{"id":19907,"date":"2015-04-23T08:50:47","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T12:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=19907"},"modified":"2015-04-23T08:55:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T12:55:04","slug":"a-few-notes-on-ttw15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2015\/04\/23\/a-few-notes-on-ttw15\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Notes on #TtW15"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo By Aaron Thompson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was\u00a0happy to see Theorizing the Web go so well for so many people. The committee has been getting a lot of positive and constructive feedback and we\u2019re reading all of it. If you feel so moved to write your own reflections on #TtW15 please send them our way. Last year, my post-conference thoughts were all about labor<\/a> and the dangers of doing what you love. That\u2019s still a problem \u2013\u2013TtW relies almost completely on volunteer labor\u2013\u2013 but this year I\u2019m thinking more about the institutions that prop up the typical Hilton-hosted conference model and make it difficult, if not financially impossible, to have more events like Theorizing the Web.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Our pay-what-you-want donation model reflects our commitment to lowering the barriers to participation in theorizing, but it is also indicative of all the little mundane ways that traditional academic institutions and TtW are not compatible. Most institutions have a little bit of money put aside for travel and conference costs, but need proof that the conference asks for a certain amount of money before funds can be approved. Without a posted conference fee many of our attendees (me included)\u00a0have no mechanism by which to\u00a0expense the registration cost and thus end up paying their donation out-of-pocket. \u00a0By choosing to not demand money from all attendees, we forgo the kind of money that average disciplinary associations receive every year.<\/p>\n

Because we work out of unusual places we usually have to install a large, but temporary, internet connection.\u00a0Internet service providers rarely, if ever, have someone asking to buy a single month\u2019s worth of their biggest commercial line. We\u2019ve tried to buy less (We only use it for one weekend!) but companies selling lots of bandwidth only work in monthly increments. I\u2019m pretty sure we have become notorious to Time Warner Cable installation crews too\u2014as we typically run multiple lines in the same building. Nothing about the conference fits neatly into the forms and procedures of a typical cable customer.<\/p>\n

There are really important reasons why, for the last two years, we have opted to put Theorizing the Web in unorthodox locations.\u00a0The early American university was purposefully isolated- it gave students a space where they were safe to make radical claims and were free from distractions so that they could get work done. If anything has been held over from that early time, it is the isolation that campuses breed. There\u2019s a time and a place for that and TtW isn\u2019t it. We want people to come off of the street, register really fast, and check out\u00a0what’s happening. Few venues make\u00a0this serendipity possible, but it is an important\u00a0feature that we look for in\u00a0selecting a venue. In the last two years we’ve\u00a0had lots of people come in, listen for a few minutes and leave. Some stay. The ones that stick around are\u00a0tremendously important to us.<\/p>\n

All of this is to say that Theorizing the Web could actually be even cheaper than it already is, if we weren\u2019t such an anomaly to venues, Internet Service Providers, and employers. TtW comes up against many of\u00a0the actual and immediate material costs of constructing alternative institutions. There\u2019s nothing quite like TtW but we hope that changes soon. We can\u2019t meet the demand for this sort of project and if there were more organizations like TtW it might be easier for all of us. Until then, feel free to send us your suggestions and recommendations for making TtW16 even better: http:\/\/theorizingtheweb.tumblr.com\/ask<\/p>\n

\u00a0David is on Twitter<\/a><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was\u00a0happy to see Theorizing the Web go so well for so many people. The committee has been getting a lot of positive and constructive feedback and we\u2019re reading all of it. If you feel so moved to write your own reflections on #TtW15 please send them our way. Last year, my post-conference thoughts were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1512,"featured_media":19908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33055],"tags":[36442,23011,10409,9663,26510,76],"class_list":["post-19907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ttw15","tag-ttw15","tag-academic-institutions","tag-conference","tag-theorizing-the-web","tag-ttw14","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2015\/04\/tumblr_nn4kta2uDp1t0j5qro7_1280.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19907"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19911,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19907\/revisions\/19911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}