Programa Catalisador do Brasil/Planejamento 2012-2013/Parcerias/Coletivo Digital/Encontro 2013-02-22

Coletivo Digital

We started the Digital Collective by the end of 2004, most people were part of the electronic government team from the city of São Paulo.

In fact the paperwork was done by 2005. Our idea was to give continuity to the work we were already developing in the city of São Paulo, working with digital inclusion and free software. Also discussion issues of access to knowledge and other things that entered our bylaws.

In the beginning we thought of projects very similar to what we had been doing, establishing 'telecentros' (internet acccess centers) but the resource investment was too big. We did not have the means.

We were 22 people but no capital. Our first projects then, which became a tendency, were capacity building projects. Example, the city of Campinas started a digital inclusion project and we were hired to train their 'telecentro' instructors.

Later Petrobras did a similar thing and we did the same, also training their managers, so they could seek sustainability for their centers.

We started to specialize in capacity building then. So later we did a big project with teh city of Osasco, and we started to realize we needed to include something else in these 'telecentros'.

The programs that were offered were always the same: text editing, spreadsheets etc.

People complained that 'telecentros' were being used mostly for social networking, while computers could open the possibility of video editing and creative media working, but there was no instruction for that, and no equipment.

So we asked the question, what courses could we provide?

Anasuya

what whas the original purpose of telecentros?

CD

Provide a community venue for internet access, to fight the huge digital gap. Government policy to build free access to information from the city hall, and telecentros where people could access the internet and those services for free. Started in the periphery and very poor neighbourhoods. During their work at São Paulo 140 telecentros were built.

Anasuya

An etry point for egovernment, right?

CD

Entry point for egovernment and entry point for people to access the internet, close the digital divide.

Only 3 million of 11 million inhabitants had Internet access at the time, and most of them related to banking work.

(Oona was speaking, she worked with them at the time... - explained the pilars of the e-government from 2001 to 2004, in which you had: 1) Access to public services and information; decentralized production of content; 2) Access to internet through telecenters in poor regions; 3) Migration of the cityhall computers and technology into free software)

A story... poor people, computer, internet, digital inclusion (funny gestures).

So we wanted to give new uses for those spaces, but not a lot of openness from digital inclusion projects for that kind of idea.

In 2009 the call for proposals by the ministry of culture started for the 'culture spots'. A program where these centres got money to run themselves and a multimedia kit (computers plus free software). However most people who got these resources did not know how to operate them.

So we developed a capacity building program on multimedia for those 'culture spots'. Audio editing, video editing, image editing with free software. Also a gnu/linux maintanance and installation course.

Henrique

Did you have any exchange with the 'Circo Voador' people?

CD

We learned about them later and their work was really alike, but no contact at the time.

We met people from São Carlos who were doing similar things and we were helping them out.

Do you know the project Cultura Viva?

Its a public policy for diverse cultural groups that were to build a multimedia 'kit' to create and distribute cultura througout the world and to collaborate among themselves.

They had many projects under these umbrellas. The 'pontos' (spots) were local based groups getting those multimedia kits, and the 'pontões' (big spots) that were supposed to bring the pontos together.

Sometimes the telecentros would become pontos, but you could also have completely untechnological groups becoming pontos, like 'quilombolas' or african groups.

Getting back, we worked for a while with this 'pontões' project, when we directed ourselves more towards multimedia production. When this ends, we keep giving them support for a while, but we entered a new project with the Ministry of Planning, later moved to the Ministry of Communications, again going back to 'telecentros'.

This new project would support already existing telecentros, giving them new machines, connection, intructors - digital inclusion agents - either all of them or those which were missing in one particular telecentro.

Jonas

I worked in a project at my college called GESAC, is it related?

CD

Ministry of Commmunications inherited two big projects, the GESAC and the Community Telecenters. This happened before these new editals called Telecentros BR.

The two editals were to support telecentros with instructors and resources, and the second one was to create a network of capacity building for digital inclusion.

We entered both editals and in the second one we built the platform for giving support to all instructors.

GSAC was a project to spread connectivity to areas of the contry without service, with a short capacity building module for the local instructors who would manage it.

So we built this distance learning platform using Moodle, and produced the contents that were conveyed to telecentro's instructors.

Since the government was trying to place all of its digital inclusion projects under a single banner, we wanted these people working on the ground to have a minimal understanding of digital inclusion and the role of digital media in citizenship.

So this capcity building network was supposed to do that.

In the beginning this network was planned to have one central hub that would produce all the content and be disseminated through it. But when we started to work, we realized this was foolish. A lot of wasted effort to customize this centrally produced material.

There were 7 regional centers, so instead we split the content between them based on their expertise.

In fact the regional centers mixed up NGOs and universities, doing work towards the telecentros. So this brought together a work that was militant from the NGO side and Distance Learning oriented from the universities. So our decision was to make a collaborative approach to bring forward a new product that mixed these two perspectives.

This was the biggest win from this network for digital inclusion.

We learned how to translate all of this into a platform. Also new was that this was all brought into a community project. So at the end of his capacity building the instructor had to create a project for the community he was in.

Any kind of project, from showing movies to work with elderly people, to assist people fighting drug use, to help citizen journalism. He had to write down the project, show it to the community, involve the community in the implementation of the project.

When the call for projects was proposed, it was to serve 16.000 instructors in telecenters around the country, and we created it to fit those requirements.

However the government did not deliver all the machines to the telecentros...

So the network ended up only serving 15% of its capacity.

We later proposed to open accesss to the platform to anyone who wanted to do a digital inclusion course, but this did not go forward.

The content is all under creative commons.

The platform is not, because they - the Ministry of Communications - thought they would not have the resources to attend a larger demand.

So that content could be offered in Wikimedia Projects.

The ministry put two universities to take care of the network - UF Pará with the North hub of the network - and UF Bahia, who now work with the instructors.

Now music.

Since we were working with all this multimedia editing, we were left asking ourselves how far can you go using only free software?

We thought we could make a project to find that out. We had already started a site called BarulhoLab (NoiseLab) that published Creative Commons licensed music.

We would use our studio (there's one downstairs), and then make the records available on the site.

But we couldn't get it financed.

