I’ve started my short residency here at the Lighthouse Studio and the first two weeks have flown by in a whirl of crypto/surveillence discussions and lashings of the builders tea which Lighthouse appears to run on.
Mostly I’ve been preparing two events, Tech Activism 3rd Monday on November 18th and Brighton CryptoFestival on December 1st, both of which are collaborations with Lighthouse and Open Rights Group and will be hosted by Lighthouse. #TA3M “are monthly meetups that happen simultaneously in cities throughout the world. It brings together a diversity of people interested in surveillance, censorship and open technology”, and the aim is to find people in and around Brighton who are either working on or interested in, well, tech and activism, and explore ways to work together.
When I first moved to Brighton I was surprised to find that there hadn’t been a CryptoParty here so I started nosing around and discovered that various discussions were taking place which have finally come to fruition in Brighton CryptoFestival, inspired by the London CryptoFestival which takes place the day before. It will be a will be a mixture of talks, workshops, cryptoparty and kids activities, intended for everyone; no prior technical expertise or knowledge is assumed.
My fellow resident Mark brought along some of his Emotional Infrastucture diaries and I’ve been keeping one on surveillance which I’ll be posting more about – it’s been a great way to focus on the topic and you can download your own over at his site.
So next week I’ll be doing more preparation for the events and also putting together a privacy session for the folks at Lighthouse – and somewhere along the way Catalan food got thrown into the mix too, so next week will see the first Practical Privacy & Catalan Cuisine Workshop ever.