On Friday 7th June, Petra Schmidt from CCT and Helen Varley Jamieson from UpStage presented the Mobilise/Demobilise project and rebuilt UpStage platform at the Eclectic Tech Carnival (/ETC) in Berlin.

The /ETC is a gathering of feminist developers and artists who come together to share skills, network, learn, hack and create using open source software. UpStage’s history with the /ETC goes back to 2004, when the very first version of UpStage was presented and used to stream live images from the event to the world. Since then, UpStage workshops and presentations have been given at many /ETCs, where the project has received a lot of support. Our current lead developer Gloria first learned about UpStage at the 2007 /ETC in Austria.

The presentation focused on the “mobilisation” rebuild of the UpStage platform as part of Mobilise/Demobilise. Petra and Helen presented the theme and the activities as well as the software, and discussed the participating partners and the unique artist-developer collaboration that sustains UpStage and its community. The audience were very enthusiastic and several expressed interest in using UpStage in their own creative projects, as well as interest in the themes.