Our Networks 2019 has ended! Check out videos of recorded talks.
Growing Our Networks in Uncertain Times↔Places
September 8–13, 2020 NEW DATES
Online, Distributed
Based out of UTC-4 from America/Toronto
Regretfully and after careful deliberation, the organizing team has decided to postpone Our Networks 2020 to later this year.
2020 has held a lot of surprises, and planning and event in the midst of COVID-19 has encompassed many of them. Despite managing some of the uncertainty by transitioning online, many aspects of the event have been slower to take shape in 2020 than in years prior. Rather than push ahead with the original dates and a more rushed event, we’ve decided to slow down and take the time required to ensure we deliver the best version possible of our first fully-online conference.
Our core conference days will now take place September 8-13, 2020—we hope you can still join us!
This year we’re taking a different approach given the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation. A lot remains unknown about how travel and ways to gather will develop between now and Our Networks 2020, and we take seriously our obligations as hosts and to our local community.
We are moving beyond an in-person event, instead inviting you all to collectively invent the future of our networks in virtual spaces. In the presence of so many unknowns, how can alternative network infrastructures support the creation of radically equitable futures? What tactics of distributed collective care allow us to offer mutual aid in this moment? How can we apply more broadly what we learn as we go about decentralizing the conference across time and place?
This is a call to face the uncertainty together—come meet us online. We’re looking for a range of virtual activations through the month of July leading up to and including the weekend of August 7–9! There will be room for familiar formats, including streamed talks and virtual workshops, but we are especially interested in activations that break free from the bounds of an “online conference.” For example, you could host a durational study group, run a meetup in a game world, exhibit an art project using a platform in some unexpected way, experiment with collective forms of distributed expression (à la Twitch Plays Pokémon). We are excited to draw on the possibilities for shared online experiences that a remote event affords. Leaning into new forms of interaction that build collective experiences at a distance, we can collectively cultivate virtual experiences that feel intimate, exploratory, and expansive.