Sanity before celebration? or: Why we decided not to participate after all, and why this may impact you too…
Dear C, friends in permaculture :-) With this message I'm replying on behalf of the team of Het Kloosterbos (HKB) and Faire Cabane (FC) to all your outstanding messages concerning the EuPC and EuPN/EPT events this October. For clarity: I'm copying this reply to our local/remote support partners as well as all the presenters and facilitators here at HKB & FC. Please consider this a constructive and critical response for the evolution of and my contribution to the EuPC/EuPC & EPT online events. The short version Het Kloosterbos & Faire Cabane teams have collectively decided not to participate in the European Permaculture Convergence (online) 2021 and will not host a European Permaculture Teachers partnership anniversary at this point. The main reason for this is that we find the platforms chosen to broadcast the presentations and facilitate the online interactive events are in direct conflict with what we wish to achieve with our respective projects, based on the published privacy policies and terms of use of the corporations providing the online services. We are concerned that the EuPC in particular has chosen to use these platforms, not in the least because these terms and policies also violate the ethics of permaculture design philosophy directly. Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that alternatives have been developed over the past years, with the support of European permaculture organisations and EU financial support at CoLab. We would have expected that EuPC21 could have been the perfect opportunity to showcase these alternatives and get the European permaculture movement on board. Feel free to read on at your convenience :-) The longer version In April this year I got the first invitation from S to get involved in the organisation or contribute to the programme of this years first fully online edition of the EuPC. Since my first EuPC (2010 in Nethen, Belgium) I've been closely involved with co-creating a better online presence of European permaculture and online EuPC/EuPN development in particular. Even so, pioneers like the late Stefania Strega-Scoz (Stella of Finca Luna, La Palma) and others have been active and successful in various degrees in creating online convergence platforms for even longer. Just to indicate that nothing about the issues and solutions of online meetings and communications is particularly new in permaculture circles. CoLab's digital circle is a good point in case. I was much encouraged by CoLab A's involvement in this EuPC and her enthusiastic offer of support when I contacted her earlier this year. My local partner and friends at MAD emergent art center were also looking forward to make streaming from the wilderness of HKB a successful event. After the initial meeting in April, I contributed some thoughts and proposals in May and July. Some more preliminary correspondence followed in August and September. On 30 September I received the invitation to register at Comcast as presenter/facilitator. The details of planning arrived with the message below on 2 October, with 6 days to go till the start of the EuPC event. Since then I have consulted the members of our team at HKB & FC. Checking out the registration page at Crowdcast set of all my alarm bells. That is when I first realised what we were getting into, from a point of view of the protection of our privacy and the agency over our contributions to the EuPC programme. I dove deeper into the terms of use and privacy policies of the other commercial partners that EuPC has chosen. I'm both unpleasantly surprised and shocked to find how participants of the EuPC event are exposed to the surveillance marketing practices of commercial corporations that we, as practitioners of permaculture ethics and principles, would never want to be associated with by choice. Not unlike we choose not to use pesticides, eat farmed meat or drive hummers to the office. You now what I mean ;-) So, why is this different? It's not like there aren't any viable alternatives available. In essence the event partners like Google (documents, forms, email. etc), Crowdcast (curated programme), Zoom (Open Space) and KumoSpace (Socializing) all have one goal: gathering as much data from the participants as possible, with the incidental "service" provided totally at the sole discretion of the provider, while taking effective and exclusive ownership of all that data. The privacy policies are only statements of the legal framework and justification for violating your privacy. Even more so since none of the participants are in a position to independently verify whatever happens to their data streaming over the public internet into the private corporate data centres around the world. Which is exactly why it would have been of immense value had CoLab been contracted to provide those platform services. The activities at both Het Kloosterbos and Faire Cabane are based on trust, on equality, freedom and hospitality. All of these would be violated by the commercial nature of the platforms chosen for this EuPC. We would be complicit in sabotaging our own work as well as compromising the key ethics and principles of permaculture: planet care, people care and fair share. Not to mention loosing all agency over the content we unintentionally provide to unaccountable and unverifiable commercial parties. We would also be exposing the participants in our events to the data gathering and processing activities of those commercial parties, well beyond the scope of the EuPC event itself. The other consideration is that with just three more days to go now, the room for negotiating time slots is less then ideal. Three days to do detailed local promotion of our live events is now practically impossible. But given the fundamental issues of the chosen platforms, this is a very minor issue now. So: as a unanimous and collective decision, we choose not to participate in EuPC and/or act as presenters or facilitators in this 2021 edition. What now? For the future: we are always open to share our work with like minded people, whether online or IRL :-) We will actively work with anyone interested in further developing online channels of communication that respect the principles of trust, equality, freedom and hospitality. There are some great things happening in this field already. We have no ambition to dominate the market in online surveillance, but would love to grow our own secure and trusted network of people and communication tools. Just like you are :-) Let's make it happen. Now is as good a time as any. Please let's work together on "living in harmony with nature". Fixing our addiction to coercive control mechanisms like the "social media" platforms, monitored "free" information services like cloud data storage, search engines and unencrypted email is the first step in fixing our civilised mind sets that prevent us from transitioning from a world in distress to "living in harmony with nature". Permaculture is a strategic step in the right direction. Let's work from its ethics and principles and follow the path that emerges and evolves from there. AT HKB & FC we have been taking some baby steps already. Over the coming months we, here in Eindhoven, will be busy with doing our own little bit in this quest. Stay tuned - and get your own protonmail.com account or your nextcloud account at CoLab or set up your own in-house internet communications hub system. Wishing you an enlightening and satisfying EuPC21 experience! warm regards and hugs! l:-) kwartiermaker for Het Kloosterbos On behalf of AL, AM, F, G & M.
Hi L and all,
Thank you for bringing this topic into the room L, a small team for researchers in the permaculture colab will be looking at this topic exactly in the coming weeks and therefore this feedback is very valuable. As a result of the research a report will be put together with best practices and resources that are more aligned with the permaculture ethics we all hold dear.
If others would also like to share their feedback please do not hesitate to get in touch as we produce this report as a commons for all convergence / conference / gatherings organisers to use going into a more ethical future.
Love
A
Dear A ?
Thanks for your great response ?
Some of our team are already dusting off their Raspberry Pi’s to do some exploring. If we can play some part in your research, we would really like to contribute. As we did with P, a while ago, when he was exploring NextCloud ?
btw, I now see that a rather embarrassing and confusing (k)notty typo slipped into my original message. Even though you probably guessed it already, I’m correction the missing not below ? So we are all on the same page again.
love,
l ?
Hi L, A,
I appreciate this needs a full debrief post-event and sure it will be enriching to do so. There are also the strategic EUPN meetings during the event which may have some relevance.
For our part, there were contributing factors in our decision-making around using some of these platforms. Some of these were:-
– The EUPN document archive is already on Google Drive, as is all of PABs file systems. There are reasons for this, not least the absolute need for reliability and maximum compatibility across systems and users. This is true also of the PAB email system which runs via Google. These choices were made historically.
– Crowdcast (not Comcast) is a fairly ethical platform and run by BAME activists with a passion for social change who were active during Black Lives Matter last year. We used it in 2020 and found their responsiveness and ability to work with us constructively excellent. It is a small business compared to most of the major software giants out there. Essentially, it’s a platform we trust at this stage, though open to other options in the future, especially those with more flexible features. We did explore use of one open-source platform but it was SOOO complex and – like much Open Source software and web platforms – required much higher technical understanding and engagement for users than Crowdcast, which is easily accessible as a participant. We decided that this would be offputting. It was also very expensive comparably.
– Zoom is, of course, everywhere these days! It’s a bit like the word ‘Hoover’ and ‘Google’ and is used to describe any online video meeting. Good marketing on their part! It’s not a platform we’re using massively for this event, but again it’s reliable and one that people understand and probably already have access to and experience with. I have had multiple Jitsi meetings, for example, which are sub-standard and that’s not viable for a public-facing event, though I’m sure it’s improving all the time as a service.
– We engaged CoLab Digital Circle so we could begin to address some of these issues and ensure money stayed within the permaculture network where possible too, so as to be co-supportive. It’s been excellent all-round and we have a great reusable website because of it. It would be great to see CoLab develop some form of broadcast technology to be used – or a Zoom-style platform – but that is a HUGE undertaking and very expensive and I am not sure if the skills even exist to do it currently.
– Finally, we had concerns about the event being inaccessible if we used many systems that people did not themselves habitually use – my experience of that is that people are not willing, on the whole, to take on new software, apps, etc, without good reason, it can add complexity. A good example is the issues with WhatsApp earlier this year – there was a mass switch to Telegram and Signal. Suddenly we all had 3 messaging apps with our networks split between them. Most people I know have switched back to WhatsApp, though I still use Signal regularly.
I do think there is an issue where compatibility of some software tools – such as Crowdcast and Kumospace – is optimised for Google products like Chrome. That is a problem for those who try not to overuse Google.
For my part, I can see both sides. Life is a compromise on a daily basis. It’s a compromise to use the internet at all given the vast server farms, data harvesting and more; as it is to get in a car or other vehicle and drive to a Convergence (or fly to Ireland as many did!). It’s all down to perspective and choice. We made choices based on our capacity and perceived interests of our audience, mainly that they could access the event as easily as possible. Some of these decisions are uncomfortable but I really hope that we have made progress in our relationship with CoLab and their capacity to become central to online activity across the European permaculture networks.
DH
Events Coordinator, Permaculture Association
Join us at the European Permaculture Convergence Online, Oct 8-17: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/eupc2021
Dear DH 🙂
Thanks for pointing out another typo: indeed I meant to say Crowdcast – I just clicked on the link that came with your invitation to register.
Thanks for offering a post-event debrief. I’m game.
As an advance on this debrief: the “contributing factors in our decision-making” are an excellent illustration of the factors contributing to our decision-making process that went into not participating 😉
As for “Life is a compromise on a daily basis”: well, let’s make daily life less compromising then, D 😉
Have a great EuPC and talk more afterwards.
l:-)
To date, about 6 months later, no post-event debrief has taken place…
Hi,
thanks L for adding me into this very interesting conversation.
I have worked in the IT industry now for nearly 20 years. I have run my own hackspace and I continue to use various OpenSource solutions both professionally and personally and can comment on the matter from this point of view.
I’ve followed the decision making process about the EuPC pretty closely. I’m nearly up2date on all Google Drive documents concerning the EuPC. I sometimes, when I had time, commented on mistakes.
The problem L describes is pretty real. I checked Crowdcast and they actually don’t adhere to European privacy standards as expected – they actually circumvent them in pretty nasty ways. There is an active Google Analytics cookie and a beacon to Stripe without a possibility for the user to stop the tracking. They only offer one payment option: credit card via Stripe (where is the multiple element for important function principle here?) Honestly, it shouldn’t matter who runs the show at Crowdcast if there are privacy violations involved.
@A – I have actually done pretty extensive research on this matter already. […]. I’m sure this information will cover a lot of themes you are planning to research. You can quote it if you like or ask me questions.
In my experience with the UK Permaculture association, who is the main actor in CoLab, the technical knowledge there is at a rather low standard. There is also no use of Ethics and Principles of Permaculture in choosing the software, instead the decisions are rather made using criteria that DH spoke of.
I personally feel that it is time for the permaculture community to expand the ethical basis we claim to base our lives on from our gardens and face-to-face communities into the digital realm, which is a huge part of our everyday life, and therefore I hope L’s letter creates open discussion and eager observation, analysis and designing to find and create better solutions for the future. I am happy to help with that, in CoLab or as a consultant.
Permagreetings,
D
Hi D,
Thanks for your email. Yes I agree we should be aiming for the best, and it would be good to get some advice on the ethical, fully functioning and accessible (for low IT literacy people) open source conferencing / marketing / payment software suite that you would recommend we use next time. We didn’t find anything suitable when we looked a few years ago.
The CoLab digital circle is independent of the Permaculture Association and makes its own technical decisions. We really welcome their exploration of the ethical digital realm, which is one reason why we asked them to develop the EUPC website – to support their economic and team development.
I’m not sure why you think the Permaculture Association is at a low technical base – that is not my perception. I am also not sure how you know what our decision making process is – have you read our Board Policy Manual or the staff handbook, or been to staff or Board meetings?
Anyway, I’ll take this in the spirit of creativity and generosity that I am sure you sent it in, and look forward to this exploration in the future.
AG