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Hillhacks

FIXME //(this whole text was done for funding applications, and would need some re-work like including links and updates, also language can be less formal ;))//

Himachal Hill Hackers (H3)

  • See also: who, to get an idea who we are in person.**

An open coalition of independent community volunteers.

H3 is based in Dharamsala/India, but the volunteers are

a composition from different countries all over the world.

We are just a group of people spending time and tools,

aiming for the same (that is: education and exchange),

because we want to do good.

Everything is just newly set up. Most people involved so far are from India and Tibet. Main input in time, money and tools is coming from Akiba (Japan) and sva (Germany, based in Dharamshala); also included are people from around the world based in Dharamshala, people involved in Indian and Tibetan NGOS and other organisations like MIT Media Lab or Chaos Computer Club from various places world wide.

Form

The open group got together in a spontaneous and dynamic way. As we want to have such an event regularly, we might have some registered form in the future, but we are not formal in any way so far.

Partners

Connections exists e.g to the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore and the Programme on Information Society and Technology of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, both registered non-profits. Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala and MIT Media Lab in Boston and India are also part of this effort, as well as other local and regional organisations. Also there are some companies; those are not listed on the website, as we try to stay free from any “commercial” interests. Those connections solely exists via the owners volunteering within the group of the hillhackers. More: see partners

Commitment

We are independent volunteers, but committed. We've already secured various tools and many laptop computers for the hands-on workshops and in particular childrens' workshops. Even without any funding there will be a lot things happening, as we already spend those tools, time, experience and knowledge: Servers, services, tools and infrastructure are provided by various persons around the world; soldering irons, lasercutter and other tools got donated and shipped from China; we got an open offer for covering one venue for the core time; another open offer is a smaller venue to conduct one of the week-long workshops.

Some more background

Akiba is a founder of Tokyo's Hackerspace and just recently created a hackerfarm outside of Tokyo. He is a wireless expert and deeply involved with open source hardware. He is also a researcher at Keio University Internet Research Lab, research affiliate at MIT Media Lab, and design consultant to the UN.

sva is actually from the humanities (including background in computer science as well as carpentry) and e.g. co-founded the Hackspace of CCC Munich in Germany, Hackspace Dharamshala in Rakkar and mentored some more.

Her special feature is sva's experience in organizing and conducting similar events: Part of the core team organising the Chaos Communication Congress (C3) of German Chaos Computer Club (CCC) the last years, and involved in the organization since 2007 (see events.ccc.de/congress, around 10.000 participants in 2013). She also led smaller German events such as the re-publica.de, as well as some in India in 2013 (mostly with support of the Centre for Internet and Society).

For the past 30 years, CCC has shown that it is possible to drive events without “paid workers”, but plenty of people doing things they love. We want to dock onto this idea of everyone contributing, and just started doing so ourselves. As things are very different in India, our planning efforts aim to pay some travel and living expenses for speakers and volunteers, if they need it. We apply for different grants in parallel and hope to be able to achieve this.

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