Still, some bands came to us with their material, and we decided to go forward with one of them. Called Metrô Sertão (Outback Subway), they mix rock with northeastern regional music. Sounds a bit like Chico Science.

Metrô Sertão's is CC-BY-ND or some other which doesn't allow derivate works.

We offered the studio, our sound technichian worked for free, and we made the whole CD production using free software, even if we had to do some extra clicks.

So a next initiative was a project bringing this experience with the audio production courses we offered to the cluture points, every month we select 3 musicians from São Paulo and another 3 from outside the state.

They come to the studio and spend one week producing a new song. We go through an intense compositional process. In the last day we'll be all like "lets record one last guitar!".

By the end of 8 meetings, we are going to record a CD with one song from each band.

The license we're using is CC-BY-SA. hmmm

So it's a jam by a mix of professional and amateur musicians.

In the first one a 16 year old boy was participating and he was amazed that everyone used long sleeves.

His last day here was going to the 'Rock Gallery' downtown to buy his girlfriend a long sleeve shirt.

Another project, but first some general ideas.

Our general landscape, which encompasses our workshops of digital inclusion and social participation.

In 2001 the debate was going around: should there be telecentres? Is internet access fundamental for telecentres? Or just offline computer use. There the movement started to make digital inclusion a public policy and a citizen right.

Big debate about free or proprietary software, and whether the services should be gratuitous.

We enter clearly on the side of public policy, citizens rights, free software and had at its hear the issue of citien particiipation.

Our telecentres in São Paulo had a governance board from the community.

In 2001, still in the Fernando Henrique government, we organize the firest workshop on digital inclusion with the intention of establishing national public policy for digital inclusion.

This workshop was organized and called for by civil society, and articulated and supported by the federal government.

As much as the government started implanting more public policy for digital inclusino, it started to try to take over the workshops.

One of the items financed in the call for proposals for capacity building was related to financing participation in this workshop.

Two things happen in this workshop: dabate of contextual issues - internet as necessary, free software, today broadband connection, 'marco civil' (internet bill of rights); and then also workshops themselves, building capacity for the instructors that participate.

This year, mistakenly the Ministry of Communications tried to cancel the workshop, as the call for proposals had some resources for this, but there was no resources for 2012. But civil society got back and established that the workshop was of its own and it organized by itself the workshop and sent a letter to president Dilma raising the obstacles for an effective digital inclusion actions.

The workshop was always defined as a place for dialogue about digital inclusion issues. The government got confused and thought it was their space for discussion of public policy.

So we have to constantly prove them we're partners but not morons.

And they ended up being present in the workshop, from the opening, being able to speak - and listen.

Questions from Henrique

One thing that worries me is the licensing issue.

This is a hot topic when talking about wiki projects.

Your site has a NC license, is there a reason for that?

CD

We had some things in the site that already had that license, some software manuals, some documentation.

We don't have a requirement, but in general we use that license (cc-by-NC).

There are both the things we translated that were already with this license, and when we worked with culture pontos they prefered the NC license.

As if Coca Cola would use your music they'd batter pay for it.

There's a case with a culture point in the north of Brazil where the content produced by a culture ponto was unlawfully exported.

Henrique

But that would have happened regardless of the license...

CD

Yeah.

Oona

This is a complex debate. You have cases like Natura, where indigenous knowledge is being patented by a corporation.

But in general I feel that in less and less cases it makes no sense to use NC.

Henrique

And I wasn't really asking about the songs, but the texts on your site.

Rodrigo

This is something that, as partners, we will bother you all the time.

Henrique

For example all this documentation, we can't bring to our sites.

Rodrigo

So you lose the opportunity of diffusing this.

CD

I did not know you could not use NC on the wiki.

Henrique

The wiki provides commercial rights, so if I import I'm violating your license. You could sue me.

Rodrigo

I, thinking as a volunteer, could there be a partnership in the direction of capacity building our volunteers for video editing, audio editing, multimedia production.

CD

One thing we're prospecting resources to build is...

When we tried to build the network we found a lot of bureaucratic barriers in terms of what content was to be produced. And also several issues with connectivity.

Telecentros that could not access videos, only have Internet access through sattelite. That's why we have these CD-ROMs.

The sattellite guys can't watch video. You can't teach video editing with text only. And we also had videos that were part of the capacity building.

We had to transcribe it whole not because of physical deficiencies, but Internet deficients.

We are now looking how to multiply this content towards Distance Education.

We are in a moment in Brazil where you have the following.

Many of the services that should be provided by the State is provided by the third sector instead. Many things in partnerships because the State does not reach the northeastern 'outback', but it manages to do it through NGOs.

So they're both working under pressure from juridically insecure agreements. There are no clear rules about how to deal with this.

The government finds it hard to analyse - and therefore approve - the accounting from partner NGOs.

We got a lot of questions two years after the project was over. And only got our accounting approved three years after - last week!

So one thing we want for this Distance Learning platform is to have a course on how to deal with all this accounting issues. If you want to build an NGO, or a specific kind of NGO that the government is allowed to contract (OSCIP), how do you do that?

Today you have a partnership system and resource translation system that is a nightmare for anyone in the third sector, and even between government agencies.

We learned a lot from the need to use this, so we could make this knowledge available. For exemple how to transition an institution to free software.

Anasuya

I just want to ask a question.

What are your sources of funding now? How was the relationship with petrobras?

And how is your relationship in general with civil society from being financed by them.

Oona

Petrobrás has a lot of money to give to culture. It is larger than the Ministry of Culture, so there is not much stigma related to that, though some people dislike it.

CD

Our relationship is that Petrobras was one of few State companies that were investing in digital inclusion.

Also, by the end of the Telecentros contract, they realized they couldn't just abandon them.

There was a big understanding between RITS, Coletivo Digital and Petrobras, to give a capacity builing to the managers of telecentros, so they could learn to raise funds for their projects.

From a bakery besides the telecentro to public and private funding sources for digital inclusion projects.

There was a care from petrobras to not let what they funded die out.

So they are well seeing for that.

Our main issue with them is that the funding model is based on pilot projects and number of people impacted. "How many poor do you serve?" "How much does each of your poor cost?".

Because of this, many NGOs who are involved in middleware activities, like capacity building of instructors, get left out.

One would say, "I implanted a telecentro in Campinas so I serve 600 people", to the kind of activities each one is engaged in. So we struggle to show the value of our work, because it impacts large numbers indirectly.

We live by project. When we have a project we get paid in Reais (reals), when we don't have projects we get paid in SuReais (surreals). We attribute a value to our work and keep going.

So we are also engaged in a discussion about the new model of relationship between NGOs an the government.

The great issue is that today an NGO like Coletivo Digital is treated alike to huge foundations like Telefonica's or Globo's Roberto Marinho Foundation.

It's normal to find NGOs which have projects supported by the government without a scale that would make it realistic to have a law and accounting office, but the same rules apply.

Anasyua

I understand now, so Petrobras is a State company.

CD

Mixed, but yeah.

Anasuya

You are familiar with Wikimedia projects, right.

CD

We are familiar and frequently found that when we used Wikipedia as a source in our courses, we got bad feedback from the university people. There was a huge debate inside the capacity building network that it was indeed a reference. We did reach that consensus positively.

Oona

I think we should talk abot the projects because I feel they don't know all of them and it could be useful for thinking up collaborations.

Anasuya

Let's talk about the projects and then move with this conversation.

CD

Our idea is that this place - the Coletivo Digital - becomes a reference to debates we're involved in about free software, free licensing, collaborative culture, access to knowledge.

Our backyard is used for showing movies, debates, parties, barbecues.

We had a free beer brewing course.

Henrique

If you're interested the domain "churrascaolivre.com.br" (big free barbecue) is mine, I can give it away.

Anasuya

The wikimedia foundation, based in San Francisco, is a key actor in the larger wikimedia movement, sees itself as primarily supporting the movement through engineering, technology, infrastructure, fundraising, and grant making - giving financial support to different wikimedia actors and operating the sites.

Around two and a half years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation thought about expanding its reach in the 'global south' and non-english-speaking communities. To basically increase its global knowledge footprint.

At that time they decided to start with a pilot in India and in Brazil. And perhaps to move into the Arab region, because these were the three regions and communities with largest potential for growth, both in terms of population and in terms of internet penetration. As well as a pretty passionate Wikimedian community, core community.

So we started in India with a small team of consultants, and then last year in Brazil.

The original idea was to set up offices in both places, and then have the community take over the projects.

But we learned pretty quickly that was not a good proccess. It is much more helpful to have the proccess held by the local community and provide support for that work.

So, in India we started looking for partners who would work with our team and try to see what this partnership would involve.

We realized that what is important is for any partner organization and for the community too see that there is a value added in the partnership.

In india right now our team is working with Center for Internet and Society (CIS).

What were they here for last month?

Oona

For the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and The Public Interest

Anasuya

So they are basically an advocacy organizatino for Internet governance and access to knowledge issue. So it made sense for them to work with us to broaden their reach and mobilization community. And it made sense for us to have their support, and have them host us. And both could profit from the experience and knowledge in both sides.

And that brings us to today, as Oona has been looking for similar organizations in Brazil. Who share our values and our mission.

Any questions so far?

Them maybe rodrigo can give his excellent summary of the projects.

Rodrigo

I'll explain the projects and communities.

The Wikimedia Movement is a global movement of several communities, like Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Foundation and other NGOs give support to this movement.

It is a big mess that should not work, but it does. Works in practice, not in theory.

Wikipedia started around 2000-2001, and in 2003 the foundation was created to manage and support the sites.

Then other projects started to pop, like Wiktionary, a dictionary, Wikiquote, for citations, Wikisource, for published texts in the public domain, and Wikimedia Commons, which is the multimedia repository. They are all wikis, so even for the images on Commons you can follow their edit history. Then Wikibooks, for open educational resources and manuals. Then Wikiversity, for free courses and discussion and bringing together people to work on knowledge and learning. Also Wikivoyage, a free travel guide which had its own organization but last month decided to move into the Wikimedia infrastructure. This is an interesting project because you can contribute from your own knowledge of places.

Henrique

So, Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, has several rules for content inclusion. Wikivoyages is lighter on that side.

Rodrigo

These are the online communities. We also have offline work, that supports the growth of that content. There's activities like Wiki Loves Monuments, which is a worldwide photo contest. Organizing people to contribute photos to Wikimedia Commons. There's also GLAM work to convince galleries, libraries, archives and museums do liberate their content. Advocating and making partnerships and assisting technically. There's also content distribution in offline media based on wikimedia projects. And QR-code based presentation of Wikimedia content in museums and public places, as done in an English city and also started in a Spanish one.

In Brazil we feel our offline work is more driven towards social issues. So recently in the campus party we were prefered to work outside the closed areas.

CD

We organized the digital inclusion are of campus party for three years.

But then we told them we don't work for free for huge corporations like Telefonica (sponsors Campus Party).

And with some disagreements, for example they had this idea of 'digital baptism' where you put a huge line of people and gave them a condensed workshop to the highest number of people possible.

So we tried to articulate this with the telecentros, so after the silly 'baptism' they'd get in touch with their local telecentros.

Rodrigo

There are several ways the foundation provides grants. The regular way for partners would be to apply for a proccess that goes through a global community process.

This focus on grants started recently, as Wikimedia moved away from doing activities to providing grants so local partners could head them in collaboration with the communities.

Oh, and there's also the education program - I forgot about tom! - a project to mobilize professors in universities providing the assistance of a volunteer to help his students produce online content in Wikipedia. This is now in several places in Brazil.

This is the main project managed by the foundation in Brazil today.

Now there's another proposal called Wikimedia in Schools, where someone could reach out to a middle school, giving talks to students and preparing teachers to use the wikis, not only wikipedia, to work in their classes. This could bring in young people, the age of people who have been starting to contribute on Portuguese Wikipedia.

Oona

Wikipedia nas Universidades intends to improve the Portuguese Wikipedia content and also mobilize students to spread collaboration culture. Making use of the work already done by students in most universities that gets archived and forgotten. At the same time, there are teachers who work with Wikipedia as a teaching tool, to work on objective writing, citation practice etc.

We had an open call last year and received proposals by teachers. We don't have a limitless number of volunteers, so we started to prepare students from these universities as well. So there is this demand for capacity building for knowledge sharing in wikis.

This perhaps relates to your materials or your practice of building capcity building educational materials for instructors.

