some time to reflect on what they had built, and what decentralization would mean in each team’s context.

 

The Wayforward Machine

Project type: Hands-on Art Making, “Play It Forward” Effort
Suggested DWeb Camp Space for this kind of activity: The Forum (outdoors)

The Wayforward Machine was a creative play space that was open throughout the 2018 Decentralized Web Summit. An explicit goal for this collaborative art installation was to create a warm and welcoming environment through playful art-making that would encourage grown ups to play well with others, while supporting intergenerational exchange with people from outside the world of technology. The Machine was comprised of eight different stations, each supported by independent hosts invited to participate by ArtsEd4All, an informal collaborative of artists and educators. The Wayforward Machine summoned up memories of childhood through a diverse assortment of materials, including LEGO, cardboard boxes, words, marbles, yarn, light and marshmallows. After the Summit, workshop photos were saved on Textile, a digital wallet for photos.

At the Knitting Way Station, attendees were invited to make pom poms and machine knitted pieces that are now woven into the nation’s largest yarn-based work of public art — the Immigrant Yarn Project, which is now on display under the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point National Historic Site, in partnership with Enactivist and the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy.