[global-south] CryptoRave 2018

[Alison Macrina]

gus:
> Dear intrigeri,
>  
> Em Sat, Dec 02, 2017 at 11:55:06AM +0100, intrigeri escreveu:
>> Hi,
>>
>> newcomer on this list speaking. I'm working with Tails. One of the
>> top-priorities for Tails in the next 2 years is to reach out to
>> communities that are under-represented in the Tails contributors
>> community and in the Tails userbase.
>>
>> Personally I want to work more *with* these under-represented
>> communities and less "for" them (i.e. crappy colonialist approach, if
>> you ask me). I'm focused on Brazil because I have good connections in
>> activist, PET advocates & trainers there already, which provides solid
>> foundations I want to build on top of as opposed to starting from
>> scratch elsewhere.
>>
>> I think CryptoRave (that I attended last year) is a great place to
>> work on this topic as it gathers lots of people (1-3k depending on the
>> year) and they are very diverse: random people who heard they should
>> pay attention to their privacy/safety online, free software and PET
>> advocates & trainers, activists, IT students, software developers etc.
>> ⇒ impact is potentially great, and cost/benefit is interesting.
>> In 2018 CrytoRave will happen on May 4-5.
>>
>> What I'd like to do there, for ethical reasons I prefer formats where
>> I'll be mostly listening or interacting in a group, as opposed to me
>> talking to a large audience (but if it seems a talk is a good way to
>> approach the problem, I can also do that):
>>
>> 1. Regarding current and potential users, advocates & trainers
>>
>>    Ask, listen, try my best to understand the needs and give our
>>    projects useful data to better prioritize our work.
>>    
>>    For example, last year I conducted a number of "intercept
>>    interviews" there with Tails users:
>>    https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/intercept_interviews/
>>
>>    This helped us understand better what people use Tails for, why
>>    they don't use it for other things, what works well and what is
>>    problematic. I would like to do the same again both for Tails and
>>    Tor. I'm not a user research expert so I'd welcome help wrt.
>>    the methodology and phrasing of the questions. I would also love to
>>    have a team-mate to do this there.
>>
>>    I would like to better plan this in advance than what I did last
>>    year, e.g. reach out to my contacts there so we arrive with
>>    a (non-exhaustive) list of people we know we should interview, and
>>    work with the organizers of the event to ensure whoever else we
>>    should interview knows about it and can find us.
>>
>> 2. Regarding current and potential contributors
>>
>>    I want to understand better what the stumbling blocks are on the
>>    path to contributing to Tails and Tor. I also want to help
>>    interested people get started with their first contribution: in my
>>    experience having someone, right next to you, who you can ask
>>    questions creates a tremendously better new contributor experience
>>    than having to look up all the needed info online. I'm not sure
>>    what's the best format for this would be and I would be happy to
>>    design it with other people, and to share this work with other Tor
>>    attendees once we're there.
>>
>> I acknowledge people who live in Brazil are better placed to know what
>> the best approach would be so we should discuss this with them.
>> I would start with asking my contacts there, the Tails pt-br
>> translation team and the events organizers. But perhaps people on this
>> list have some insight?
>>
>> I don't speak Portuguese so I may not be the best person to do this
>> work there; sadly, we have nobody who's very active at Tails speaks
>> Portuguese or lives much closer to Brazil (yet!). Interestingly, last
>> year some Tails users expressed they were happy to meet a Tails
>> developer in person and happily surprised I would care enough to
>> bother traveling that far in order to meet them, which alleviates the
>> cons a little bit. Also, I can easily find good translators to smooth
>> interviews and session I would facilitate. Still, if we have enough
>> people better placed than me to do what we want to do there, I'll be
>> totally in favor of directing our resources to them.
>>
>> Regarding costs, if booked sufficiently in advance, sending me there
>> would cost ~800€. Tails could probably pay some of it but it would be
>> nice to pool resources with Tor and/or find funding for this. I'll be
>> hosted for free at friends and I can pay for my food & other
>> expenses there.
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> 
> I think we could frame your activity as a "Tails users meetup".
> 
> But, coming back home after primavera hacker, my two centavos, is that for an
> event like CryptoRave, it'll need to have two different sessions/activities:
> 
>  - what's tails: for the general public that probably don't know what is
>    it. If you don't want to be in the front, we can try to find someone
> to do this introduction talk. I think this is very important.
>  - tails meetup: to engage the users and how to become part of the
>    community.

We should plan to do the same for Tor as well. Do we know yet when the
CFP opens?


> 
> I really liked your idea. And the interviews were pretty awesome. :)
> 
> We should start to find funding for your flight tickets.>
> cheers!,
> gus
>