Subscriber Meeting 29-11-2007

From NodelWiki

Minutes of Node.London meeting, held 13 September 2006 at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Minutes: Frederik Lesage

The following is a set of minutes from the last Node.London subscriber meeting which took place at the London School of Economics on Thursday 29th November and hosted by the Organisation Strategy and Design (OSD) Series. See also annex 2 for a ‘scribing’ of the meeting.

1)How this usually works There was initial confusion about the context of the meeting. Quite a few of the participants in the meeting were MA students from the social psychology department who wanted to hear about Node.London’s activities as well as about Upgrade!. There were also students from the Architectural Association. (see annex 1) Unfortunately, there wasn’t a representative from the OSD to explain the series’ context and ‘yours truly’ (sic) was not able to cover this adequately. Some of the Node.London members presented themselves and explained how subscribers’ meetings take place, a general overview of Node.London’s history, brief descriptions of the organisations that are active in Node.London, etc.

In the end, it seemed awkward to Node.London members that many of those sitting in on the meeting were not there to get involved but rather to observe.

2)Presentation by Michelle Kasprzak from Upgrade! Scotland One of the objectives of the meeting was to hear a presentation by Michelle Kasprzak, Programme Director for New Media Scotland, who coordinates the Scotland node for the Upgrade! network. The following is a brief outline of the presentation:

Upgrade! is a media art and technology network that started in New York. As stated on its main website (http://www.theupgrade.net/), it is an ‘International network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture’. Each node is run independently by whoever chooses to start and maintain one. Node membership is mostly constituted by media artists, tinkerers, sometimes scientists, painters, etc. Although there is no standard protocol for meetings or activities, Michelle tells us that the Scotland node meets every month for discussions and presentations that are free and open to anyone who would like to attend. They are funded by the Arts Council Scotland which allows them to pay their speakers and provide snacks and drinks to the attendees.

Presentations are a great way for people to hear what others are doing. Creative and well-planned programming can provide artists with good exposure and a chance to hear about interesting new projects. Topics are not necessarily about media art.

To start a node, one simply has to contact the current members and ask them to support its creation. A node only needs the time and the will of a few individuals in order to get started. There is no nomination process or selection committee. Most of the nodes lean towards non-hierarchical, open organisational structures but this is not set in stone. This suggests similar governance issues to those already encountered and discussed in Node.London: silence is often interpreted as tacit approval, the loudest speaker or individual with the most time or resources seems to make the most decisions, problems with inductions and getting newbees up to speed, etc. There is a need for a ‘manager’ or at least someone to arrange logistics of meetings. Some nodes do mentor other nodes and provide moral support.

Each year, an international event bringing together all of the nodes takes place in one location. (There are 28 nodes posted on the main site) The event allows the Upgrade! members to meet and ‘take a step back’ to take account of what is going on internationally: shift the focus from a micro perspective to a macro perspective. This year’s event takes place in Macedonia. These events have led to touring exhibitions such as “B-sides”.

Upgrade! is described as being great for learning about other peoples’ context. The network’s character is one of collegiality and open exchange. It’s main strong points are that it provides information exchange for local artists and a way to tap into an international ‘brain trust’.

3)What do we do now? After the presentation, the confusion about the diversity of meeting participants resumed. There was a brief exchange between participants about what they wanted to get out of the meeting. In the end, it was agreed that we should take a break for snacks and resume informally to talk and decide when the next meeting should take place. Here, in bullet form, are the concluding decisions we arrived at:

a) We should skip the December meeting and resume meetings on the last Thursday in January. A venue was not selected.

b) There was much debate about the Node.London/Upgrade! collaboration. Some thought that it would be a shame to lose the Node.London ‘brand’ (for lack of a better word) and that it might be a good idea to create a ‘Node.London/Upgrade!’ as a kind of hybrid set of subscriber meetings. Others suggested there could be a Node.London Upgrade! agent or representative that organised Upgrade events and liaised with Node.London. Others thought it was best to keep them separate and simply encourage someone to independently start an Upgrade!. The conclusion was that we should start a discussion on the Node.London site about Node.London’s potential relationship with Upgrade! and see what everyone thought now that we had heard from an Upgrade! representative.