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Salford Innovation Forum

By Jennifer Thomson, MA Journalism student

Academics and "people who want to change the world" are invited to a groundbreaking media workshop hosted by the University of Salford.

The event, at Salford's Innovation Forum on 3 November, will discuss the role of 'media ecology' in achieving more sustainable futures. The term 'media ecology' refers to the distribution of media technology knowledge among individuals and its effects on society.

Entitled Media Ecologies and Postindustrial Production, the workshop will discuss ideas for achieving sustainable futures through various 'media ecologies' such as crowdsourced democracy - a way of exchanging ideas among communities, Fab Labs - small scale workshops that produce media technology products, and peer production.

'Peer production' is a model where volunteers and waged producers create free software or hardware content and share it within a common pool, thus making it accessible to everyone. It can then be used and modified by others who return the improved product to the common pool.

A distinct advantage of this method is that a different - a better product is generated, therefore users can bypass corporate hurdles like copyright.

The workshop hopes to apply the utopian concept, which has, so far, proved successful in software development, for example in Linux operating systems, to other media platforms, and in the process tackle climate change and global poverty to create a more sustainable future.

Dr Phoebe Moore, an International Relations lecturer at Salford, will host the event, which is funded through the prestigious Alumni Disbursement fund. She said the ideas were becoming more prevalent as the recession takes hold.

"People are looking for more sustainable ideas without the hindrance of say, excessive copyright legislation.

"The methods we're talking about will get round that by creating a newer, improved product.

"Peer production is already overtaking traditional, corporate methods of production, the Linux operating system being one example. This workshop will look at extending the principle to other aspects of media technology."

Also at the workshop, Salford lecturers will launch the Peer to Peer (P2P) Research Group - an independent group of academics and practitioners who base their principles on the international P2P Foundation.

The foundation aims to protect the environment, while promoting free cultural and information exchange.

Keynote speakers at the event will be Matthew Fuller of Goldsmiths University (author of Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture, MIT Press), Michel Bauwens of Dhurakij Pundit University in Thailand (Founder of the P2P Foundation).

The workshop's programme is available at http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/sssi/p2p/index.html. It is free for all to attend.

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