PPP-local-meetup report (Varia, November 2023)

From PrePostPrint

PrePostPrint Local Meetup recap

Original pad: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/ppp-local-meetup-11-2023

Dates: Friday 24th & Saturday 25th November, 2023

Time: 10:30-17:00h CET (both days)

Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Link: https://varia.zone/en/PrePostPrint-local-meetup.html

Once again, the maintainer's group met together to work on PPP over two days. They travelled from France and Belgium to Varia in the south of Rotterdam for an unconference style meetup. Within an open programme, many others joined to think along on what PPP has been, is, and could be. Which created a great dynamic and mix of people closer and more familiar to PPP and others who were new to it. We played music from a rotating selection of cassette tapes while revealing our "hidden agendas" for the meetup.

On the first day one group worked on questions around the PrePostPrint website and another on how to be a part of PPP in the communication channels being used on Matrix. We finished the day with a demonstration of tools and projects such as coline, OSPKit, pagetypetoprint, myfffonts, a small bash tool called "now", Vinnyfont, https://velvetyne.fr/, the Walkie Talkie XPUB grad catalog, https://digestingcare.eu/ + printed booklets, Spectres of Learning + Chattypub, ssh-warm-welcome, octomode.

On the second day we were joined by more people in collective conversations around the idea of a PPP wiki, the political orientations of F/LOSS publishing tools, a local PPP group in the Netherlands and a call for new maintainers. We finished they day again with a request for more demo's, which included distribusi, P birds stickers, p-chaumont vectors, plancton, wiki-to-print/wiki2print/wiki-to-pdf, and some self aclaimed "dumb demos".

More info and links can be found here: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/PPP-local-meetup (from line 71 for demo's on day one, and from line 573 for the demo's on day two).

We took a group photo while some of us made the letter "P" with our hands: https://wiki.prepostprint.org/images/a/a9/PPP-Varia.jpg, which unfortunately misses some people on the picture who joined for the first day. More pictures can be found in the Varia archive soon (https://vvvvvvaria.org/archive/).

The two days were concluded with a round of hidden outcomes:

  • huge list of references! great to have!
  • unexpected outcomes
  • tomorrow there will be a call with the Linz Desgn Week https://dsignweek.servus.at/ and PPP local meet up, to summerize. How to connect to non FR/BE/NL context
  • i now understand what PPP is :)
  • there is a flyer for the local PPP NL group
  • nice to meet everyone in person
  • happy to see that PPP is still alive
  • very happy to have channels and the wiki to share publishing enthusiasm with, that was already circulating, but not so widely
  • learned that iframes and transclusion are cool
  • happy to have a wiki, looking forward to write in it
  • happy to meet new people and be part of a moment of reflection, what to do together
  • unsolved question around the website
  • it's good for the moral to see each other
  • has been a long time for luuse to meet others, very rich moment
  • good to share frustrations and stories when working with publishers, happy to not feel alone here, it's not our fault, it's just the way it is when exploring things
  • available to translate English to French for PPP things
  • happy that after 6 months talking/thinking about a wiki, we managed to set it up in 1.5 day; it's running and it's yellow, let's use it, let's see where it leads us
  • we didn't talk about the hidden agenda of an event in Brussels, but with connection now to Luuse and through Simon with OSP, hopefully the links will continue to strengthen and this will take place some time some day, i'm quite confident
  • main purpose was to get inspired about the tools being used, happy to meet everyone, very nice
  • great to meet everyone, not sure what PPP was and now i know a little bit, excitement is the unexpected outcome

tl;dr:

Notes from the two days are here: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/PPP-local-meetup

Pictures of these two days can be found here: [soon]

There is a wiki now: https://wiki.prepostprint.org

There is a local PPP NL group now! They will gather on 16th Feburary 2024 for an all day meetup. Location TBD. Join the Signal group at https://signal.group/#CjQKILLW4ogkgaFBJgKnpeKesAcvSVixMEgKpR_Kgdd4MEUWEhD4LsrXPbakq8jJLJbxF1om

There is a call published for new maintainers: https://prepostprint.org/maintenance/2023-2024-call.html