Life and Plans Update: The Socratic Web, Crowdfunding, Conferences, Writing and Travelling

Since attending the Workshop on Digital Misinformation in Montreal back in April 2016, my whole life has been on a new tangent. I was already back on the rbutr train at that point, but this workshop helped me solidify many thoughts and helped point me in the right (I hope) direction for moving forwards.

Since then I started writing more on the topic of Fake News and the problems with all other efforts to fight it. I also started posting those articles to my Medium blog, which has now become my official Digital Misinformation and Fake News blog.  This has helped me get my ideas out to many more people than I ever seemed to be able to reach through the rbutr blog (and definitely this blog, something which I am sure about 4 friends read. And probably never the same 4 friends.)

As well as that I have given a few talks/presentations, and attended a couple of low key workshops on misinformation, journalism, truth, etc, which have also helped put me in contact with more people active in the space.

I published my Socratic Web white paper the other week, and am now at the point where the next major stepping stone is crowdfunding the foundational money to get that project started, and otherwise planning/organising as many conferences as possible for next year.

Which brings me to what I am doing next…

December and January

Christmas is a terrible time to run a crowdfunding campaign, so I have decided to delay that campaign until February. So over the next two months, between Christmas, New Years, and some plans to go camping on the Australia day long weekend, I will be spending my time writing more articles and applying to present and participate at conferences which have misinformation and fake news tracks. Most of my time will still likely go towards preparing a killer crowdfunding campaign so that the execution in February will be as perfect as possible.

February and March

At the beginning of February Vanessa, Leonardo and I will be moving to Koh Phangan, Thailand, for two months. Rent, daycare and food is infinitely more affordable for us there than it is in Sydney and Vanessa (who suffers from moderate-severe (30) ME/CFS) can get frequent massages to help manage her pain.

This will give me some time and space to focus on running the crowdfunding campaign, preparing for my presentation at the International Journalism Festival in April (the real reason for our travel), and beginning the creation of The Socratic Web organisation, brand, and website as soon as the crowdfunding is completed.

April and After

The beginning of April has all of us travel to Rome so that I can present at the International Journalism Festival. We’ve planned a small trip around the event and will see some of Rome, Pompeii and the area around it, Perugia, Florence, and then more to the North West as we head towards France to visit some friends in Paris. Those who are also planning to travel to Europe may consider booking a private flight from Jettly.

There is a Web Conference in Lyon at the end of April, so I am going to chase up participating in that event too. Then there is another conference in Toronto in mid May which I am going to apply to speak at too, so I may find myself heading over there if that goes well.

So our plans from the end of April are much more vague until I sort out whether I am going to these other conferences or not. Either way, we will all end up back at Ness’s mum’s place in the UK between events.

There is also a Basic Income conference in Finland at the end of August which I could be persuaded to make it to as well….

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