36C3 preproll music
Herald Angel: Welcome everybody for our
next talk 'Infrastructures in a horizontal
farmers community'. I guess one thing that
all of us have in common is, that we all
are in special communities. We want to
build better communities. We want to build
better infrastructure. And we want to
build better technology, be it in a little
hackerspace in Sweden or in a theater
group in France or in an NGO in Germany.
That is something that unites us all. And
our next speaker, Andrea, she is giving us
some insights into their farming community
in Italy, because she has 15 years of
experience with that. So I think we can
all learn quite a lot. And Andrea is a
self-taught web developer. She graduated
in communication sciences. She is also a
cook and she is part of a group of radical
farmers. I would say she's a little bit of
everything, a jack of all trades. So,
she's the best person to give us some
insights. So, please welcome Andrea with a
big, warm round of applause and enjoy this
talk. Thank you very much.
Andrea: Well, thanks to you too, everyone,
to stay here. It will be difficult to fit
in a 30 minute to explain the experience
and to explain the interaction between a
lot of different communities, not only
these experiencing Bologna, but okay. I
will speak about Campi Aperti. Campi
Aperti means open field in Italian. And I
come from Bologna. OK, Bologna, if you
imagine that this is Italy, it's here,
Bologna. I'm speaking about the growing
vegetable, growing organic food. This is a
community of a farmers. It's a community
of people that reclaim the rights to grow
our food and decide how the territories,
the land, the countryside is transformed.
And so it is direct action. There are
there are some reclaims to change some
law. But we are not wait that these law in
Italy are changed. But we do directly this
stuff. This stuff is a survival for
farmers, because the problem is that there
exists only law in Italy that are for the
transformed, the food, make pizza, bread,
beer and this stuff and only are made for
industrial production. So, the production
of unmade, of the farmer is, that there
are no law for these. You can't do sell.
You can't do direct sell. But this group
of farmers do this is stuff. And so they
have a political action really, in the
street, in the square. And then they must,
the more visible stuff that they do, is do
these organic markets. But is not only
this. Is political stuff. And these food,
their background and their roots in
radical anti capitalist group and from the
global movement in the 90s. So, where?
Where are these stuff happen? Happen in
places that are free. Because you can't
ask at the beginning. Fifteen years ago
you can talk. But also now, probably is
more difficult. You can't ask the
municipality to start that these kinds of
markets. And they found a good ground in
squat in square in the street, in places
that are managed by human agreement, not
the law. And so Campi Aperti was born in
2003 in XM24 in Bolognina. That is on a
shared, is occupied, public shared space,
self-managed by our community. Is not a
service, is a place where the needs of the
community and the answer to these needs,
find an answer and a solution. This place
is under the threat of eviction and we
support a lot this place. Really, really
important for our life. So I told you
where and I want also told you how. Not
how, only how after. When. The time. The
time, it's important stuff. The time, for
capitalism, is thinking in hours and
money. But, and it's fast, but this, is
shaped on you, on an egocentric idea. But
this is not the only way to think the
time. For farmers is really easy. Think of
the time cyclical, not egocentric, not
human centred way. And so there are habits
to plan the stuff and to take a seasonal
agreement or seasonal planning. And so,
the first stuff to rethink our life and
our community is, take our time. Our time
of to grow relationship and our time to
think how to do this stuff. And our time
when we buy something. Our time to think
where it came from. The stuff that we buy
and the stuff that we eat. In which how
are developed and where it comes from.
Where from, from what the community and
from what territories. OK. This is a gift
that you will find in the slide. If you go
to check after these talk, you can see
also a video in Creative Commons for sure.
And but the now I have not the time to
show our action in video. I want to
explain a bit the infrastructure. The
infrastructure is based on the human
agreement and the group of Campi Aperti
started with five people in an occupied
space, public space and they started with
a small market. After and after they grew.
And now there are more than 150 farmers.
And with thousands of people that come at
the market and are co-producer of the
products. And so we manage ourself by
assemblies and we do this stuff for
consensus method. So the topic are food
autonomy, be independent with the food.
