Yesterday evening i found an envelope copy of the book Digitofagia – net_cultura1.0 by Ricardo Rosas and Giseli Vasconcelos on the stairs to my apartment (thanks for the relay Geert!). This book has been in the making for more than 4 years and i had more or less accepted that i would never see it in print). The idea for this book cam up in the context of the Waag-Sarai Exchange platform in late 2004/early 2005. The book collects a number of articles and assays that discuss the – very lively – netculture/hactivism scene in Brazil at that time. It is the outcome of a number of discussions we had with people around the projects midiatactica and metareciclagem around that time.

Realizing this book was one of the more complicated things i have contributed to over time (transferring money to Brazil is a real nightmare) and when we were ready to go to print we learned that Ricardo who had spend an enormous amount of energy chasing authors and finding a publisher had passed away. The book was finally published late last year in Brazil (by Radical Livros) and although i cant read Portuguese i am happy that it is finally available:

The book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share alike license. A pdf version (missing a page in memory of Ricardo that was added later) can be downloaded here (the book cover here).

… has been close to unbearable in the last couple of days. Daytime temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s and high humidity do not really constitute an enjoyable atmosphere. The fact that yesterday night’s garden reception that was hosted by sarai on the occasion of the launch of the Sarai reader #06 was surrounded by an array of ventilators pretty much sums the situation

Right now I am at the submidialogia event in Campinas organized as part of the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform on the campus of the local university Unicamp. It is a pretty impressive gathering of all sorts of Brazilian media / open access practitioners ranging from free radio activists to government officials involved in the digital culture projects the Brazilian government is deploying throughout this vast country. Parts of the event are streamd live although without the marvelous simultaneous translation services by lots of volunteers the Portuguese only stream will probably be pretty much useless for most readers of this post.

The place where Unicamp is located – Barão Geraldo – is a bit surreal. It is a pretty wealthy settlement that reminds me a lot of California. Accordingly the hotel where some of the participants are staying is called Funcamp:

Update (26 feb 2006): A short report about the conference is available on the exchange platform blog.