Tech Team Plans


Scroll down for ongoing discussion about the Tech Team's purpose and activities.


 

Tom Atlee sent this note 5/7/07 giving the Shambhala electronic landscape:

 

Dear tech folks,

 

We will have people coming to the Story Field Conference with special tech and communication needs and desires -- including a couple of radio talk show hosts who may need to do programs during the Conference. Shambhala has precious few resources. I think it is time to start planning some infrastructure and letting people know what's possible.

 

I have done some research and drafted a statement (thanks to John Abbe for ideas about the LAN). Any thoughts you have on either the substance or the communication of it -- as well as volunteers to help see this through to reality -- would be greatly appreciated. All this can evolve as we go along, encountering new needs, resources, possibilities, ideas....

 

Coheartedy,

Tom

 

 

COMMUNICATIONS RESOURCES IN AND AROUND SHAMBHALA MOUNTAIN CENTER

 

Before coming to the Conference, you might think seriously about your communication needs, especially as regards any special/professional need you have to be connected to the outside world. There are limited communication facilities at Shambhala Mountain Center. Pointing to the life-simplicity and -spaciousness generated by its mountain isolation, the SMC website says:

 

"Cell phones do not work here, nor is there access to the Internet. We have a few public phones available, and, of course, the Postal Service comes by regularly! You will need a calling card to make long-distance phone calls while you are on the land... Please make the necessary arrangements for any communication you must have. Your family and friends can get messages to you by calling (970) 881-2184 x0 during the day, and their message will be posted for you. Any emergency calls must be identified as such by the caller in order to be handled urgently. Emergency messages involving detailed information can also be faxed to (970) 881-2909, where they will be picked up regularly throughout the day."

 

The chances are good that we will be setting up a Local Area Network to do online collaborations (messaging, wikis, blogs, photos, etc.) during the Conference. However, these may be relatively isolated from the Internet, itself, so there won't be browsing opportunities. We do plan to download into the LAN web pages we were using together before the Conference so we can work on them during the Conference, and then upload them to the Web after the Conference. We might also set up daily car-runs into a nearby town for those who wish to do Internet work, extended phone calls, broadcast, or other complex or professional work. If you and/or others want to set up a base in town from which to do such work, that should alsi be possible.

 

What are the nearby town scenes? Shambhala Mountain Center is way out in mountain country NE of Rustic, CO, and SE of Red Feather, CO -- each of which is more than an hour from Fort Collins (a small city, with everything including radio stations) which, in turn, is about an hour from Boulder and Denver. Rustic has no public Internet access, motels, or cell phone reception. Red Feather, on the other hand, does. It is about 20 minutes from Shambhala Mountain Center, so it would be our main target for a "town" connection. Red Feather Trading Post (a great information center: 970-881-2912) says there is an Internet Cafe in town called Mountain Gallery -- and that there is a Verizon cell phone tower nearby -- so Verizon reception is good, and T-Mobile is occasionally good. The only hotel/motel -- Trout Lodge -- has been closed for 2 years but has just been purchased and will probably be open for business before August. Lone Pine Reality 970-881-2500 has private homes for rent on a temporary basis.

 

We hope this offers a starting point for you to research facilities and other resources you may need. If you need further assistance or want to talk over possibilities, contact ___(ANY VOLUNTEERS??)___


Discussion

 

 

Do you have a sense of what you need networked connectivity for? That might make it easier to imagine. nw

Gabriel: Good question Nancy. To ask it in a different way, what are we techies in service to at this conference, and what are the best ways to achieve that service?

--

Sheri:

A little seed planting along the lines of the art of harvesting --

 

I love this and it's got me thinking about how we harvest the stories, the emergence, the cross-pollinating. I've been following the thread through the Art of Hosting communiting around the art of harvesting and I am intrigued with how we can see part of the service we are also offering and perhaps creating the conditions that can support this is around harvesting (wikis, blogs, interconnectivity, cross-pollination, audio, graphic recordings, etc.).

 

Here are a few links:

 

http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/674

 

http://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?cat=28

 

Chris shares this while ruminating on the film Terabithia: "One way to think about harvesting is to see it as putting imaginations to use to create meaning in one world so that another world may come into being. In social change efforts, harvesting is most powerful not when it simply documents the shift from one state to another, but when the harvest itself becomes the catalyst for the coming into being of the new world. ....

 

I’m quite interested how a multimedia, multimodal harvest of meaning from an experience can facilitate and sustain new levels of consciousness and awareness. In this film, the continuation of the world requires a harvest that envelopes Jess’s sister so that she immediately opens to the power of her own imagination. It’s what every good meeting should be about."

 

I am inspired by this.

 


 

Tom:

I LOVE all this -- and I want to note that when John Abbe told me yesterday on a walk that it may be possible to do a satellite Internet link (cost about $1000 for a year, including wireless modem; he's checking on shorter term), I returned to some basics I was thinking of earlier. While it is all well and good to be able to pick up email -- and very healthy to take an enforced break from that every now and then -- it would be extremely useful for the participants at this conference to be able to share with other participants resources they know about online, and for all participants to be able to research more deeply into things they are being introduced to at the Conference. I would expect that being able to be online would increase the impact of the conference by 30-3000% (depending on the turns of fate and emergences in OST, for which being able to dive online may be a make/break possibility in a particular case). I suspect that setting up a LAN and having runs into town would help if we can't be actually connected to the Internet, but if we CAN be, there is no real substitute. And with that, all the habitual bloggers and wikiers will simply continue their natural habits while there, with some of them taking on additional responsibilities or initiatives to serve the conference especially, as you all are noting in your reflections above. -- Tom

 

***

Nancy:

I'm belatedly strolling back to read and think with you. My on-the-fly response are that it is terribly important to chew on the questions Gabriel posted. WHAT is in play here in terms of who and what is in service to whom and what.

 

Tom, I also think it is very interesting to chew on your assumption about the 30-3000% impact increase. Can you say more? I think this is beyond finding and sharing links and resources. My instinct is that what we are often reaching for is continuation after the F2F, which is sooo hard to acheive with our personal busyness. There is something intentional here I don't think we've quite unearthed yet and I'm not sure it IS the actual internet connectivity itself. That may be a blinder. Dunno. Hard to express and harder to concentrate in a time of overwork. I apologize for my mudiness.

 

***

Gabriel:

Thanks Nancy. I also think exploring those questions is important and look forward swimming in that river a bit more.

 

One additional perspective that Tom mentioned to me on the phone the other day is that some folks who are being invited simply won't come if they feel they will be disconnected from their electronic work world for an entire week. It's a high barrier to entry for some who would be fun co-conspiritors in this conversation.

 

On the connectivity front: I've put out some feelers to further John Abbe's research into the possibility of getting an economical Net connection for the conference, should that be our decision. I'm starting a new page to store that ongoing research.

 

Shambhala Net Access Research

 

***

Gabriel:

OK, so I've confirmed that Shambhala has decent wireless and wired access in the venue we're using. Now we can get back to the question of how and why we're using it!

 

FYI, their pipe is shared 1.5 down / .5 up DSL, so too much activity could overwhelm it, but basic stuff should work just fine.