Rodrigo

We must create a methodology for teachers to use this very practically in schools. If you do something too abstract they won't buy it or need too much assistance.

CD

One thing we've been proposing, in association with Fedral University of Minas Gerais, we noticed that digital inclusion network was reaching to a specific kind of instructor.

You would go to a city like Juiz de Fora, you could work with an instructor in a telecentro, but they wouldn't incorporate that they had a responsibility to disseminate that knowledge and share it with others.

So the telecentro would ask the federal government for resources, but couldn't look into its own community and what he could contribute there and get from it.

So we are working on mapping of these communities of what are their vocations and what already exists there. If a telecentro works mostly with music, understand that it can use its expertise with other craft communities (such as local tailors), and that they can organize their creative potential locally. And that could be one criteria for resource distribution from the federal government.

This way you avoid placing resources in telecentros that become and in in themselves and therefore have little sustainability because they don't relate to teir communities. So you ask for a proof of local investment, but social not political or financial.

This mapping should help us and the telecentros identify local resources, opportunities, obstacles.

The university we're working with have great experience using moodle in collaborative proccesses. They worked with a medicine shool, where professors that belonged to the university for 20 years did not know who was the mailman or other people within the community.

So they built virtual portfolios for the members of the community, so they could recognize each other.

Oona

This connects to our interest in our wikiproject health.

Rodrigo

And what software do they use for this mapping?

CD

Everything is done within moodle, using the moodle API to use the data and build visualizations.

Anasuya

Thinking about a partnership, what excites you most and what concerns you most?

CD

One of our main motivations would be a project to build capacity within the Brazilian Wikimedia community, when Oona was talking about how was it working and which are the projects, I remembered the platform of distance learning we were intending to build, and thought this could also be done within a wiki.

So we could reconcile this project we already had in mind together with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Worries...

When we created the Digital Collective, one thing in our bylaws was the issue of sharing knowledge. So being able to participate in the Wikimedia Movement would have great consonance.

This debate in Brazil is recent, and with arid causes, bringing a movement like this lets you translate this arid causes into things meaningful for people. So this is not only restricted to people like us, who are militants for this cause.

So not many worries... we're not afraid...

Oona told me there are some requirements, transparency in accountance etc, but more than we already do? In any case you'd only have to ask.

And now we have the Access to Information Law, which we are already subject to in other projects, so we are quite used to greater transparency.

When we were with he telecentros we had to call 600 people to tell them the budget was being held and we couldn't pay them. We're used to these things.

To be open and work collaboratively are things we're used to. If you try to find out which table in this office belongs to whom, you won't because anyone can use anything they need.

Henrique

What about international bureaucracy and contracts?

CD

It's nothing compared to SICONV (the brazilian public grant system).

CD

And, let us make a question, what do you expect from a partnership with us?

Anasuya

From the foundation side what we expect is an organization that sees value in this partnership, welcomes the team in a room, and makes sure the team feels comfortable in the organization, that the team feels as a part of the organization.

Oona

I thought the plan was to lock me in the kitchen..

CD

Oh no, we only enslave 'gaúchos' (brazilian southeners) here, to make barbecue during our parties!

CD

Our expectation is to aggregate the knowledge you have accumulated into our institution.

Including issues of licensing, for example, where I did not know about the incompatibility with wikimedia sites.

And also count on the collaboration of Wikimedia in the projects we have here.

We don't want to put you in a room. We want work interaction, not brand exchange.

Anasuya

For us the practical work is building the community and content.

CD

Do you think from the stories we told and the projects we explained that we're fit for that?

Anasuya

I can certainly see the connections, but it would be interesting to hear from all of you.

Rodrigo

I think so, we already want to work with capacity building. Let's include people and train them to train other people.

In that we have a lot in common.

We might still have a few discordances about licensing and a focus more on knowledge from us or culture in your case.

But this is Brazil we do whatever we want.

So we're always open to do projects with you and it will be like that, so if you want to start a project tomorrow we'll be waiting.

CD

The way I think, I think of the beach communities of the Jureia (coastal forest natural protection area), and the books they created about how to fish in a natural and non-predatory way, these kids have a lot of potential but they only have sattelite connection, they are poor children of fisherman from that area.

The connections that 'pontos de cultura' bring to give a wider reach and sharing for them can be really strong.

One other thing we could think is a presence of the wikimedia community in the Workshops on Digital Inclusion and Social Participation - the 12th edition.

Besides support from the federal govenment, we have support from the local government, so we are discussing where its gonna be.

But we think it is a space for dialogue where wikimedia should be present.

This last time the Brazilian Internet Governance Committee brought workshops of their own, besides some funding, and they were surprised how their workshops were all full.

Another case was the Social Participation Coordination of the General Secretariat of the President. They had workshops and were surprised by the interest. They are creating a national system for social participation.

And we have project managers there, not only instructors, so we belive that to be a very important venue for wikimedia presence.

Rodrigo

We should also show you outreach activities we undertook that worked out.

CD

Thinking about this case, the boys from Jureia created this book. If you create a space where you can collect and become a space for community production. This very community has a course on "white viola", where they teach from building the viola to playing the viola in the 'fandango'.

If you can provide a space for them to publish and document their work, its quite interesting.

Rodrigo

I think you can do that with a mix of wikiversity and wikibooks.

Oona

I also think this possibility to spread knowledge of wiki usage among these communities, throughout this national network of telecentros, is a great opportunity.

All of us seem to have worked together, so it is a matter of building up concrete ideas as working together seems natural within our agendas.

Anasuya

So the practical step would be for you to think among yourselves, proccess ideas, and set a next conference in, let's say, two weeks?

Oona

Let's everyone digest and arrange our ideas.

AE also was interested in working with you.

So we can consider this possibility of a multistakeholder partnership.

AE has little experience with digital technologies, but bring a lot from their work with teachers. And public policy, which you do as well.

So it's great that we now have this personal experience of our feelings and our passions.

Anasuya

You should feel comfortable to ask questions over the next few weeks, to ask anything from or about the foundation.

CD

And so should you!

Anasuya

It was really exciting to be here, it is not the same to see it online and reading the material, it's nothing like seeing you and hearing the story face to face!

Coletivo Digital - Português (tradução)

Começamos o Coletivo Digial no final de 2004. A maior parte das pessoas veio da equipe do Governo Eletrônico da cidade de São Paulo.

