Ars Einreichung final english

category digital communities- the ubiquitous unibrennt cloud

Description of Project

With unibrennt no planned project of a digital community is being submitted, unibrennt is an occurrence. This preface is relevant as the following description is not going to be a description of a project but rather a description of an occurrence, an event. Beginning on October 22, 2009 something exploded and has developed to something unheard of. It was at no point in time planned or scheduled in any way. What emerged out of self-organised chaos in the following weeks and months can be understood as the emergence of a new social movement. The term occurrence vs. the term project marks the main quality of the phenomenon unibrennt. For the evaluation of this phenomenon it is useful to bear in mind the differences of a spontaneous occurrence and a regular, planned project as the setting up of a start-up for example. There was no project management, no chronology of project phases, no phrasing of (business) ideas and visions in advance, no pinpointing of objectives, targets, means and measures, no budget and no trained professionals. Within a few hours a movement simply emerged, within a few days it exploded and within a few weeks it had an infrastructure, an organizing capacity and a vast number of participators, it was perfectly connected and had even built up an archive; all of these being achievements that many successful projects take years to reach. Even today it is difficult to understand what unibrennt actually comprises and contains. Consenus exists that it is a movement of protest. Undisputedly it is an extraparliamentary form of self-organized protest; undisputedly it is a political manifestation of a burning social conflict of interest related not only to the concept of education. Evidently, unibrennt as a singular occurrence will go down not only in the annals of contemporary history in general but also in the annals of history of protest movements, history of reform of universities and definitely the annals of web 2.0 and net culture. Unibrennt is not a 2.0 movement, no protest 2.0. Just as little as unibrennt is a political organization of the classic kind that uses the potential of the internet successfully. Much more all of these factors walk hand in hand with the following: political discussion, digital working environment and self-government. The players of the movement cannot be divided into the occupiers of the lecture halls on the one side and the digital community on the other side. At every point in time the movement is just as much a digital community as it is a political movement that works autonomously and self-governed, open and diverse and follows bottom-up rules. The movement in this sense is just as open and ubiquitous as the www itself. The digital community does not only make sure that the demand for free education is omnipresent but also exemplifies through its own existence what free education could feel like.

Project history

The exact birth date of unibrennt is October 22, 2009, 2pm. From this day on, for the next 4 days unibrennt explodes rapidly to a huge extension. The breaking news has reached hundreds of thousands of people, the media shows similar front-page-stories of unibrennt and hundreds of thousands of people get involved – in situ and online. The following weeks are dedicated not only to the constant extension of the movement but also to an ongoing differentiation of the movement, both inwardly and outwardly. Three weeks after its birth the movement is already a serious wildfire. The movement spreads throughout the German-speaking countries. Even though unibrennt emerged out of itself, three of the most important developments that can be said to have been a breeding ground should be mentioned here: The political situation in higher education After years of higher education reform and neo-liberal re-fitting, the situation at universities has escalated so far that the system has collapsed. The point in time in internet history The same pre-conditions that already made Obama’s election campaign and protests in Iran phenomena - hybrid networks encompassing space, time, groups, mass media and means of participation - serve to enable unibrennt to be a digital community from the beginning. Students are equipped with laptops, mobile phones, camcorders and accounts on web 2.0 platforms. Many participants already have an online network among them. They organize the pooling of their separate communities to larger cluster structures and thus enable the complex internal and outbound communication which upholds the momentum. "Malen nach Zahlen" (Painting by numbers) Two days before the occupation of the Audimax (Auditorium Maximus, main lecture hall), the Aula (assembly hall) of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was occupied in a staged action. The form of protest was not spontaneous but well thought through and effective. The protest is picked up by the media. A demonstration scheduled for the next day was meant to preserve the momentum of this action. The formation of #unibrennt ,digital community‘ The demonstration on October 22, 2009 arrives at the Audimax at 2 pm, after a march through the main building of the University. The students decide to occupy. The news is immediately spread via the internet and text messages. At 3 pm a fan page on facebook is set up on facebook that will become a remaining focal point in the movement, with over 30.000 fans. Simultaneously, sympathizers and critical voices begin their campaigns on the internet, slow discussion forums in new media are revived. Solidarity declarations are published on web sites. Pictures are to be found on facebook and twitter. Hashtags are beginning to be established (#audimax, #unibrennt). The occupiers publish a first declaration on a blog. A media center is set up in a room next to the Audimax and becomes more professional every day. Live streaming is established, a complex home page is being set up and an improvised server structure is established. Despite the enormous rush on the website, downtime is kept at zero.

Aims of project

The political demands of unibrennt are clear (bit.ly/unibrennt_forderungen). The aims of the occupations are obvious: (1) to point to the dramatic situation in academia, (2) to apply pressure on academia’s administration and the political system as such and (3) to be an autonomous, self-determined and self-governed movement that follows the same self- given rules as should be applied to the education system and university. One could describe these challenges and aims in traditional terms of public relations, organizational development and knowledge management; only that in this case they are self-organized and lived openly. Web 2.0 evangelists and aficionados make up the smallest group of the digital unibrennt community, the largest part being people who are willing to learn and willing to work. The digital community unibrennt consists only to a very tiny extent of web 2.0 evangelists and to a small extent of web 2.0 aficionados and to a big extent of people willing to learn and willing to work. With its eventful appearance, the movement was able to utilize the means and tools available for self-organization and further development. Whereas an existing organization must implement wikis, blogs, feeds and video conferences by top- down strategies using resources, pressure and incentives to a great extent as well as time- consuming training, the movement has collectively learned to use these techniques at a breathtaking speed. Communication tools, accounts and identities are set up and attended cooperatively. Passwords are exchanged every week. Documents are shared via google-docs and wiki. There are emergency phone lists for text messaging in case the occupied lecture hall is cleared. Media monitoring is performed by the cloud, lists of links for online media coverage, a flickr-album with scans of newspaper articles. Press releases, demand catalogues and open letters are distributed to the media via email and to everyone via internet sites, wikis and links on platforms. A photo and video crew as well as a workgroup for live streaming constantly document plenary meetings, occupations, demonstrations, flash mobs and more. Workgroups make their plans and contact data transparent in the wiki. In the workgroups as well as in plenary meetings a protocol is kept live and visible via beamer. All protocols, decisions and motions are sent out and saved in the wiki where they can be read and edited. Plenary meetings can be tracked via live stream and are archived as video files. Interactive participation via chat, twitter or video conference is a daily occurrence. Debates are extended to social networks and are carried on in these. Issues, agendas, schedules and links are constantly sent out and resources are requested and organized the same way. For its public relations, its organizational development and its knowledge management, the ubiquitous cloud unibrennt uses all available platforms, all types of media and any kind of means of present-day communication to the same extent and in the same way as it uses the real space of the occupied lecture halls. The movement’s high level of media competence is remarkable. The ubiquitous cloud constantly continues to learn and teach. It is possible through this that technical standards (e.g. live streaming) have been set for occupied lecture theatres throughout the German-speaking world.

Statement of Reasons

The emergence of unibrennt definitley has changed the lives of many people. The occurrence unibrennt will change the form and the success of protest movements to come. Already the movement is a case-study for NGO-movements that gives them a picture about how to supply digital communities with live streams, how to connect activities on the streets, in conference rooms and in the internet with each other and how to include the digital communities into their work via platforms and wikis. The movement and the ubiquitous cloud unibrennt have managed their daily work without funds, without full time employees, without specialists. Against the background of the common goal to self-organize and the necessity to gain organizational and political impact all participants played an equal part. Their competence as well as their resources were and are still seen as equal. Only thanks to private resources was it possible to build media centers, live streams, to have servers and websites and organize Volksküchen, the public occupation kitchen, first-aid-points and cleaning troops. Only through those resources and coordination via the cloud a lot of other functions could be fulfilled 24/7, week for week. Run by students who study at the same time and by lecturers who have research and teaching to do at the same time. A movement such as unibrennt is not only a singular, statistically highly unrealistic occurrence. In the course of the movement there continue to be moments, situations and dynamics which can implicate the low statistical likeliyhood of the movement to continue. Quite a lot has to happen and has to work out in order to develop an ubiquitous cloud and to keep it alive. It is these moments in which it is vital for the net to operate properly in order to overcome these moments of high risk. This network of unibrennt consists of people and groups, occupied lecture halls and private spaces, of mobile phones and laptops, of division of work and cooperation, of facebook fan-pages, skype conferences, wikis and international mailing lists; it stretches from a server room at the university of Vienna to a hosted blog about a street actions in Kiel and a public kitchen in Munich, to an international meeting in Graz to a poster campaign in Basel, all at the same time. The connection in many cases is the affiliation with the movement, it runs via the internet and the coordination happens in the cloud. All of this is archived on the net and it goes without saying that it is openly accessible for everyone and can be processed and revised freely, almost in realtime.