Local expertise

[carey]

<tl;dr>Could we make Techjamaica.com more interactive? Could we establish some way of experimenting and documenting with things that would improve us in Jamaica especially?</tl;dr>

So, through the years it has been advised by various acquaintances and through various channels on IRC that I try to use local expertise; if that is lacking then try to nurture it through simple inquiry and discussion.

Remember JaLUG? Were there 2 LUGs in Jamaica -- MoBay and Kingston -- and a MUG? Could we revive LUGs? What do you think about starting GUGs (General User Groups)?

My idea is that as much as physically meeting would make for interesting social opportunities and operations, the "money weather" is quite pressuring for many of us locals. Most of us use skype, whatsapp, google hangouts, facebook [lower cases mine] et al.

Many of us who attended basic school in the '80s < x < '95 learned some variant of The Magic Pomegranate. The internet is all those things in one. How about setting organizing online with open toolkits just like Techjamaica.com has done so far (just more interactively)?

Mumble servers, XMPP, IRC, image bins, paste bins, collaborative editors, DVCS, VPN: we use all these things, we are just still too isolated. We do not need massive bandwidth to do most things. Interestingly, some projects, if embraced, could even increase efficiency and bandwidth availability.

I am not fond of writing/reading long expositions. Let the ideas flow; brainstorm; let's go all out in some experiments; let's find alternatives and substitutes. Remember when Techjamaica.com was a platform behind Asterix VoIP?

[Utech22]

I love this idea .

[carey]

To begin, what is required? More streamlined, easily accessible, archival communication? Collaboration tools? I am looking into setting up git/hg repositories. Would it be better to make things as peer-to-peer and decentralized as possible? The more we keep things inland the less likely we lose it to "Net politics", right?

Personally, a long term goal I seek is Village LAN: each community has a network (mesh or other) that can easily be interfaced with other networks. In the '90s and early 2000s we used to do many things for ourselves. We were using dialup, but still, I have fond memories of the SNES multiplayers over internet games that were played using just what we had without depending on some centralized solution in some other country.

To show that the politics is not paranoia, see what is happening in Turkey at the moment? What prevents it from happening here? I recommend our methods be as decentralized and distributed as possible.

[owen]

So many things to do, so little time. Many TJ folks are either still trying to get jobs, working hard or saving thier money. what do you hope to achieve? you original post is kinda confusing. Break it down to one sentence.

[carey]

So many things to do, so little time. Many TJ folks are either still trying to get jobs, working hard or saving thier money. what do you hope to achieve? you original post is kinda confusing. Break it down to one sentence.

1 sentence: I am trying to establish (a) platform(s) for other platforms (communication, productivity et al) in our geographical area, independent of off-island facilities.

At the moment, I am trying my hand at Writerbay, among other things. Why does it seem most of what we have is just for posing and not to actually utilize? We have smartphones and all kinds of tools, but so far we only touch the surface of their capabilities.

[owen]

Its because posing is fun. So you kind of want a think-tank?

[Satanforce]

So many things to do, so little time. Many TJ folks are either still trying to get jobs, working hard or saving thier money. what do you hope to achieve? you original post is kinda confusing. Break it down to one sentence.

To elaborate further:

1. Who are you/we?
2. What are we doing here?
3. What is it that we are trying accomplish?
4. What resources will we use to accomplish this/these?

[datdread]

1 sentence: I am trying to establish (a) platform(s) for other platforms (communication, productivity et al) in our geographical area, independent of off-island facilities.

At the moment, I am trying my hand at Writerbay, among other things. Why does it seem most of what we have is just for posing and not to actually utilize? We have smartphones and all kinds of tools, but so far we only touch the surface of their capabilities.

The tools mentioned are still maturing. It could be argued that "posing" is a part of the maturation process.

Collaboration is pretty decentralized now. Lots of us are managing multiple projects while we "pose" on TJ.

How is WriterBay? Made any "food" from it?

[carey]

The tools mentioned are still maturing. It could be argued that "posing" is a part of the maturation process.

Collaboration is pretty decentralized now. Lots of us are managing multiple projects while we "pose" on TJ.

How is WriterBay? Made any "food" from it?

Waiting for the end of April to find out how payment goes.

[carey]

To elaborate further:

1. Who are you/we?
2. What are we doing here?
3. What is it that we are trying accomplish?
4. What resources will we use to accomplish this/these?

1. Anyone who is interested in developing something useful to themselves or/and others.
2. Same thing we usually do on Techjamaica.com forums, but with more interactivity and enhanced collaboration.
3,4. We are trying to make use of local resources and reduce dependence on resources that are out of our control.

We are 1 of the few countries in the world that did not attempt a linux distribution of our own.
We don't have even a little control over our metadata.

JaLUG used to attempt projects all the time that were admirable in their scale and goals. JaLUG came up with the idea of introducing OLPC in schools before NetServ was accepted by government. JaLUG seemed to have been crushed by the weight of having to do everything with little resources in a single location: every parish was to have at least 1 LUG.

If we are going to maintain competitiveness in the global village and improve, we locals will need to start grassroot projects that -- even if they fail -- show that things are possible by our own hands. Owen and Pezz make games for a living. Pezz once called for support on a programming project. Imagine if things were more interactive as in the project had a pre-alpha stage on github or such; imagine if we had like virtual/electronic walk-in sessions (to paint a picture) like an IRC channel.

So many things popping up that we could implement locally. Imagine if off-shore data links should cease from an embargo or catastrophe. We as an island have only ns.jm at UTech as nameserver. UWI is in charge of .jm. Our systems are frail and will fail in disasters.

It all may seem grandeur or fantastical, but do you think it is possible to start things rolling again, where we seek to modernise and isolate our activities and processes? Make it so that the common Jamaican eventually won't think Facebook is the internet when they finally get a mobile computer, for instance?