Na verdade, nós nos formalizamos em 2005. Nossa ideia era dar continuidade ao trabalho que já vinha sendo desenvolvido na cidade de São Paulo, trabalhando com inclusão digital e software livre. E o estatuto envolveu também questões como o acesso ao conhecimento.

No começo nós achávamos que deveríamos desenvolver projetos muito semelhantes aos que já vínhamos desenvolvendo, criando telecentros (centros de acesso gratuito à internet), mas os recursos para isso não eram grandes o suficiente para viabilizar isso.

Éramos 22 pessoas sem capital. Nossos primeiros projetos, então, e que se firmaram como tendência, eram os de capacitação/formação. Por exemplo, a cidade de Campinas começou um projeto de inclusão digital e fomos contratados para treinar os instrutores dos telecentros deles.

Later Petrobras did a similar thing and we did the same, also training their managers, so they could seek sustainability for their centers.

We started to specialize in capacity building then. So later we did a big project with teh city of Osasco, and we started to realize we needed to include something else in these 'telecentros'.

The programs that were offered were always the same: text editing, spreadsheets etc.

People complained that 'telecentros' were being used mostly for social networking, while computers could open the possibility of video editing and creative media working, but there was no instruction for that, and no equipment.

So we asked the question, what courses could we provide?

Anasuya

what whas the original purpose of telecentros?

CD

Provide a community venue for internet access, to fight the huge digital gap. Government policy to build free access to information from the city hall, and telecentros where people could access the internet and those services for free. Started in the periphery and very poor neighbourhoods. During their work at São Paulo 140 telecentros were built.

Anasuya

An etry point for egovernment, right?

CD

Entry point for egovernment and entry point for people to access the internet, close the digital divide.

Only 3 million of 11 million inhabitants had Internet access at the time, and most of them related to banking work.

(Oona was speaking, she worked with them at the time... - explained the pilars of the e-government from 2001 to 2004, in which you had: 1) Access to public services and information; decentralized production of content; 2) Access to internet through telecenters in poor regions; 3) Migration of the cityhall computers and technology into free software)

A story... poor people, computer, internet, digital inclusion (funny gestures).

So we wanted to give new uses for those spaces, but not a lot of openness from digital inclusion projects for that kind of idea.

In 2009 the call for proposals by the ministry of culture started for the 'culture spots'. A program where these centres got money to run themselves and a multimedia kit (computers plus free software). However most people who got these resources did not know how to operate them.

So we developed a capacity building program on multimedia for those 'culture spots'. Audio editing, video editing, image editing with free software. Also a gnu/linux maintanance and installation course.

Henrique

Did you have any exchange with the 'Circo Voador' people?

CD

We learned about them later and their work was really alike, but no contact at the time.

We met people from São Carlos who were doing similar things and we were helping them out.

Do you know the project Cultura Viva?

Its a public policy for diverse cultural groups that were to build a multimedia 'kit' to create and distribute cultura througout the world and to collaborate among themselves.

They had many projects under these umbrellas. The 'pontos' (spots) were local based groups getting those multimedia kits, and the 'pontões' (big spots) that were supposed to bring the pontos together.

Sometimes the telecentros would become pontos, but you could also have completely untechnological groups becoming pontos, like 'quilombolas' or african groups.

Getting back, we worked for a while with this 'pontões' project, when we directed ourselves more towards multimedia production. When this ends, we keep giving them support for a while, but we entered a new project with the Ministry of Planning, later moved to the Ministry of Communications, again going back to 'telecentros'.

This new project would support already existing telecentros, giving them new machines, connection, intructors - digital inclusion agents - either all of them or those which were missing in one particular telecentro.

Jonas

I worked in a project at my college called GESAC, is it related?

CD

Ministry of Commmunications inherited two big projects, the GESAC and the Community Telecenters. This happened before these new editals called Telecentros BR.

The two editals were to support telecentros with instructors and resources, and the second one was to create a network of capacity building for digital inclusion.

We entered both editals and in the second one we built the platform for giving support to all instructors.

GSAC was a project to spread connectivity to areas of the contry without service, with a short capacity building module for the local instructors who would manage it.

So we built this distance learning platform using Moodle, and produced the contents that were conveyed to telecentro's instructors.

Since the government was trying to place all of its digital inclusion projects under a single banner, we wanted these people working on the ground to have a minimal understanding of digital inclusion and the role of digital media in citizenship.

So this capcity building network was supposed to do that.

In the beginning this network was planned to have one central hub that would produce all the content and be disseminated through it. But when we started to work, we realized this was foolish. A lot of wasted effort to customize this centrally produced material.

There were 7 regional centers, so instead we split the content between them based on their expertise.

In fact the regional centers mixed up NGOs and universities, doing work towards the telecentros. So this brought together a work that was militant from the NGO side and Distance Learning oriented from the universities. So our decision was to make a collaborative approach to bring forward a new product that mixed these two perspectives.

This was the biggest win from this network for digital inclusion.

We learned how to translate all of this into a platform. Also new was that this was all brought into a community project. So at the end of his capacity building the instructor had to create a project for the community he was in.

Any kind of project, from showing movies to work with elderly people, to assist people fighting drug use, to help citizen journalism. He had to write down the project, show it to the community, involve the community in the implementation of the project.

When the call for projects was proposed, it was to serve 16.000 instructors in telecenters around the country, and we created it to fit those requirements.

However the government did not deliver all the machines to the telecentros...

So the network ended up only serving 15% of its capacity.

We later proposed to open accesss to the platform to anyone who wanted to do a digital inclusion course, but this did not go forward.

The content is all under creative commons.

The platform is not, because they - the Ministry of Communications - thought they would not have the resources to attend a larger demand.

So that content could be offered in Wikimedia Projects.

The ministry put two universities to take care of the network - UF Pará with the North hub of the network - and UF Bahia, who now work with the instructors.

Now music.

Since we were working with all this multimedia editing, we were left asking ourselves how far can you go using only free software?

We thought we could make a project to find that out. We had already started a site called BarulhoLab (NoiseLab) that published Creative Commons licensed music.

We would use our studio (there's one downstairs), and then make the records available on the site.

But we couldn't get it financed.

