Eben Moglen
Over on DTF, Daniel Steinberg has posted several excellent shows from last July’s Open Source Convention in Portland. I particularly draw your attention to Eben Moglen’s talk, which is both important and inspiring to hear:
- Legal Opinions, Eben Moglen
- Metaphor, Scott Yara and Robert Lefkowitz
- Life Cycles, Mark Lucovsky, Simon Phipps, and Anil Dash
- From the O’Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at OSCON, Ownership, Chad Dickerson, Irwin Gross, and Roger Magoulas
- Another show from the Executive Briefing, Open Source at Microsoft, Tim O’Reilly interviews Brian Behlendorf, Danese Cooper questions Bill Hilf
We’re planning a fun new activity at Web 2.0 in November: Shorts 2.0. We’re asking for nominations of the funniest and smartest video shorts to showcase on opening night and to highlight throughout the plenary sessions at the conference.
I suspect I’m not eligible to submit entries, so could someone please send in a nomination for my new favorite video, the Free Hugs Campaign on my behalf? Please? Thanks.
Glow, Flow, and Show
Tor Norretranders keynoted EuroOSCON, O’Reilly’s European Open Source Convention. He said that the secret to life is “Glow, flow, and show.” The author of The Generous Man gave examples of why people dare, care, and share in life.
Gavin Starks on Saving the World
O’Reilly editor Jon Mountjoy interviewed Gavin Starks about how we can save the world by reducing each of our CO2 emissions by one ton. Gavin talks about the new global charity called Global Cool.
And here’s me wearing my jaunty Gal Reporter cap, interviewing attendees and exhibitors on the show floor, with a lot of help from Daniel Steinberg.
Ewan Spence has posted two more shows over on The Podcast Network’s Tech Conference Show for your listening pleasure:
The final day of EuroOSCON 2006 began with a thoughtful look at the
political issues surrounding software patents. Florian Mueller spoke
about how the different political parties view the patent issue
differently (something that’s perhaps obvious, but important to
understand) and how the open source community needs to continue taking
action against software patents in Europe. Some of his advice
included: educating small/medium enterprises, more focus (patents vs
fair use vs DRM), becoming active in all political parties and
creating lobbying forums and networks. [Frankly, this is just begging
for a specialized social application to help these folk!
MyPatentFreeEuroSociety anyone?]
Just a note to check out the EuroOSCON photographs.
Here is a set(x180) from our EuroOSCON conference page. Also check out those
tagged with EuroOSCON2006 on Flickr.
There has been a lot of talk about communities here at EuroOSCON. A particular community that seems to matter to many people are the voters. How can we bring the government closer to the people and how can we create open forms of discussion and data that makes politicians sit up and take notice.
Our speaker manager, Vee McMillan, is starting to receive and post speaker presentation files that can be downloaded for your reading enjoyment. They come in during the conference and for about two weeks after the event concludes, so check on back.
Writes Jason Lee Miller:
Due to demand, MySQL AB announced the expansion of its telecom-specific services and consulting for MySQL software. Specifically, the company is promoting its MySQL Cluster, a high-end version of the standard database designed for fault-tolerant, mission-critical network and telecommunications applications at carrier-grade.
He goes on to plug the Call for Participation for the conference: “The company is rounding out the last month of its Call for Participants for the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo, slated for April 2007. The call ends November 7.”
Day 1 at EuroOSCON 2006 was a packed day. So many people and so many different notions of ‘open’. Here is a run-down of talks I attended, ranging from microformats (an answer to ‘data inside’?) to neogeography.
Ewan Spence has posted another interview, this one with Fotango’s Koby Amedume, who discusses the launch of their new JavaScript service, Zimki, here at EuroOSCON.
Guy Kindermans posted this article earlier today:
Open Source heeft zijn bestaansrecht al meer dan voldoende bewezen, maar dat betekent niet dat een en ander niet voortdurend in vraag kan worden gesteld. Op de tweede European Open Source Convention - EuroOSCON - had Tim O’Reilly zo zijn bedenkingen over de gevaren en nieuwe kansen voor Open Source in de toekomst.
(French version here.)
I just attended a talk
on the Campware initiative. The
title, “Free Software for Free Media in the Developing World,” pretty
much nails it - developing software to help people in the developing
world create independent news media organizations.
Douglas Arellanes spoke passionately about how to create independent media organizations. One of the criteria is an independence in funding, and of course the correlated problem of providing low-cost solutions that allow anyone to hack together a radio station for example.
Our fab photog James Duncan Davidson led another photo photo safari through the photogenic streets of Brussels as EuroOSCON began earlier this week. Eleven photo aficionados joined him on the Walkabout and some great shots were taken by all.
