Institute of Network Cultures’ Winter Camp

On: March 8, 2009

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About Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff
Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff is a New Media theorist, Web researcher and Internet entrepreneur. In 1999 he started working as IT professional at the broadband Internet Service Provider @home (a franchise of the ISP and search engine company Excite@Home). After working here for over eight years he decided to pursue a study in New Media at the University of Amsterdam. During this study he has been an active member of the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) research group, working together in a strong team of designers, programmers and theorists to develop new Web-specific methods and tools for doing online research and has written in depth about Internet censorship research, code consciousness and cyber-cosmopolitanism. Next to several stand-alone projects he also started up CYBERLIFE, focusing on building Web-applications, sites and tools, Web hosting and doing Web research. After receiving his Master degree in New Media he continued his contributions to the DMI, has helped organize the Society of the Query conference for the Institute of Network Cultures and has been a thesis supervisor at the University of Applied Sciences (HvA) for Interactive Media. His current company, nochii BV, focusses on utilizing theoretical knowledge and practical experience to help companies get a better understanding about the Web, their network and the space they occupy and its relation to the offline. He holds the strong believe that the Web, both as infrastructure and as concept, can aid in dealing with the increasing complexity of the world (both online as offline) and the relating problematics.

Website
http://nochii.nl

This week was Winter Camp week, an event organized by the Institute of Network Cultures (INC). The event brought together different networks that had been around for at least two years, to see what happens at this stage of settling down, when they are no longer fresh and new. Often the activity level drops after the newness has gone so the question posed on Winter Camp was about how networks deal with this, should they transform in to so-called ‘organized networks’ or stay true to their distributed nature? Does professionalizing the network and the introduction of hierarchies, rules and regulations decrease their spontaneity or can a balance be found between structure and autonomy. Bringing twelve groups together displays many of the different ways these networks deal with this and at the same time provide a space for those networks to meet face-to-face, often essential for the existence of networks. Some networks actually never met in real life or only sparsely seen each other at convergences.

The networks present at Winter Camp where:

Some of the MoM bloggers where present at this event as resident bloggers to both document the different networks in their individual projects during the week as look at those questions posed by the INC. To check out our blogs of the event check out the Winter Camp blog.