Still, some bands came to us with their material, and we decided to go forward with one of them. Called Metrô Sertão (Outback Subway), they mix rock with northeastern regional music. Sounds a bit like Chico Science.

Metrô Sertão's is CC-BY-ND or some other which doesn't allow derivate works.

We offered the studio, our sound technichian worked for free, and we made the whole CD production using free software, even if we had to do some extra clicks.

So a next initiative was a project bringing this experience with the audio production courses we offered to the cluture points, every month we select 3 musicians from São Paulo and another 3 from outside the state.

They come to the studio and spend one week producing a new song. We go through an intense compositional process. In the last day we'll be all like "lets record one last guitar!".

By the end of 8 meetings, we are going to record a CD with one song from each band.

The license we're using is CC-BY-SA. hmmm

So it's a jam by a mix of professional and amateur musicians.

In the first one a 16 year old boy was participating and he was amazed that everyone used long sleeves.

His last day here was going to the 'Rock Gallery' downtown to buy his girlfriend a long sleeve shirt.

Another project, but first some general ideas.

Our general landscape, which encompasses our workshops of digital inclusion and social participation.

In 2001 the debate was going around: should there be telecentres? Is internet access fundamental for telecentres? Or just offline computer use. There the movement started to make digital inclusion a public policy and a citizen right.

Big debate about free or proprietary software, and whether the services should be gratuitous.

We enter clearly on the side of public policy, citizens rights, free software and had at its hear the issue of citien particiipation.

Our telecentres in São Paulo had a governance board from the community.

In 2001, still in the Fernando Henrique government, we organize the firest workshop on digital inclusion with the intention of establishing national public policy for digital inclusion.

This workshop was organized and called for by civil society, and articulated and supported by the federal government.

As much as the government started implanting more public policy for digital inclusino, it started to try to take over the workshops.

One of the items financed in the call for proposals for capacity building was related to financing participation in this workshop.

Two things happen in this workshop: dabate of contextual issues - internet as necessary, free software, today broadband connection, 'marco civil' (internet bill of rights); and then also workshops themselves, building capacity for the instructors that participate.

This year, mistakenly the Ministry of Communications tried to cancel the workshop, as the call for proposals had some resources for this, but there was no resources for 2012. But civil society got back and established that the workshop was of its own and it organized by itself the workshop and sent a letter to president Dilma raising the obstacles for an effective digital inclusion actions.

The workshop was always defined as a place for dialogue about digital inclusion issues. The government got confused and thought it was their space for discussion of public policy.

So we have to constantly prove them we're partners but not morons.

And they ended up being present in the workshop, from the opening, being able to speak - and listen.

Questions from Henrique

One thing that worries me is the licensing issue.

This is a hot topic when talking about wiki projects.

Your site has a NC license, is there a reason for that?

CD

We had some things in the site that already had that license, some software manuals, some documentation.

We don't have a requirement, but in general we use that license (cc-by-NC).

There are both the things we translated that were already with this license, and when we worked with culture pontos they prefered the NC license.

As if Coca Cola would use your music they'd batter pay for it.

There's a case with a culture point in the north of Brazil where the content produced by a culture ponto was unlawfully exported.

Henrique

But that would have happened regardless of the license...

CD

Yeah.

Oona

This is a complex debate. You have cases like Natura, where indigenous knowledge is being patented by a corporation.

But in general I feel that in less and less cases it makes no sense to use NC.

Henrique

And I wasn't really asking about the songs, but the texts on your site.

Rodrigo

This is something that, as partners, we will bother you all the time.

Henrique

For example all this documentation, we can't bring to our sites.

Rodrigo

So you lose the opportunity of diffusing this.

CD

I did not know you could not use NC on the wiki.

Henrique

The wiki provides commercial rights, so if I import I'm violating your license. You could sue me.

Rodrigo

I, thinking as a volunteer, could there be a partnership in the direction of capacity building our volunteers for video editing, audio editing, multimedia production.

CD

One thing we're prospecting resources to build is...

When we tried to build the network we found a lot of bureaucratic barriers in terms of what content was to be produced. And also several issues with connectivity.

Telecentros that could not access videos, only have Internet access through sattelite. That's why we have these CD-ROMs.

The sattellite guys can't watch video. You can't teach video editing with text only. And we also had videos that were part of the capacity building.

We had to transcribe it whole not because of physical deficiencies, but Internet deficients.

We are now looking how to multiply this content towards Distance Education.

We are in a moment in Brazil where you have the following.

Many of the services that should be provided by the State is provided by the third sector instead. Many things in partnerships because the State does not reach the northeastern 'outback', but it manages to do it through NGOs.

So they're both working under pressure from juridically insecure agreements. There are no clear rules about how to deal with this.

The government finds it hard to analyse - and therefore approve - the accounting from partner NGOs.

We got a lot of questions two years after the project was over. And only got our accounting approved three years after - last week!

So one thing we want for this Distance Learning platform is to have a course on how to deal with all this accounting issues. If you want to build an NGO, or a specific kind of NGO that the government is allowed to contract (OSCIP), how do you do that?

Today you have a partnership system and resource translation system that is a nightmare for anyone in the third sector, and even between government agencies.

We learned a lot from the need to use this, so we could make this knowledge available. For exemple how to transition an institution to free software.

Anasuya

I just want to ask a question.

What are your sources of funding now? How was the relationship with petrobras?

And how is your relationship in general with civil society from being financed by them.

Oona

Petrobrás has a lot of money to give to culture. It is larger than the Ministry of Culture, so there is not much stigma related to that, though some people dislike it.

CD

Our relationship is that Petrobras was one of few State companies that were investing in digital inclusion.

Also, by the end of the Telecentros contract, they realized they couldn't just abandon them.

There was a big understanding between RITS, Coletivo Digital and Petrobras, to give a capacity builing to the managers of telecentros, so they could learn to raise funds for their projects.

From a bakery besides the telecentro to public and private funding sources for digital inclusion projects.

There was a care from petrobras to not let what they funded die out.

So they are well seeing for that.

Our main issue with them is that the funding model is based on pilot projects and number of people impacted. "How many poor do you serve?" "How much does each of your poor cost?".

Because of this, many NGOs who are involved in middleware activities, like capacity building of instructors, get left out.

