Incommunicado 05
nformation Technology for Everybody Else
2-day international working conference
www.incommunicado.info
Amsterdam, De Balie, June 16-17, 2005
Institute of Network Cultures, Waag-Sarai Platform and Soenke Zehle
Incommunicado is a two-day workshop that intends to approach the growing ’ICT for
development’ (ICT4D) sector and its conceptual and organizational idioms from a committedyet-
critical ’insider’ perspective. The Incommunicado gathering wants to explore discourses, concepts and strategies. It offers neither an esoteric, self-referential ’critique fest’ nor a mere exhibition of best-of-ICT4D projects. Instead, it aims to create a space to allow those active mainly in the field of ICT4D to come together with people from other areas of media activism and criticism.
To facilitate such encounter and exchange, the Incom event will not follow the standard academic conference format but organize an open workshop to encourage cooperative work and informal networking. The call outlines five (overlapping) topic areas, and an editorial collective will ensure that current information on all topics as well as fmoderators and focused presentations are available. A pre-conference publication will bundle perspectives considered most relevant by participants and made available online. The conference location itself supports open exchange and networking and can accommodate self-organizing groups anywhere between 15 and 200 people. Pre-conference cooperation via the conference wiki or the incommunicado mailing-list is encouraged.
The event is part of the activities of the Incommunicado network, a research list and weblog
that focus on the reappropriation of ICT across the ’Global South’. The idea of being (held)
incommunicado - to be in a liminal state vis-a-vis multiple regimes of information as well as
human rights - serves as point of departure for analyses, critiques, and projects beyond the
standard agenda of ICT-for-Development.