Safeguard the territories, practice
agroecology and we shared, we have a
shared warranty. So the group of farmer
not to take, not upset, decentralize the
warranty about organic food by the state,
but they practice our shared warranty.
Means that everyone, everyone of the
producer at the market, take care of the
product, also of the orders and and the
care of the relationship . But this also
means, that if you break the trust, one
with the other, you go out from the
community. And this looks like difficult
to decide, but is not so difficult,
because when you are local, and you know
the products that you grow and the how are
organic, it's easy to to decide this
stuff. Is a look like that, for explain
some technical people, is like if you not
trust the certification authority, but you
are based on a web of trust. And so we
include also in our relationship, in our
work, the sense of the limit and the
mutualism. So we plan to not grow too much
but to grow only locally. And we divided
the assembly. There are assembly for every
market, that are 8 every month. There are
assembly globally all together, every two
months. And the assembly every two months
locally for our valley, are based on
formal consensus method. This means that
we trained us to stay in the consensus
area. We know that the agreement are based
in balance between a relationship and
knowledge. We come all from a different
knowledge, because we are specialized in
different stuff and that we have to grow
together our relationship, so we can, we
try to stay in this area of consensus
knowing that we are different knowledge,
but I trust. We don't want to stay in
ananomity. We don't want stay always agree
all together, because there are a lot of
risk in that area. You can, in this area,
you grow the diversity. In that area, you
are doing echo chambers and you are doing,
you can do easily mistake in the unanimity
place. In the other, you find the low
trust and different knowledge. So you are
in dissent normally and you have of low
relationship, so low trust. But a full
agreement of what do you want for the
future? The only stuff that you can do is
take a technical agreement together. So
write really specific law. But we don't
want law, so we want the agreement and the
guideline. The other stuff are done by
trust, one with the other. So, told you
that we use formal consensus method, means
that in these distributed meeting, we have
shared agreements. We start with a base
ground that is that every assembly is
reported. So at the beginning of every
assembly, we choose a rapporteur, or more
than one, because sometimes there are
global assembly, that start at the morning
and finish in the evening. And so, we have
a time, a keeper for the speaker. And we
decide to put in our agreement that the
right to listen and to be listened and
that no meta conversation of the topic,
only everyone talk speak for herself.
Okay, we need that to communicate. And
when we started to think about the
communication, we speak with another
community that know better this stuff
about communication than us and we found,
and we know, because we share that same
the same political idea, with hackmeeting.
Hackmeeting is a community in Italy that
is anti fascist, anti racist and anti
sexist, and was born in the 90s also, that
the community and every year they meet in
different space, occupied space in Italy.
They are for the freedom in the
communication, and with a critical view
about technologies. So, we ask asked and
we discover a lot of self managed server,
and for first tools that we implemented in
the 2004, was our website.Yeah. And we
started with a lot of mailing list. The
first tool was mailing list and after, to
communicate outside in the group, we
started with this website hosted
autistici/inventati. That is one of the
older self managed server in Italy near
us, with a strong view about anonymity and
the privacy oriented for the user. The
communication are really, really
important. In group that live in the
countryside you live in different farm,
far from one from the other. And so
happened, that to use the mailing list,
all people need the connectivity. So, what
happened that if you based your
connectivity on a commercial companies and
your are in countryside, you discovered
that you are told: No, you are still far
from the city and we don't earn too much
enough to bring to you connectivity. And
so, we started to explore how to resolve
this problem. And we discovered that
exists yet a community that have thought
to this stuff and that yet existed a Pico
peer (Peer to Peer) agreement. And in Italy, we
meet ninux, ninux community that are
based, that shared us and teach us how set
mesh network. And so I show you a bit of
photograph. Our infrastructure is a small
and grow really slowly, and is based, our
hardware are 15 people that want stay
connected, one with the other, and
understood that the broadcasting
connection is nice, is really lighter, use
5Ghz point to point antenna, to do point
to point connection and so the cost to
stay, to learn and to do maintain that
network is an effort that they can do. And
we found also for people more technician
that help, is like help to install Linux,
but here we install OpenWrt. And after
that people know how maintain and take
care, they in freedom their PC. And in
this case, antenna. We use all super
proprietary hardware that we change the
firmware and we use tp-link ubiquity but
we are switching to an open hardware
project that is LibreRouter, and as
software we use LibraMesh, libremesh.org.