One would say, "I implanted a telecentro in Campinas so I serve 600 people", to the kind of activities each one is engaged in. So we struggle to show the value of our work, because it impacts large numbers indirectly.

We live by project. When we have a project we get paid in Reais (reals), when we don't have projects we get paid in SuReais (surreals). We attribute a value to our work and keep going.

So we are also engaged in a discussion about the new model of relationship between NGOs an the government.

The great issue is that today an NGO like Coletivo Digital is treated alike to huge foundations like Telefonica's or Globo's Roberto Marinho Foundation.

It's normal to find NGOs which have projects supported by the government without a scale that would make it realistic to have a law and accounting office, but the same rules apply.

Anasyua

I understand now, so Petrobras is a State company.

CD

Mixed, but yeah.

Anasuya

You are familiar with Wikimedia projects, right.

CD

We are familiar and frequently found that when we used Wikipedia as a source in our courses, we got bad feedback from the university people. There was a huge debate inside the capacity building network that it was indeed a reference. We did reach that consensus positively.

Oona

I think we should talk abot the projects because I feel they don't know all of them and it could be useful for thinking up collaborations.

Anasuya

Let's talk about the projects and then move with this conversation.

CD

Our idea is that this place - the Coletivo Digital - becomes a reference to debates we're involved in about free software, free licensing, collaborative culture, access to knowledge.

Our backyard is used for showing movies, debates, parties, barbecues.

We had a free beer brewing course.

Henrique

If you're interested the domain "churrascaolivre.com.br" (big free barbecue) is mine, I can give it away.

Anasuya

The wikimedia foundation, based in San Francisco, is a key actor in the larger wikimedia movement, sees itself as primarily supporting the movement through engineering, technology, infrastructure, fundraising, and grant making - giving financial support to different wikimedia actors and operating the sites.

Around two and a half years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation thought about expanding its reach in the 'global south' and non-english-speaking communities. To basically increase its global knowledge footprint.

At that time they decided to start with a pilot in India and in Brazil. And perhaps to move into the Arab region, because these were the three regions and communities with largest potential for growth, both in terms of population and in terms of internet penetration. As well as a pretty passionate Wikimedian community, core community.

So we started in India with a small team of consultants, and then last year in Brazil.

The original idea was to set up offices in both places, and then have the community take over the projects.

But we learned pretty quickly that was not a good proccess. It is much more helpful to have the proccess held by the local community and provide support for that work.

So, in India we started looking for partners who would work with our team and try to see what this partnership would involve.

We realized that what is important is for any partner organization and for the community too see that there is a value added in the partnership.

In india right now our team is working with Center for Internet and Society (CIS).

What were they here for last month?

Oona

For the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and The Public Interest

Anasuya

So they are basically an advocacy organizatino for Internet governance and access to knowledge issue. So it made sense for them to work with us to broaden their reach and mobilization community. And it made sense for us to have their support, and have them host us. And both could profit from the experience and knowledge in both sides.

And that brings us to today, as Oona has been looking for similar organizations in Brazil. Who share our values and our mission.

Any questions so far?

Them maybe rodrigo can give his excellent summary of the projects.

Rodrigo

I'll explain the projects and communities.

The Wikimedia Movement is a global movement of several communities, like Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Foundation and other NGOs give support to this movement.

It is a big mess that should not work, but it does. Works in practice, not in theory.

Wikipedia started around 2000-2001, and in 2003 the foundation was created to manage and support the sites.

Then other projects started to pop, like Wiktionary, a dictionary, Wikiquote, for citations, Wikisource, for published texts in the public domain, and Wikimedia Commons, which is the multimedia repository. They are all wikis, so even for the images on Commons you can follow their edit history. Then Wikibooks, for open educational resources and manuals. Then Wikiversity, for free courses and discussion and bringing together people to work on knowledge and learning. Also Wikivoyage, a free travel guide which had its own organization but last month decided to move into the Wikimedia infrastructure. This is an interesting project because you can contribute from your own knowledge of places.

Henrique

So, Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, has several rules for content inclusion. Wikivoyages is lighter on that side.

Rodrigo

These are the online communities. We also have offline work, that supports the growth of that content. There's activities like Wiki Loves Monuments, which is a worldwide photo contest. Organizing people to contribute photos to Wikimedia Commons. There's also GLAM work to convince galleries, libraries, archives and museums do liberate their content. Advocating and making partnerships and assisting technically. There's also content distribution in offline media based on wikimedia projects. And QR-code based presentation of Wikimedia content in museums and public places, as done in an English city and also started in a Spanish one.

In Brazil we feel our offline work is more driven towards social issues. So recently in the campus party we were prefered to work outside the closed areas.

CD

We organized the digital inclusion are of campus party for three years.

But then we told them we don't work for free for huge corporations like Telefonica (sponsors Campus Party).

And with some disagreements, for example they had this idea of 'digital baptism' where you put a huge line of people and gave them a condensed workshop to the highest number of people possible.

So we tried to articulate this with the telecentros, so after the silly 'baptism' they'd get in touch with their local telecentros.

Rodrigo

There are several ways the foundation provides grants. The regular way for partners would be to apply for a proccess that goes through a global community process.

This focus on grants started recently, as Wikimedia moved away from doing activities to providing grants so local partners could head them in collaboration with the communities.

Oh, and there's also the education program - I forgot about tom! - a project to mobilize professors in universities providing the assistance of a volunteer to help his students produce online content in Wikipedia. This is now in several places in Brazil.

This is the main project managed by the foundation in Brazil today.

Now there's another proposal called Wikimedia in Schools, where someone could reach out to a middle school, giving talks to students and preparing teachers to use the wikis, not only wikipedia, to work in their classes. This could bring in young people, the age of people who have been starting to contribute on Portuguese Wikipedia.

Oona

Wikipedia nas Universidades intends to improve the Portuguese Wikipedia content and also mobilize students to spread collaboration culture. Making use of the work already done by students in most universities that gets archived and forgotten. At the same time, there are teachers who work with Wikipedia as a teaching tool, to work on objective writing, citation practice etc.

We had an open call last year and received proposals by teachers. We don't have a limitless number of volunteers, so we started to prepare students from these universities as well. So there is this demand for capacity building for knowledge sharing in wikis.

