Digital Naturalism Conference / Residency / Workshop

The Second Digital Naturalism Conference, Gamboa, Panama
August 4-31, 2019
www.dinacon.org/apply
Deadline to apply: Feb 1, 2019

You are invited to apply to the upcoming Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon 2). It is an on-going, drop-in conference running from August 4- August 30, 2019, Gamboa, Panama. Our first experimental, self-funded, free-form gathering in Thailand last year was so fun and fruitful, we are doing it again! (Check out our free book from the first conference to get a feel for what dinacon is like! https://www.dinacon.org/2018/11/02/book/ )

For one month, we will be hosting field biologists, interaction designers, engineers, artists, and anyone simply interested in exploring new ways of interacting with nature. All this will take place in Gamboa, one of the world's major hubs for biological field research.

People (https://www.dinacon.org/people/)
Our goal is to bring interesting, creative people together to share ideas and techniques in semi-outdoor laboratories. It has an emergent conference structure directed by the participants themselves who can come and go over the course of 4 weeks in August. If it helps, you might think about it more like an artist residency, a workshop series, a field course, or a hacker camp, rather than a traditional academic conference.

Venue (http://www.dinacon.org/location/)
Facilities
The conference will be co-located at a large eco-resort hostel and the new Digital Naturalism Laboratories - Field Station Makerspace in Gamboa.

Location - Gamboa
Gamboa, Panama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamboa,_Panama) sits at the confluence of 2 continents, 2 oceans, and evolving ecological, technological, and sociological factors over the past 100 years. It's located directly in the center of Panama wedged between the canal and the Soberania National Forest. This spot of extreme biodiversity and massive anthropogenic geoengineering became the home of the Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute, one of the world's leading outdoor laboratories.

The location provides direct access to a wide variety of fascinating jungle creatures. You will see leaf-cutter ants blazing green, shimmering trails through the forest while howler monkeys roar in the distance. Agoutis and capybara lope around the small town which also hosts caimans, iguanas, and several hundred bird species.

Plus being only 40 km from the nearest international airport hub, makes Gamboa quite easily accessible from many places on earth.

Responsibilities (https://www.dinacon.org/2019/01/01/frequent-questions/ )
The three basic rules for ALL dinacon participants are simply:
Make something (Can literally be anything! Write an article, build a robot, conduct a study, etc...)
Document it openly (At a minimum just create a post on our website)
Get your project reviewed by at least 2 other participants
These very basic rules are formed to promote creative freedom and exploration while ensuring that everyone going to the conference comes away with a finished project in hand, that has been reviewed by amazing experts you got to co-habitate with.

Costs (https://www.dinacon.org/2019/01/01/costs/)
The conference is fully participant-driven and funded, which also unfortunately means we are unable to make the conference entirely free. Despite this, we worked hard with local groups to provide quite cheap and subsidized registration, housing, and food to the conference. This makes our conference much cheaper than most other typical conferences (generally cheaper than just the hotel costs of a normal conference).

One of our biggest goals is to make this conference open to as many people as possible, despite financial burdens. Thus we have a sliding- scale registration where the money from people who are able to pay a bit more to subsidize the costs of those who cannot.

(Right now these costs are APPROXIMATE - we are still working out final figures and details)

Fees
-Registration - $20-$75 USD per day (A sliding scale will help fund people who might not be able to join us otherwise)
-Food Fee (mandatory for all participants - includes 3 meals per day) - $20 USD per day

Housing
-Indoor Dormitory Housing - $28 USD per day
or
-Camping Slots (limited slots) - $4 per day
or
-There Gamboa Rainforest Resort Hotel is also nearby which charges ~$120 USD per night

Travel
Flights to Panama City are generally on the less expensive side, especially from most of the Americas and Europe. You can typically find roundtrip airfare from 300-700 USD from many cities. (e.g. From NYC - $300, Rio De Janeiro - 550 USD, Barcelona - 540 USD )

Apply (www.dinacon.org/apply/)
For more information about the conference, its location, and to apply now, please go to www.dinacon.org . The application is purposefully quite short!

Please let us know if you have any questions!
-Tas and Andy

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Sincerely,
Andrew Quitmeyer and Tasneem Khan -
Digital Naturalism Conference Founders and Organizers