That is a project, that is a bundle of
configuration open over OpenWrt. And that
use a different protocol like babeld and
batman adv. But yeah, the topic of them is
make easier this stuff for the user, and
they do. So, we have a blog
antennine.noblogs.org. That where we take
the documentation of this stuff. We think
a lot about technology. Also think, why we
are adopt technology. And so we started to
deploy a feminist view about technologies.
Means, that we thinks that every
technologies is an effort. When someone
told to you, that this technology is
smarter, sometime is because is not the
considering the entire cycle of life of
that technologies. And so looking a lot in
the technologies that everyone this moment
is doing advertisement about technologies:
hey use this, is easy. We think: ok no,
stop. Stop. Is better wait and think what
do we are doing. So we think that it's
important not to do the things alone,
because you became the point of failure of
your of your community. To be resistant
you need to do this stuff with more
people, not start if you are alone, and
mix proficient people with newbie.
Contemplated the possibility of making
mistake and so, build the testing
environment before put the stuff in
production. Document everything to explain
the choice that you took, and that give
the time to yourself and to the other to
study, and not to be too much specialized.
Specialized brings people too easily to go
to burnout. It's better, if you trust
yourself in more than one topic and share
knowledge with the other. Not to go too
much in deep in one topic, because you
lost the entire view, and why you are
doing something. You are not pay for to do
this stuff for community, is a need for
community and is a richness of for
everyone of your community, in our view,
in our way that we do this stuff. So, we
start from our needs. We started to speak
about our digital data in 2016. This is a
meeting of a Genuino Clandestino. That is
the bigger network of self organized
farmers in Italy. And there are a lot of
different small communities that do, that
to grow vegetable and do direct sell in
shared public space. And we started to
speak about our digital data and we
decided, that we don't want to put in
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple
space. We are anti GAFAM. And because
we are against the big distribution of the
food and also big distribution of the
data, we think that in this moment is
really important to take care of our
intimacies and our data. So we decided to
put in server and to run ourself these
services. And we spend a one hour, one
year to find a virtual private server.
Someone that host our digital place that
shared with us our policy, and we found in
France, in Toulouse, the tetaneutral.net.
That is inside of a bigger network that is
federated france data network and are
really important for us, because they, I
thinks that they do a good work, because
of they are for the neutrality, for
freedom of choice to the internet and with
budget based on donation of the community.
We've passed a lot of time to find, inside
our community of farmers, sysadmin and we
found, and we started to use the Nextcloud
as a free software to where host our data.
And we decide to start, we started in
March of this year, and we decided to
start to use only for administrative work.
So, only for 10 people of the group. And
after deciding if these are tool is OK for
our needs or not. If is not we will see
and we are just in time to go back and not
use. But at the moment, the stuff are
running good, and we are store in this
cloud the cards about our farmers. Because
we make everyone to enter in Campi Aperti
needs to be visited by another farmer, and
that to know the, how they grow vegetable
and the how they do organic stuff. And so,
we write dossier of ourself, and it's why
the website was not more enough. We need
private place where store this stuff, also
to decentralize the task that we have to
do. To distribute the task. And so, after
this one year of testing, we are planning
how to grow, okay. If all the stuff are
going good, we decide how to grow. And so
again, we decide to not to do this stuff
alone. We look around in a community near
to us and we decide again to adopt
something that is yet to use the body
(???) of community that is anti-fascist,
anti-racist and anti-sexist. That is
Autistici/Inventati. They change the
infrastructure this year and they moved
container infrastructure to have divided
the configuration, the specific
configuration, the configuration that you
can share with other and the software. All
this free stuff are managed by
minimalistic orchestrator container. And
that is called the FLOAT. And we find this
solution interesting, also because we
started with the other possibility of a
solution, and we saw that in this moment
there are huge software also open source,
that can resolve this problem. But
developed and used by huge open source
company that not really feed our needs. So, we
are interesting in this software, because
give static service allocation, like some
of these feature looks like not real, are
non feature for the needs of the
companies. But for us are, because we have
our community, so we have different needs.
