DINACON 3

You are invited to apply to the upcoming Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon 3). It is an experimental conference about exploring new ways of interacting with nature!
It runs from July 1-31, 2022, in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka and people come in and out for days or weeks at a time.

Video Invitation to Dinacon 3 – Sri Lanka


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 one of the world’s major hubs for biological field research.

To get a feel for the types of projects people make, check out our free book from last year!

Host Site

Dreamspace and Sri Lanka:

For this upcoming Dinacon, we will be partnering with the amazing folks at Dreamspace Academy. Dreamspace started as a war reconciliation centre that evolved into a fantastic endeavour for helping the local society and environment.

In their words:

“DreamSpace Academy is a non-profit social enterprise tackling local socio-economic and environmental challenges through challenge-based learning, grassroots innovation and impact venture building. Three decades of civil war in Sri Lanka caused a massive impact on socio-economy and environmental ecosystems International aid provided significant support, but imported solutions couldn’t solve fundamental local problems sustainably. Our mission is to achieve sustainable development goals in Sri Lanka by empowering underserved communities, protecting environmental ecosystems, facilitating peace-building and fostering sustainable startups”

Dreamspace is located on a peninsula bordering a lagoon and ocean in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Batticaloa is located on the eastern side of Sri Lanka and home to many incredible creatures (including Blue Whales and the mysterious Singing Fish!). 

Who Should Come?

All Disciplines

We target the intersection of interactive design and field biology, but you can be whatever you want! Whether you are a dancer, a chemist, a forager, or you just like nature and want to live and make stuff with cool people, the conference is for you!

Local and International

The key goal of the conference is to share knowledge, so we are looking for a healthy mix of connecting local and international groups who want to spread their knowledge about hacking and nature.

Diverse Backgrounds

We are working to try to share this opportunity with not just the privileged folks of the world. We are targeting a healthy mix of people from different genders, cultures, and backgrounds.

Experimental, Site-Specific Unconference

The Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon) combines interaction design and field biology. It has an “unconference” format where the daily activities are led by the participants. It is open to scientists, artists, technologists, designers, and anyone else interested in finding new ways of interacting with other living creatures.

There are only 3 basic requirements for participating:

  1. Make something
  2. Document and Share it Publicly
  3. Get at least two other participants to provide you with recorded feedback

There have been two previous Dinacons, one in Thailand, May-July 2561, and one in Panama, August 2019. The work of the participants was collected and freely shared in these nice books we made for each conference: https://www.dinacon.org/2018/11/02/book

You can also review our website for more information about people and events from past conferences:  www.dinacon.org

Dinacon was created in reaction to many traditional academic conferences which fail to connect the participants to the interesting locations they visit (or even to each other). It draws inspiration from other gatherings and unconferences like PIFcamp (pif.camp), SignalFire Artists Residency (http://www.signalfirearts.org/), and the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (https://openhardware.science/gatherings/).