Post-Fiesta

The Fiesta is over, and I'm taking to bed for the well-positioned public holiday. I've posted pictures of the Internet Fiesta from the first day. I think we learned a lot of lessons from this first Internet Fiesta in South Africa, and this will be useful if the talk of further Fiestas in the country becomes reality.

As I mentioned previously, the Internet Fiesta computers were provided by the great guys at The Shuttleworth Foundation. They used the same thin-client technology as their Tuxlab program, and we had Schools Linux Users Group (SLUG) volunteers helping out from laying cabling to teaching the community how to use a mouse and web browsers.

The technology worked brilliantly, except we were pushing the limits of what could be achieved by having 50 computers on the network with just one fat server with 2GB RAM (ie, around about 40MB per machine). 3GB (around 60MB per machine) would have done reasonably well. But next time, at least two servers if we want to have 50 machines.

One interesting problem on the second morning was that we were running out of local network bandwidth by allowing the kids to play Frozen Bubble, and computers could not boot from NFS due to network saturation. Strategic use of additional gigabit ethernet equipment would be useful.

The wireless Internet connectivity donated by UniNet worked flawlessly over the period, and took a lot less time to set up than relying on the local fixed-line monopoly (who weren't interested in donating anything anyway). I'm pretty sure we will be relying on wireless options in future where fixed-line infrastructure is either not available or will not be donated for the Fiesta in question.

Being our first attempt, we were unprepared for dealing with having many more people wanting to use the computers than there were computers. Some system would be nice to accurately determine who has been hogging computers, and who just arrived.

We had three rows of computers, and we decided to have a staged migration of one row every ten minutes - so that the community could use the computers for periods of half an hour. I did a few of these migrations, and it basically was a full-time job during this period. The children, especially the boys, weren't very interested in equitable distribution of computer time to their community, and weren't above pressuring smaller kids or girls away from computers. Which we combatted to the best of our ability. But we needed a better system.

We would have liked to see more adults and the elderly at the Fiesta, I imagine. The kids crowded around the entire hall, and the adults weren't all that interested in learning in that environment. We took the attitude of approaching adults at the door and asking them if they wanted to learn and experience computers and the Internet, and kicked off kids. Being gender-biased against boys, I also let girls get away with using the resources for longer where possible.

The shape of the new system isn't obvious. A ticket system with ever-increasing numbers on the tickets would allow us some control over verifying how long someone has been there, and allowing us to ask them to politely allow others to get a chance. We might also need to reserve some resources, possibly in another room/area, for adults (over 16s or so) and the elderly. I'm not sure how we can promote girls getting equal (or, in my opinion, somewhat preferential) access to the resources without the intimidation from the boys getting in the way, though.

We could have entertained the children in other ways than the computers, freeing up demand for the resources, and also giving them something to do when they had to relinquish their computer for others to get a chance. On the second day, movies played this role, and I think there should probably be some dedicated form of entertainment the night through.

We could have done more demos if we had an area sufficiently separate from the general computing area (and the entertainment above). We would only really need to cover a few topics. Firstly, the basics of computer use: the various bits of hardware and their use (this is a mouse, and it moves the cursor on the screen), the user interface (clicking on icons, text boxes, and so forth). Secondly, the basics of web interface. Thirdly, a primer on Google and Wikipedia. Finally, some way to send email and communicate with others on the Internet.

We mostly focussed on the third above, and relied on people exploring the first two on their own. And we did some one-to-ones on the last.

For the most part, people explored on their own quite happily, and shared their new-found knowledge with their peers. When I first arrived, explaining things was a full-time job, and gradually it seemed that the volunteers would only be called in because the users got lost somehow, closed a window or had a weird dialog they were afraid to do something about, AND often if they couldn't find someone from the community around them who had an idea of what to do. That's not bad for about half an hour of computer use, if you ask me.

I left at about 11pm (after about 14 hours there), and we were a bit worried that we wouldn't have external volunteers after 3am or so. One great story is that one of the women in the community that I helped first-thing on the first day was up at 4am helping an elderly gentleman learn about the Internet and find information on cars on the web. I think this all bodes well for the telecentre that is going to be placed at this site in the next month or so.

We have a number of similar stories, and I hope we don't let people down by not writing them up!

Things that worked very well and probably even better than expected: the carnival atmosphere outside with a large tent and sound system and karaoke(!) and co-ordinated dance stuff and jumping castles (for a few hours at least) and food and drink stalls worked great. There was a live act from within the community (called Destinations) which had all the girls screaming.

So why have the Fiesta if it's going to be a one-shot thing in this community? Why bring computers and the Internet to the community only to take them away again? I think Alan (Levin) summarised it well in his closing remarks - we need the community (the schools, the businessmen, the community organisations, churches, NGOs) to put pressure on the local, provincial, and national government to make Internet access affordable. And pressure them to assist the schools to get computers by making low-cost and high-value options like The Shuttleworth Foundation's Tuxlabs supported by the Department of Education. We hope to ignite a spark of interest in education and the future and of leaving the past's inequalities behind. Alan also explained that having computers and access to the Internet and its vast resources come at the cost of staying in school and learning perceived "hard" subjects like Maths and Science (which the apartheid government attempted to brainwash communities into believing that those subjects were not things that non-Whites could handle or would be able to use to get jobs).

Alan's vision of the Internet Fiesta in South Africa may have been the spark, but Jenni Husler (who I've had the privilege of working with as well) really shepherded that spark into the fire that it became. I'd love to try manage a project like this in future, but only if I could draw on the experiences and suggestions of her pioneering of the territory.