So, how its work, quickly. Because yeah,
we are at the CCC, I have to show you
something of technical. So, we have a
specific genetic configuration, that we
versioning with GIT. We use Ansibel to
versioning our configuration and the
software, so the generic part, is builded
by the continuous integration that we have
on our decision Autistici/Inventati. That
is builded in a... we have a Docker
registry and build the Docker image. And
so, FLOAT deployed, running our Ansible
playbook, deploy the different Docker
image on the different machine. So, why
it's good for us? Because we can
versioning all the stuff, so we can also
do mistake but go back and we can deploy
on virtual machine, where we can do
testing and on the real production on the
real machine. This is, I thinks why we
thinks to adopt. Also, because we want not
use, we don't want to stay on a virtual
machine, we would like move on bare metal
and we trust to the group, these
orchestrator is only 1000 line of Python
code, and is written like, is Ansibl
plugin and we can use the double factor
authentication, universal two factor
authentication. That is good for us,
because if you have for the stuff that
your security is base, could be based on
how to do a token. So you have a security
in something of local, that you have to
keep. And in some integrated monitoring,
like Prometeus and Graphader (???). And
this feature, or non- feature is, that the
services go down when something fail. And
this is, for us, this is important. We are
not a company that have to stay 24 hour
up. We are a community that they want to
know, if something goes wrong with your
machine and if someone put physically the
hands on your machine. Yeah, this is, now
is the time of the question. Slow please,
the question, because I don't speak really
well English Andrea laughs you see now?
But also I don't understand really well.
And these is the long list of thanks and
all the community that I speak about.
There is also EclecticTechCarnival, that
is a feminist community, that pushed a lot
to me to arrive here to explain this stuff
to you. And thanks.
applause
Herald Angel: Thank you very much for the
great talk. It was very, very interesting.
We still have 10 minutes for questions and
answers. If you have questions, just move
to the three microphones in the room, and
then we're going to have you ask your
questions. So, we start with microphone
number two. Very slow in English, please.
Andrea: Yes.
Mic 2: Thank you very much for the talk. I
have a question. The customers, do they
pay in advance for a year or do they pay
at the market?
Andrea: Ok. In Bologna, in Campi Aperti
experience is direct sell in the market.
So the co-producer, the consumer pay at
the moment. But we know that that is not
the perfect model and there are other
other experiment the city, in which Campi
Aperti and this group of farmer is
involved. And so, there is also Arvaia,
that is another group that the customer
pay in advance. And have a place, and also
work in fields, and take boxes every week.
And there is also another project, that is
Camilla and is based on... you are
associated and you have to work three
hours every month in a market. And there
is this market open for all the
association, all the people associated to
these. So, it is a city that is
experimented. But yes, for Campi Aperti,
you not pay in advance it. Only for, in
other projects.
Mic2: Is it okay if I ask something else?
Herald Angel: If it's... Well, I would
first take microphone number three. But if
you just stay there, I feel like there
would be still time for another question.
So, microphone number three, please.
Mic3: Yes. I have a question about
consensus. You mentioned that some level
of disagreement is not only acceptable,
but maybe good, because if everyone
agrees, then there is no discussion,
development and less trust. But what level
of disagreement is acceptable? Have you
tried different models, like how you
achieve this consensus?
Andrea: Yeah, we think that disagreement
is important to not hide problems. So
also, we put attention to not to say at
the end of a conversation we are all
agree, but for example, if someone of more
doubt and we have a formal way of a
consensus. So, to be sure that we are all
agree, we do an orientation, we call it,
and that means that you can divide the
group in three position. Active consent,
consensus with doubts but that you think
that trust is enough, so you are agree,
but you will be not active to do this
stuff. And the active dissensus, that
means, that the decision that are you
taking is against the principle and if you
put yourself in that position, you have to
explain to all the others and you have to
do again an orientation. But if you are
more than 20% of the people that stay in
active dissent, you have to re-discuss
all. So, became block, blocked.
Herald Angel: Great, thanks for the
explanation. That was very interesting.