Tor Nørretranders delivered a highly entertaining keynote titled ‘Glow, Show, Flow & 2.0.’ You got the distinct feeling though that he would have preferred to call it something else. His story of how open source and peacocks are much about the same thing, was highly entertaining.
Tor started off by telling us about the Ultimatum Game, which seems to indicate that when interacting with humans we aren’t completely rational when it comes to accepting and giving rewards. If we feel someone is being unfair, then we will rebel even if we lose out in the process. We seem to have a notion of fairness, correlated with the hormone oxytocin. Our levels of oxytocin rise when we collaborate in fair environments.
Perhaps that’s why we participate in open source: we glow. [Another lesson here is that we don’t react in this way when interacting with computers.]
Tim O’Reilly delivered the first keynote at the O’Reilly European
Open Source Convention 2006 this morning by talking about the changing
face of open source. What does it mean if our applications and APIs
are free but the data is not?
This is quite an important question. We often think of open source in terms of source code only, but this is wrong. As he mentioned in the talk, “software is performed rather than distributed.” Increasingly we are using software platforms built using open source components (say Google on Linux), but no longer distributed. What does this mean to open source and the production of open source and the community around open source?
EuroOSCON
2006 kicked off this morning with a number of tutorials: Data
Warehousing with MySQL, a Ruby on Rails crash course, Startups 2.0 and
a Jabber Boot Camp. I attended
the latter (after eating a waffle for breakfast).
Ralph Meijer and Peter Saint-Andre from the Jabber Software
Foundation gave a thorough explanation of what Jabber is and what you
can do with it. My take is that at its heart, it is a mechanism for sending snippets
of XML between two end points, with end-point presence information
manipulation. Of course, you can implement an instant messenger with
this functionality—but you can do a lot more.
Some examples of using Jabber: adding presence or real-time
interaction to an application. Just like Google Mail and LiveJournal
Talk have done, there’s no reason why you can’t “chat-enable” any Web
application. I’m waiting for the RoR plugin. You can also use it in workflow scenarios. If some job
needs someone to perform some task, you can simply check his presence
information and IM him a link to the task. Or if he is not available,
IM someone else. You may want to use the messaging layer instead, and an interesting use of that can be found in ServiceMix where they provide Jabber as a transport binding in an enterprise service bus.
We’re pleased as punch to announce that we’ll also be teaming up with Ruby Central to co-produce next year’s RailsConf Europe. It’s planned for Berlin, September 17-19, 2007. We’ll have more details available later this fall; sign up for the newsletter mailing list to stay in touch in the meantime.
Our pals over at IT Conversations have just posted audio of author Peter Morville’s presentation, made at ETech earlier this year.
A reminder that the Call for Participation for ETech 2007 is still open, but only until October 9…
Yes, we are moving right along here in O’Reilly Conference Land. The latest roll-out is the Call for Participation for our brand new Web 2.0 Expo, the companion event to our Web 2.0 Conference. Web 2.0 Expo will feature workshops and sessions over six tracks, a ginormous exhibit hall (we hope, anyway), and networking galore.
You have until October 30 to submit a proposal; registration opens in the fall. (And I do mean “open”–no invitations required for the Web 2.0 Expo.)
Hear ye, hear ye–the Call for Participation is now open for the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo. (You may, perhaps, have noticed a slight change in the name of the conference. While users will always be at the heart of the conference, the new title reflects how the scope of the event is growing!)
You have until November 7, 2006 to submit your proposal(s) to speak at the event, so don’t delay!
If you’re more interested in attending rather than speaking, look for registration to open in January. And if you want to keep up with the world of MySQL, check out program chair Jay Pipes’ blog.
EuroOSCON has shaped up into one of our most thought-provoking conferences ever, taking a hard look at the technology, business, politics, and social dimensions of open source, open culture, open APIs, open innovation, and all that’s built on top of them. If you haven’t signed up, you still have a few days to register. (Some discounts are still in effect, so take a look–you might qualify.)
Daniel Steinberg has published another great podcast: a preview of EuroOSCON with co-chairs Nat Torkington and Nikolaj Nyholm.
Are you pushing through the boundaries of web telephony into new ways of thinking and doing? If so, and if you’ve ever wanted to get your telephony project and/or ideas out to a large and influential audience, now’s your chance: ETel, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, is accepting proposals until midnight, Monday, September 11.
ETel is happening in the Bay Area at the end of February–even if you don’t want to participate as a speaker, Surj Patel and Brady Forrest are cooking up a great event, so do plan to attend.
“MySQL Pro,” co-written by MySQL Users Conference program chair Jay Pipes, got a fab review on Slashdot! Way to go, Jay!
