[sfccp-announce] 2008 New Years Community Colo Update

[San Francisco Community Colocation Project Announcements]

:: SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLOCATION PROJECT
:: 2008 NEW YEARS UPDATE (JANUARY)
:: http://www.sfccp.net/

:: CONTENTS
   1.0 Birthday Party -- Celebrate One Year of SFCCP!
   2.0 Organization Growth Update
   3.0 Legal Update
   4.0 Expansion Freeze
   5.0 Planned Enhancements
   6.0 Fundraising Update

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1.0 BIRTHDAY PARTY -- CELEBRATE ONE YEAR OF SFCCP!

We're going to informally celebrate our one year birthday party on
Friday, January 25th, starting around 7pm and going until whenever.
The party will be hosted in San Francisco, between 7th & 8th and
Howard & Folsom. We'll send more details as the date gets closer. 

The party will include a video link with our volunteers in Argentina,
Brazil and Germany, so they'll virtually be coming to the party also.
We're also going to play some hacker movies, drink alcohol and eat
food. We need a little bit of help pulling this party together, so if
you have some time to volunteer, please email org @ mail.sfccp.net and
ask to get involved on the party planning.

This party is also intended to be a benefit for SFCCP to help us raise
some money to end the waiting list and start moving people in again
(see below).


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2.0 ORGANIZATION GROWTH UPDATE

Well, it's been one busy and exciting year of building up the San
Francisco Community Colo! We started out with nothing more than an
impending deadline of when our servers would power down at California
CCP and a year later, we're a rapidly-expanding non-profit with
volunteers from all over the world who share our vision for a
non-commercial, protected community network. 

All year, by the time we've finished the upgrade work for one
expansion, it's almost been time to start the upgrade work for the
next expansion! So that's good -- the more servers we rack, the lower
the costs for everyone. The downside is that expansion is expensive
because we do something like, for example, add a new power circuit to
accommodate one new client and during the time we're waiting for more
clients to move in and pay for the entire circuit, SFCCP eats that
cost difference. We're developing strategies to deal with that kind of
situation.

Meanwhile, here are some of the cool projects that we're hosting at
SFCCP during our first year:

http://baychi.org/ : BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the 
ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), 
brings together scholars, practitioners, and users to exchange ideas 
about computer-human interaction and about the design and evaluation 
of human interfaces.

http://radioplanton.linefeed.org/ : When one looks at government
corruption in Mexico, one of the most brazen and repressive political
machines is the governorship of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz in the tourist state
of Oaxaca. Since 2006, an enormous popular movement has been growing
out of what started as a teachers' strike there. This movement is
directly taking on a ruthless governor who uses illegal paramilitary
muscle to protect his racket. At least 17 people have been killed
during the uprising, including Brad Will, an Indymedia reporter who
was shot by one of the paramilitary thugs. Brad filmed his own death.
Radio Planton is a free, community radio broadcasting on 92.1 FM in
Oaxaca and has given continuous news about events on the ground there.
SFCCP is proud to host their website and streaming simulcast.

marieta.indymedia.org : This is a powerful server donated by an SFCCP
volunteer in Amsterdam to a group of techies from Brasil Indymedia. It
hosts independent media websites like brasil.indymedia.org,
ecuador.indymedia.org, venezuela.indymedia.org and
qollasuyu.indymedia.org. It also hosts a skill-sharing environment to
help people from those countries learn sysadmin and web development
skills.

Also, to support other local grassroot initiatives, we joined the
Network of Bay Area Workers Cooperatives -- http://www.nobawc.org/

We also organized a special workshop for people from other cities who
want to build a community colocation project in other places. We
presented the workshop at LinuxWorld and the Bay Area Linux User Group
meeting.


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3.0 LEGAL UPDATE

Defending the digital rights of free speech and privacy is a part of
CCP history and one of the main parts of our mission as an
organization.

This year, we set up a relationship with the law firm of Covington &
Burling (with the help of the EFF) who has offered pro bono legal
services to us for day-to-day issues that might come up. And, we
established a channel to the EFF for any major cases that might happen
(like the Diebold case of several years ago).

Also, members of our organizing group participated on a training with
the EFF at a bootcamp workshop they organized. With this information,
we are starting a Legal Guide on the wiki to help community colo
participants have the knowledge about their digital rights and what to
do if they ever receive a corporate or law enforcement order. 


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4.0 EXPANSION FREEZE

Recently, we had to upgrade our power circuit because we were using
beyond our capacity and we had to add 10 more amps. Unfortunately,
this only covers the power we were running over capacity with and does
not give us power to add new servers! We need to purchase an
additional 10 amps of power as well as APC power strips (we are
actively seeking donations for this type of hardware!). 

As a result, we have had to impose an expansion freeze for right now.
We are building a waiting list because as soon as we have the
financial and hardware resources, we will continue our expansion.

Much of 2007 was spent building the organization, building the working
groups, building the interactive website, and getting things set up.
Now we are organizationally going to focus more on getting financial
support from the community at large. The core organizers have kicked
in a lot of their own personal money and we need an infusion of money
to make possible our next expansion.

We hope that we will be out of this freeze soon and we will continue
to update the SFCCP community as the situation develops.


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5.0 COMING ENHANCEMENTS

In addition to expanding our capacity, we have a number of service
expansions planned as well. These include:
   o Remote serial console access,
   o Remote server reboot capabilities,
   o Specific bandwidth monitoring available via the website,
   o Anti-spam services with an anti-spam network appliance 
     donated to us.


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6.0 FUNDRAISING UPDATE

The organizing group has decided to put a significant part of our
focus on fund-raising as we head into 2008. We know that there are
people within the community who have the resources to help us and also
share our ideals and goals as a group. 

We welcome any help we can get from anyone regarding ideas, searching
for possible funders, help with grant-writing, and etc. Any and all
help on this is crucially important, especially since we are currently
in the expansion freeze, solely because of financial need.

We are also continuing to promote the Supporting Member program. If
every SFCCP client got 5 people to join at $10/month, we'd be a lot
closer to ending the expansion freeze. SFCCP is doing the work
necessary to provide affordable colocation that creates legally
protected community networks. If you know people who share those
values, please approach them about becoming a Supporting Member!
Again, the URL for this program is:
http://www.sfccp.net/wiki/Join

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This is our 2008 New Years update! We're excited about the
possibilities for this coming year and hope everyone else is, too. You
are always welcome to drop by irc.indymedia.org in channel #sfccp to
chat with us and get involved! This is a community effort and we rely
on the community for support. 

And for those of you who have supported SFCCP throughout our first
year, a BIG thank you goes out to you. We couldn't have done it
without you!

See you in the February 2008 Update :)