Microphone number two, again.
Mic2: Thank you for your talk. I wanted to
ask whether you have any mechanism to help
people that want to become farmers,
especially to acquire new land.
Andrea: Hmm. Existed a project and now is
not the more active. We are sad, because
it's not more active and because this
project started from people that had these
need. And after they found the land and
say: ok, we have not more the time. And we
have, we not find again who put the time
in that project. And so, there is not a
real... process in which we help people to
became farmer. But, for example, the
mailing list is open. Everyone that
participated to the market can be says can
join the mailing list and also the
assembly and the meeting and so happen a
lot of time and that the people asked for
space in countryside so find information.
And the other stuff, that really change,
make the change is, that a lot of people
come in Campi Aperti asking us to do
transformation, to transform only the food
and this fact is not acceptable in Campi
Aperti. The people are not can only
transformate the food. We are, we do
practice for be independent from
capitalism for our food. And so you can't
ask only to transforme. So they... we ask
to these people to start a project to grow
vegetables and became a farmer. And so...
or started an active collaboration with a
group of farmer yet exist. And so in this
way started more people to live in
countryside.
Herald Angel: Thank you very much. Next
up, we have a question from the Internet.
Signal Angel: You seem to have gone really
far in doing a lot of things yourself. Do
you still rely on a lot of mainstream
technologies? Or did you re-implement
everything yourself?
Andrea: Do you...?
Herald Angel: Is everything self-made? Or
do you still rely on some mainstream
technologies? Is there something that you
use, that is mainstream capitalist, that
everybody else uses too? Like, you
mentioned that you don't use Google or
Facebook or something like that. Apart
from that, is that something mainstream
that you still use that you rely on?
Andrea: Yeah. We are not monopolistic.
Like, we have the basic communication
independant infrastructure, but yes, some
of them are, we are not the direct running
Autistici. We are based that on self-
managed servers. So, same community that
the shared with us a political topic, but
in that way we are not running the
service. We are not running the service.
To communicate that we use the Website and
the mailing list, so we have our
independent communication, but there is
not... we not avoid people of us that use
also commercial instrument or commercial
such network. All this stuff is only that
we don't trust that too much, that way of
communication will be really useful when
when we need. Or...
Herald Angel: All right. Another question
from microphone number two, please.
Mic2: Hi. Thank you for your presentation.
In your presentation, you mention dossier
written by farmers about the other
farmers, and farmers visiting other
farmers. I wanted to ask, these dossier,
what kind of information do they collect
and how are they used? I mean, what's the
purpose of the dossier and what
information do they collect?
Andrea: Okay. Is the protocol of shared
warranty. And so, a person that want enter
in Campi Aperti from the website, can ask
to be visit and starter to fill a form and
fill dossier, these cards. And after,
these cards go to the people, assembly of
that valley, the valley where this farmer
come from and decide when do the visit. So
this visit is reported to the next
assembly. And who did the the visit say,
what this person wrote in the card is a
true or not true. And so, also here you
have a, you have the weight of trust, of
the whole much trust of the words of a
person that asked to enter, and we
store this card, this dossier and we
print. We print and we put physically on
the desk when people do the market.
Because it's really important that people
that come to buy the stuff, know where and
if we want to go also to visit the
producer. And also, because I told you
that the some of that organic stuff are
organic, but not that with the
certification by the state. And also a lot
of the stuff that are transformed are
inside of the campaign Genuino
Clandestino. That means that are
transformed, handmade, but the out of the
law. And so you need that, that people are
well-informed, who buy this stuff.
Mic2: Ok, so...
Herald Angel: Sorry. Sorry. I'm very
sorry. But we don't have time for a back
up questions. Also, I'm very sorry, I
would have loved to have the person who
ask the first question also have like,
asked the last question, but we ran out of
time. But I'm sure that you can still
catch Andrea after the talk and ask
whatever questions were not answered. So,
first of all, thanks for all of your very
interesting and clever questions and also
thank you very much, Andrea, for the great
presentation. Please give another big,
warm round of applause for Andrea. Thank
you very much.
Andrea: Thanks, see you.
applause
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