Becoming a Server

Becoming a Server
Name	Documentation Workshop: Becoming a Server
Location	The Internet and a distributed network of local hosts
Date	2020/07/20-2020/07/22
Time	14:00-16:00
PeopleOrganisations
Type	HDSA2020
Web	Yes
Print	No

We based this years summer academy on the idea that if each participant had a computer and that computer was connected to the Internet, we could create a sufficient distributed learning environment. With this model, process documentation was also distributed. We created a system whereby participants, workshop hosts, and facilitators alike could share their files with each other and the public domain as a form of ad-hoc process documentation:

1. Every participant dedicated a folder on their personal computer for files that they served to the public domain.
2. This folder acted as a server, and was accessible through its own unique public key of the form "hyper://....".
3. With this set-up, we were able to share files with each other through Beaker Browser by moving them into these folders.
4. Last, we made a Hyperdrive Portal to pull the contents of these folders into this webpage: hyperdrives.hackersanddesigners.nl.

During the course of the week, as we came in and out of workshops, we made it a habit to regularly "document and publish" → drop files that we created, edited, or copied into these folders so that we could share them with each other and the rest of the Internet.

In this workshop, we learned how to serve these folders from our personal computers to the Internet with Beaker Browser. Becoming a server comes with great responsibility, so we each wrote README files where necessary, decided on what licenses to use for our content, and even styled our own corners of the Hyperdrive Portal. The workshop script can be found here: https://etherpad.hackersanddesigners.nl/p/hdsa2020-documentation-workshop

The future: