Category: SFD

Software Freedom Day 2007 – 83 teams registered!

It is almost 3 months away from Software Freedom Day 2007, and we already have 83 teams registered! This year a lot of work went into the new registration system to make it easier for teams and for everyone else to find information, see all the teams, and get a feeling for what a truly global and participatory event this is. Check out which continents all the teams are from, it is fairly evenly balanced. As usual, Australia is doing well with 10 teams already registered!

Teams that want special SFD goodies including CDs, shirts, stickers and balloons need to be registered by the 31st July, so get in soon and register your team. Last year we had about 200 teams all up (including all the ones that registered after the free goodies date had passed), so we hope to have 300 teams this year!

The new Software Freedom International Board which includes 3 top SFD team leaders from 2006 is totally awesome, being extremely active, enthusiastic and full of new ideas.

Rock on and remember, freedom isn’t just for geeks, so let’s all get out there and help spread the important ideas of software freedom. I’ve got a short “About Software Freedom” page for anyone interested.

Software Freedom at Oxford

I’m currently staying at Oxford (UK) working on some interesting projects. The last three days I’ve been meeting with most the Software Freedom International board, of which I’m president. We’ve been planning out Software Freedom Day 2007 and are aiming for the biggest global celebration of Software Freedom ever!

Software Freedom is an underpinning value of the FLOSS community, as well as others that value transparency, sustainability and the opportunity to participate in software and technology. The basic idea is that as more and more of our lives are based on technology (communication, history writing, culture creation, electronic elections, etc) it is imperative the technology we rely on is transparent (open, visible, able to be scrutinised) and sustainable (data must be accessible long term), otherwise how can we trust our basic human rights are being upheld in a world where technology underpins everything we do? How can we participate in the technology that shapes our future?

I wrote a short summary of this from the perspective of human rights and really believe that as more and more of the world becomes connected (particularly with the OLPC coming out) that bodies like the United Nations need to consider digital freedoms in their declaration of human rights, otherwise those basic human rights become compromised.

More on my other work here to come!

FOSS & Software Freedom on Cybershack

I recently recorded an interview with Cybershack, a radio show for geeks/gamers. It was a difficult interview so I’m not completely happy with it. It was all in one take and they didn’t want to give me the questions in advance, but all in all it turned out ok I think. I’m hoping to get them more involved in FOSS and hopefully even get FOSS on the TV show someday 🙂

Check out the podcast of the interview here and it starts about 13 minutes 33 seconds.

Software Freedom Day 2006 report

I sent this out to mailing lists a few days ago, but completely forgot to blog it! 🙂

Software Freedom Day 2006 in Sydney was an awesome day jam packed with great talks, workshops, and fun all round. We had no more than 100 visitors during the day, however many people stayed for most of the day and the retention rates from this year will likely be a lot higher than last year, where we gave out probably 1000 CDs and pamphlets, but got very little follow up participation. We were very happy with the event this year which was a lot of fun.

The entire day saw great talks by all speakers, and all the recordings will be linked from the SFD Sydney team website soon. Senator Kate Lundy gave a fantastic speech which is available on her new (Joomla) website 🙂 It is awesome to see an Australian Senator who is Open Source savvy and generous with her time enough to drive to Sydney to speak to us all!

Congratulations to Stuart Hector who won the GP2X. The competition was to define what Software Freedom means, and it was voted on by the crowd. Stuart won with a short and concise “Software Freedom Rules!” which earned a cheer from attendees 🙂

Location: University of New South Wales – the Main hall in the new law building G04 near the roundhouse. Ground Floor left at the entrance

Date: September 16th 2006

Goal: To introduce more people to why Software Freedom matters, and in particular how it is important to maintaining digital environments we can trust to work and play in. Some good examples where Software Freedom matters is in e-voting software, and Open Standards for long term access to your documents. After all, the basic freedoms we expect are only as free as the technology they are based on. The day will be of interest to any person interested in how technology is changing their lives and freedoms. It will also be fun for anyone interested in technology generally and we will have some great workshop sessions.

Conclusions: This year by running an actual event we reached less people, however those who came were from a broad set of backgrounds (legal, cultural, technical, media and political) and everyone had a brilliant day. We have a brilliant collection of talks that really encapsulate Software Freedom from many different angles.

Sponsors: Venue kindly sponsored by the Unlocking IP Project at UNSW Law Faculty. Event run by the Sydney Linux User Group, Linux Australia and also many thanks to all the speakers who are donating their time and knowledge about Software Freedom. Also many thanks to GP2X for provided a great gaming device as a prize for the day! There is a review of the device available at http://www.localfoss.org/node/245

Thanks: Many thanks to all the volunteers who helped out as well as the people who turned up to help if needed. Particular thanks goes to Silvia Pfeiffer and John Ferlito for keeping the video recording going (which will all be online soon!) even when we had to switch rooms during lunch.

Also to Sridhar Dhanapalan, Andreas Fischer, Chris Deigan, Shane Stephens, Conrad Parker, Andreas Fischer, Andrew Sinclair, Peter Baker, Bruce Badger, Billy Kwong, James Purser, Mark Phillips, and Raphael Kraus for the audio/video work, the morning setup and afternoon pulldown, the and in some cases for being there if we needed more help 🙂

Many thanks to all the speakers and workshop people who gave their time and expertise to making the day awesome!

Thank you also to our sponsors the Unlocking IP project at the Cyberlaw Centre, who organised the venue and helped promote the event. They also gave a great talk and workshop, thanks Professor Greenleaf, Abi, Catherine and Ben! To GP2X Australia who provided a very cool little gaming device for the competition prize. To Linux Australia and SLUG for providing support and CompSoc for helping getting the word out.

Thank you to Software Freedom International for making this day possible and supporting all the teams 🙂

Also a big thank you to my husband Jeff Waugh, who is always a wonderful support and inspiration!

Software Freedom on Triple J

Software Freedom Day will be covered on tomorrows (Friday) Triple J HACK show at 5:30pm. We have about 6 mins, and I haven’t heard the final cut. It went really well and we covered a lot of ground 🙂 I focused on Software Freedom as being about transparent and sustainable technologies underpinning our everyday lives. I think it went really well 🙂

You’ll be able to get the podcast.

I also did an interview for the CyberShack Radio show which will be aired next week. Too late for SFD, but to a great audience. They have asked me to come back on a semi-regular basis and conisdering their audience is power users, gamers, & technologists, it is a great chance to get FOSS in front of people who can really enjoy and get passionate about it 🙂

I’m hoping to get them excited about FOSS enough to do a TV special at linux.conf.au, but I’ll see how we go 🙂

A free GP2X to give away at SFD Sydney!

Awesome, I’ve just had a GP2X donated to give away as a lucky door prize at Software Freedom Day Sydney! Rock! It arrives today/tomorrow so I’ll get to check it out in the flesh as it were.

The prizes will be drawn last thing in the afternoon, and you have to be there to get a chance, so come along to SFD Sydney, at UNSW on Saturday!

SFD – Badgers, Badgers…

Only a few more days to go and the Software Freedom Day Sydney event has awesome speakers, workshops, giveaways, and more!

Oh and we are going to have a special going away lunch party for Bruce Badger who is soon going away to the UK for a while. Bruce has been a strong community member for ages and we are going to miss him, so come along to see him off over lunch.

Where: UNSW – the main hall in the new law building (G04)
When: Saturday 16th from 10am till 5pm
Who: Anyone interested in technology or/and freedom
Cost: Free
Details: http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/sydney

Talks

  • 10:00 – Opening for Software Freedom Day by Professor Graham Greenleaf and Pia Waugh
  • 10:30 – Your freedom – a dream within an email – Pia and Jeff Waugh
  • 11:00 – Nick Seow – Hiding the Rosetta stone: will you be able to access your information tommorrow
  • 11:30 – Dr Chris Chesher – the power of social networks
  • 12:00 – Freedom of Automation – Conrad Parker
  • 12:30 – Lunch and lightening talks
  • 13:30 – Unlocking IP – getting access to the commons – David Vaile (TBC)
  • 14:00 – The Free Trade Agreement and what it means to you? – Kim Weatherall
  • 14:30 – Getting freedom in the media – using the media to help you – Rodney Gedda (IDG)
  • 15:00 – A Political perspective on Open source – Special guest Senator Kate Lundy
  • 15:30 – Software Freedom – Essential for Business and Innovation – Professor Gernot Heiser from NICTA
  • 16:00 – International development and aid with software freedom – Travis Harvey (Australian Development Gateway)
  • 16:30 – Prizes draw, Software Freedom Day close and final comments – Pia Waugh

Workshops

  • 10:00 – Talk over at lecture theatre by Pia Waugh and Jeff Waugh for everyone
  • 11:30 – Open Source tools for Video and Video at LCA – Silvia Pfeiffer
  • 12:30 – Lunch
  • 13:00 – Build your own ISP – John Ferlito
  • 14:00 – Linux and Open Source for students fun workshop – Stuart Rusthon
  • 15:00 – Senator Kate Lundy Speaking in Main Hall
  • 15:30 – Unlocking IP workshop – the Cyberlaw Centre
  • 16:30 – Software Freedom Day close and final comments at main lecture theatre- Pia Waugh

The space between two moments

These last four weeks have been pretty crazy. I haven’t had a moment to really catch up on anything, but I’m slowly getting there so for people waiting on me please keep being patient 🙂

First there was two weeks on the road. A week in Canberra talking to Government people, universities, corporate types and of course community people about FOSS. I’m putting together some pretty interesting documents which should get some good support from Australian Government Agencies, so stay tuned for that.

Then I helped run a seminar for ASK-OSS and spent a few days in Brisbane running the same conference up there. Both events were a lot of fun and very interesting. It was great to meet Dan Ravicher who is a great speaker, and his partner Alex who is a street smart lawyer defending the rights of disadvantaged people in New York! Alex was a very cool lady to meet! It was wonderful to meet with Mark Webbink again, I hope everything is going ok Mark.

Then this last two weeks, I’ve been sick. ‘The flu with my RSI starting to play-up again’ sick. Not very nice, particularly when one has soooo much to do!

I had loads of wonderful people from SLUG come around on the 26th and pitch in to help pack up all the global Software Freedom Day team packs for shipping on Monday. It was a great day, and we packed up basically 150 packages in just under a day. Many thanks to all those people (plus Jeff and Sridhar) 😉 who put in a champion effort!

What else. We’ve had teams register late for Software Freedom Day almost every day, so it looks like there will be over 200 teams this year, and it is only the third year! I’ve got an event running in Sydney which has technologists, journalists, politicians and culturalists giving talks, as well as some useful workshops so it should be a lot of fun for anyone in Sydney who can come along 🙂 And I’m chatting to Alice Brennan today from Triple J about covering Software Freedom Day on HACK, the week day afternoon news on Triple J (and one of my favourite radio shows). More details on that when I know.

Phew! What are we doing today, Brain? …