Planet Extra - column details

The Hacio'r Iaith Community

26.02.10
You don't need anyone's permission to set up your own website, blog or online service. In a refreshing change from the economics of the mainstream media, you don't have to make a case for the viability of your minority interest — or, for that matter, your minority language. You just start something. Or you find a like-minded community and contribute. There is plenty of room online for the things you want to post. Online we don't speak of audiences, with the passivity that entails; we speak of communities. Unlike in the mainstream media, there is no shame in low "circulation" figures as long as you are reaching the people you want to reach. Online communities can be large or small. Sometimes the online layer supports a pre-existing offline community, but not always.

Hacio'r Iaith is an event created by a community which explores these potentials. We discuss success stories, lessons learned and practical how-tos. The community formed online, later the first Hacio'r Iaith event took place in Aberystwyth on 30th January 2010. It was a gathering of just over forty people from around Wales, many of whom shook hands for the first time there. Hacio'r Iaith is open to anyone who would like to learn about the web and technology, of any age and from any industry or sector. This includes enthusiasts, professionals, academics, coders, gamers and bloggers, but also aspiring novices.

The Hacio'r Iaith sessions follow an "unconference" event format known as BarCamp, which has been successfully used hundreds of times around the world. This format is very different to the traditional model of an industry conference, where you pay (or your employer pays) for a ticket, often over-priced; and where you often listen to experts promoting their own products. By contrast, BarCamp-style events are usually free or very cheap. The agenda is generated by the attendees. If you want to run a session on something, you just suggest it, in advance or on the day. It can be a practical how-to, a presentation or a discussion. All you need is two or more people per session. As far as we know, Hacio'r Iaith was the first BarCamp-style event conducted in the Welsh language.

For us in the technology field "openness" is not just a meaningless buzzword. Openness is embedded in the structure of Hacio'r Iaith, the event format and the way we organise things. We try to avoid email where possible, favouring a trail of blog posts and wiki pages that we control on our own sites. This is all public, in the sense that it is accessible on the web for anyone who would like to search for it, view it or link to it. As for the content of the event, why restrict our insights to the people who were able to attend? We are not trying to compete with mainstream media outlets or publishing, but just make useful information available, for anyone who wants it. Our nascent group blog at http ://haciaith.comis a good place to start. Here you'll find recordings of the sessions and useful discussions. We will also organise and announce any future Hacio'r Iaith events there first.

Although our topics of discussion are centred around technology in the Welsh language, this is incidental because the format can be used to explore any subject under the sun, not just technology itself. After the success of the first Hacio'r Iaith gathering, I had a call from a friend in the medical profession asking for tips for organising another open event in Wales this year. But much of my advice to her and the medics consisted of links to the public record that had already been generated for Hacio'r Iaith.

In my opinion, there is too much emphasis on "intellectual property" in Wales, keeping things closed to an extent which actually stifles innovation and markets. I'm not proposing we scrap copyright, trademarks or patents, nor the laws which enable them. There's a need to promote a nuanced understanding of these things, rather than trotting out the vague umbrella term "intellectual property". But in my field, for instance, certain skills such as how to start your own website, how to make online video and how to find open source software should be well-known and well-practised by the people of Wales. This information should be evenly distributed and not treated as trade secrets. If I give you this information, I don't lose anything. I probably gain something — I benefit from what you create online, my reputation is enhanced and consequently there could be more demand for the paid side of my work.

Even the software itself can be commonly owned and improved, making intellectual "property" in the hands of a few appear very limited. Take WordPress as an example. WordPress is the free website management software which runs on hosting servers. It runs many websites worldwide including: 10 Downing Street's site, Stephen Fry's site, Daily Telegraph blogs, The Ford Story (Ford cars) as well as Hacio'r Iaith and my own blog. You may have seen blogs hosted on wordpress.com which is a commercial service. This is actually just one example of a website which uses the free WordPress code available from wordpress.org. Last month, January 2010, a private venture launched the Caledonian Mercury: an online-only newspaper for Scottish news, built entirely on WordPress. The newspaper is free to read, ad-supported and definitely one to watch. Some of the Hacio'r Iaith community have been hard at work doing translations of WordPress and its visual themes. We use this software for our own sites. The software is also released freely and for free, under an established open source software licence called the GPL. This is akin to distributing seeds — anybody can use them to grow their own online services and communities. They can also produce their own seeds of course — and cross-breed or modify them (no GM concerns here, it's just a metaphor). Hopefully people will use this, because we want to give others the power to grow their own online media, in any language but particularly the Welsh language which we love. Those people might be musicians, writers, journalists, designers, academics, activists or entrepreneurs. They could create a blog, a hyperlocal news site or a papur bro, a new company website or even an online newspaper.

Local authorities, public bodies and governments spend millions of pounds in tax money on their own customised software development, not only on website systems, but on databases and other internal systems. In short, they spend time and money reinventing what has already been done elsewhere. Why is the underlying code not being made available as an open source byproduct, for the good of everyone, including the public? The White House (which now runs its own website on a modified version of free software called Drupal) is exploring the possibility of doing this. We should too.

Carl Morris