This perhaps relates to your materials or your practice of building capcity building educational materials for instructors.

Rodrigo

We must create a methodology for teachers to use this very practically in schools. If you do something too abstract they won't buy it or need too much assistance.

CD

One thing we've been proposing, in association with Fedral University of Minas Gerais, we noticed that digital inclusion network was reaching to a specific kind of instructor.

You would go to a city like Juiz de Fora, you could work with an instructor in a telecentro, but they wouldn't incorporate that they had a responsibility to disseminate that knowledge and share it with others.

So the telecentro would ask the federal government for resources, but couldn't look into its own community and what he could contribute there and get from it.

So we are working on mapping of these communities of what are their vocations and what already exists there. If a telecentro works mostly with music, understand that it can use its expertise with other craft communities (such as local tailors), and that they can organize their creative potential locally. And that could be one criteria for resource distribution from the federal government.

This way you avoid placing resources in telecentros that become and in in themselves and therefore have little sustainability because they don't relate to teir communities. So you ask for a proof of local investment, but social not political or financial.

This mapping should help us and the telecentros identify local resources, opportunities, obstacles.

The university we're working with have great experience using moodle in collaborative proccesses. They worked with a medicine shool, where professors that belonged to the university for 20 years did not know who was the mailman or other people within the community.

So they built virtual portfolios for the members of the community, so they could recognize each other.

Oona

This connects to our interest in our wikiproject health.

Rodrigo

And what software do they use for this mapping?

CD

Everything is done within moodle, using the moodle API to use the data and build visualizations.

Anasuya

Thinking about a partnership, what excites you most and what concerns you most?

CD

One of our main motivations would be a project to build capacity within the Brazilian Wikimedia community, when Oona was talking about how was it working and which are the projects, I remembered the platform of distance learning we were intending to build, and thought this could also be done within a wiki.

So we could reconcile this project we already had in mind together with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Worries...

When we created the Digital Collective, one thing in our bylaws was the issue of sharing knowledge. So being able to participate in the Wikimedia Movement would have great consonance.

This debate in Brazil is recent, and with arid causes, bringing a movement like this lets you translate this arid causes into things meaningful for people. So this is not only restricted to people like us, who are militants for this cause.

So not many worries... we're not afraid...

Oona told me there are some requirements, transparency in accountance etc, but more than we already do? In any case you'd only have to ask.

And now we have the Access to Information Law, which we are already subject to in other projects, so we are quite used to greater transparency.

When we were with he telecentros we had to call 600 people to tell them the budget was being held and we couldn't pay them. We're used to these things.

To be open and work collaboratively are things we're used to. If you try to find out which table in this office belongs to whom, you won't because anyone can use anything they need.

Henrique

What about international bureaucracy and contracts?

CD

It's nothing compared to SICONV (the brazilian public grant system).

CD

And, let us make a question, what do you expect from a partnership with us?

Anasuya

From the foundation side what we expect is an organization that sees value in this partnership, welcomes the team in a room, and makes sure the team feels comfortable in the organization, that the team feels as a part of the organization.

Oona

I thought the plan was to lock me in the kitchen..

CD

Oh no, we only enslave 'gaúchos' (brazilian southeners) here, to make barbecue during our parties!

CD

Our expectation is to aggregate the knowledge you have accumulated into our institution.

Including issues of licensing, for example, where I did not know about the incompatibility with wikimedia sites.

And also count on the collaboration of Wikimedia in the projects we have here.

We don't want to put you in a room. We want work interaction, not brand exchange.

Anasuya

For us the practical work is building the community and content.

CD

Do you think from the stories we told and the projects we explained that we're fit for that?

Anasuya

I can certainly see the connections, but it would be interesting to hear from all of you.

Rodrigo

I think so, we already want to work with capacity building. Let's include people and train them to train other people.

In that we have a lot in common.

We might still have a few discordances about licensing and a focus more on knowledge from us or culture in your case.

But this is Brazil we do whatever we want.

So we're always open to do projects with you and it will be like that, so if you want to start a project tomorrow we'll be waiting.

CD

The way I think, I think of the beach communities of the Jureia (coastal forest natural protection area), and the books they created about how to fish in a natural and non-predatory way, these kids have a lot of potential but they only have sattelite connection, they are poor children of fisherman from that area.

The connections that 'pontos de cultura' bring to give a wider reach and sharing for them can be really strong.

One other thing we could think is a presence of the wikimedia community in the Workshops on Digital Inclusion and Social Participation - the 12th edition.

Besides support from the federal govenment, we have support from the local government, so we are discussing where its gonna be.

But we think it is a space for dialogue where wikimedia should be present.

This last time the Brazilian Internet Governance Committee brought workshops of their own, besides some funding, and they were surprised how their workshops were all full.

Another case was the Social Participation Coordination of the General Secretariat of the President. They had workshops and were surprised by the interest. They are creating a national system for social participation.

And we have project managers there, not only instructors, so we belive that to be a very important venue for wikimedia presence.

Rodrigo

We should also show you outreach activities we undertook that worked out.

CD

Thinking about this case, the boys from Jureia created this book. If you create a space where you can collect and become a space for community production. This very community has a course on "white viola", where they teach from building the viola to playing the viola in the 'fandango'.

If you can provide a space for them to publish and document their work, its quite interesting.

Rodrigo

I think you can do that with a mix of wikiversity and wikibooks.

Oona

I also think this possibility to spread knowledge of wiki usage among these communities, throughout this national network of telecentros, is a great opportunity.

All of us seem to have worked together, so it is a matter of building up concrete ideas as working together seems natural within our agendas.

Anasuya

So the practical step would be for you to think among yourselves, proccess ideas, and set a next conference in, let's say, two weeks?

Oona

Let's everyone digest and arrange our ideas.

AE also was interested in working with you.

So we can consider this possibility of a multistakeholder partnership.

AE has little experience with digital technologies, but bring a lot from their work with teachers. And public policy, which you do as well.

So it's great that we now have this personal experience of our feelings and our passions.

Anasuya

You should feel comfortable to ask questions over the next few weeks, to ask anything from or about the foundation.

CD

And so should you!

Anasuya

It was really exciting to be here, it is not the same to see it online and reading the material, it's nothing like seeing you and hearing the story face to face!