On Thursday, October 22, 2009, hundreds of students spontaneously occupied the Audimax, University of Vienna’s biggest auditorium. Immediately large sections of the population, including teachers and many existing organizations, expressed their solidarity. The movement was directed against decades of failed educational policies, the structural reform of universities in the course of the Bologna Process, and chronic underfunding of the educational system. Remarkable was that it was not central organizational structures (e.g., official student associations) that were at work here, but network structures created ad hoc and communicating via Twitter & Co. (hashtag: #unibrennt).
With the emergence of “unibrennt” (‘Die Uni brennt!’ / “The university is on fire!”), something appeared on the scene that was to profoundly affect many people’s lives. “unibrennt” is also certain to influence the form and success of future protest movements. It has already set an example, one that shows NGOs and others how to achieve “digital communities” by interlinking activities in different ways in the streets, conference halls and online; and by providing live streams as well as enabling participation via integrated platforms and wikis.
The “ubiquitous unibrennt cloud” has made all this happen without funding, full-time employees or specialists. Against the backdrop of a common goal, and based on premises of self-organization and the need for structural and political clout, a large number of people have played roles of equal importance. Which explains how it has been possible within such a short period of time to set up media centers, live streams, servers and homepages using private equipment; or how community kitchens have been organized; and first aid stations and cleaning crews, fitted out. Moreover, it explains how these and many other functions and nodes could be kept running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, week after week – and at that by students, many of whom have to work alongside their studies, and lecturers and instructors, who must also teach and work.
A movement such as “unibrennt” is not just a unique event but statistically a highly improbable one. For repeatedly in the course of the movement, there have been situations that have made its continuance unlikely. Many things need to come together and work for such a “ubiquitous cloud” to grow and survive. It is at these moments that the movement’s network has to function and overcome precarious situations. The “unibrennt” network consists of people and groups, occupied lecture halls and private spaces, mobile phones and laptops, division of labor and teamwork, Facebook fan pages and Skype conferences, wikis and international e-mail lists; it has spread everywhere, from the server room of the University of Vienna to self-hosted blogs, from street actions in Kiel and a community kitchen in Munich, to a networking meeting in Graz and a poster campaign in Basel. For many, a connection consists in belonging to the movement. It’s about communicating via the WWW and deciding matters in the “cloud”. While existing organizations attempt, in time- and resource-consuming processes, to achieve a top-down implementation of wikis, blogs, feeds and video conferences through training, pressure and incentives – the movement has collectively learned these techniques at an incredible rate.
Communication tools and identities are created and maintained collaboratively 24 hours a day. Passwords are changed weekly. Documents are managed through Google docs and wikis. SMS lists are put together for emergency evacuations. Media monitoring has been outsourced within the cloud via a string of links to online media reports and a Flickr album of newspaper scans. Press releases, lists of demands and open letters are sent by e-mail to the media and available on platform websites, wikis and links to everyone interested. In collaboration with the “live stream” team, a team of photographers and videomakers document the plenary sessions, sit-ins, demos, flash mobs and more.
Project teams ensure the transparency of the movement’s objectives and of contact data in wiki. Everything that takes place on these teams and in plenary sessions is documented live and presented to the public via video projector. Minutes, resolutions and petitions are sent out and stored on a wiki where they can be viewed and edited. Plenary sessions are available via live streaming and stored online in a video archive. Interaction via chats, tweets or video conferencing is the order of the day. Debates spread to social networks, where they continue. Topics, dates and links are posted incessantly; and resources, requested and organized.
Of course, all these materials are not just stored in online archives, but are also accessible to the public, and may be used and modified free of charge.
--- “unibrennt” began at 2 p.m. on October 22, 2009. Over the course of the next four days “unibrennt” grew explosively. On October 26, 2009, news of what was happening reached hundreds of thousands when the entire media world ran the same lead story: “Unibrennt!” Tens of thousands were on site or involved online. The following weeks were marked by rapid growth and differentiation, both internally and externally. Three weeks later, there was talk of a wildfire for the first time. In the meantime, the movement has spilled over to the rest of the German-speaking world and beyond.

Links: http://unibrennt.at

Approx. 20 people are Facebook administrators (anonymous)
Approx. 10 are Twitter “administrators”
Approx. 100 are in the media team (press, IT, photo/video, websites, Facebook, wiki, etc.)

luca hammer: @luca 2-blog.net, website & live stream;
michael horak: @fatmike182, IT team; georg schuetz: @
geschuetz Superbertram.com, documentation team;
markus kienast: @unibrenntTV, documentation team;
hc voigt: @kellerabteil, wienbrennt team; dominik gubi:
@nacaseven; walter palmetshofer: @vavoida IT/ring
debates/financing teams; jonas reis: @JonasReisWien
carina: caferina; inge minge