Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.


"And to wrap this up, here's the best piece of news for the day..." I paused, enjoying the moment. "The last node of the Indian hackerspaces network is now live ! You guys have put together your own, completely built from scratch, nation-wide communication infrastructure tying these innovation spaces together, and to hackerspaces all around the world. Give yourselves a big round of applause !"

It was a room of 50 hackers, but the cheering made it sound like it was two, three times that and was the perfect conclusion to 4 months worth of work estimating needs, scouting for instinctive hackers, coordinating efforts over the country with the help of other Agents and finding alternate solutions on the way with everyone's help. Perfect in an organic, networked way and so worth it.

"It's been awesome working with you guys and I'm very sad to leave - but I know that I'll hear a lot of you all, your hackers, and the inventions you will come up with. There's some face-changing waiting to happen, and thanks to you India will play its part. Namasté !"

And with this, it was over. They were chatting with each other, already resuming the bouncing idea back and forth as I collected my last notes, shook some hands and headed out. This hackerspaces network was going to thrive, because it was in these people's minds before it was a reality the EVOKE teams helped make come true.


The phone caught me as I was picking the last of my stuff and thinking of how nice it would be to go back to France and the US for some time off. Guy going by the name of Number, first name Unknown. So much for time off !

"Hello, sir !

(... ?)

Yes, everything went fine. The usual kinks to work out here and there, nothing a little protovating couldn't solve. Give it another few months, 2 years at worst and India's hacker and maker culture will thrive and promote innovation. The network should also provide local to national scale relevant information...And I think they already want to extend its features. We should see some really good stuff coming out of all this.

(...?)


Sure ! I was going to start my way back to Europe to spend some time with the wife and kids, so it's right on my way. I can be in Morocco by...Early next week ? Would that work ?

(...)

Perfect ! I'll report in as soon as I get there. Thank you, sir.

---
FACT : In 2010, Afghanistan started rolling out their own made-from-scratch wireless communication network through the FabFi project, an open source, wireless communications project. You can read more about the wh*** project, its structure and features on the FabFi project website !

Views: 66

Comment by Bruce Haynes on March 4, 2010 at 11:25am
Thomas ive power voted you for CREATIVITY, a very interesting angle
Comment by Thomas Maillioux on March 4, 2010 at 11:33am
Thanks a lot, Bruce !
I believe that such communication networks could do a lot to a country's general well being. Connecting people together, sharing local knowledge, swapping ideas on how to best hack/make something to make up for the lack of more industrialized devices...The implications are mind blowing for something so simple as...connecting dots on a map. Did you know that such infrastructures exist ? Afghanistan hackerspaces started putting up their own through the FabFi project ? http://fabfi.fablab.af/

Now that I'm done working on this one, I get to read your updates and everyone else's ! Yay !
Comment by Bruce Haynes on March 4, 2010 at 11:41am
you seem to have some very relevent knowledge! i look forward to your feedback on my video post
Comment by Raymond M. Kristiansen on March 4, 2010 at 11:51am
FabLab is amazing! Did you see the TED talk that Neil Gershenfeld had in 2005? You can view it here.

The Afghani Fablab also has a Wiki with more information. It is accessible through the link you gave but here is the direct link to the wiki.

Stories like the Afghani FabFi project is very inspiring, and I look forward to reading more from you about hacker culture, and how hacker culture can work together with other parts of civil society to create social change.
Comment by Thomas Maillioux on March 4, 2010 at 11:54am
Thanks for the extra link, Raymond ! The wiki promises to be an interesting read - could actually come in very handy for someone I talked to at the La Suite Logique hackerspace in Paris.
Comment by Raymond M. Kristiansen on March 4, 2010 at 12:03pm
@Thomas: You should check out the work of a friend of mine, 'Bicyclemark' - his blog is at citizenreporter.org - here is a link to his presentation at 26C3 (26th Chaos Communication Congress) in Berlin in 2009: [link]. I see you use twitter - I (aka @dltq) added you. Mark is @bicyclemark
Comment by Raymond M. Kristiansen on March 4, 2010 at 12:05pm
Oh and I have to say that I Loved the way you mixed narration with Google Maps (or whatever that is) in this blog entry. Visualizing data is of utmost importance.
Comment by Amos Meeks on March 7, 2010 at 2:17pm
Thomas, I think that we have some very similar goals. We should collaborate, maybe even do a joint Evokation about Hackerspaces? We should talk.
Comment by ninmah on March 8, 2010 at 8:05pm
Thomas, I really love the creative, mixed-media approach you took with this post! Great story too.
Comment by John D. Boyden on March 15, 2010 at 6:39pm
Excellent stuff! I love how you add a fact section at the end of each post. +1 creativity

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