RE: [ox-en] Re: Report from OKCon 2011
- From: "michael gurstein" <gurstein gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 12:40:37 -0700
Daniel and all,
Thanks for this opportunity to comment directly.
As you know I'm a novice to OKF/OKCon so take my comments in that context.
I think the overall conference content, design and execution was very good
as far as it went. But I would like to see it go further and take up the
broader areas of responsibility that the emerging strength of the "OD
movement" implies.
Two specifics. Just after getting back to Canada I had occasion to talk to
a very old friend who has a fairly senior (and overview) position within the
Canadian Federal Government. I asked him specifically about "Open Data" (he
himself is not a techie). What he said was very interesting. He said that
at his overview-interdepartmental level-Open Data was being taken very
seriously--initially by the techies (CTO's) who saw it as a way of saving
money through creating inter-operability standards etc. But he went on to
say that it was also being taken very seriously by some of the more advanced
thinkers in the policy sphere who were concerned with issues like structures
of governance, access to information policy, public participation and so on.
So my first suggestion is to have a track or at least solicit several
sessions/speakers who can address Open Government Data issues from the
perspective of its impact on broader policy issues of democratic
governance--perhaps both from mainline and critical perspectives--and here I
don't mean techies but rather those in the various governments who are
thinking about the longer term and broader governance impact of OGD.
Also, just after getting back to Canada, Tracey Lauriault whom many of you
know I guess introduced me to a plenitude of activities in my own back yard
here in Canada specifically addressing some of the "Data Divide" issues that
I was looking to raise--a couple of specific examples being:
EMIS - http://emis.santemontreal.qc.ca/ - Espace Montréalais d'information
sur la santé
Saskatoon CommunityView Collaboration - http://www.communityview.ca/
Given the significant support given to the overall direction of my earlier
blogposts I would suggest a further parallel track that dealt quite
specifically with public or community based data
implementations/uses/applications. This would I think serve to round out
the broader discussion and provide examples and opportunities for meet ups
for those with an interest in this area.
Best to all, and thanks for having me... I very much enjoyed it and hope
that overall my contribution was a postive and constructive one.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-list-en oekonux.org [owner-list-en oekonux.org] On Behalf
Of Daniel Dietrich
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 5:29 AM
To: Stefan Merten
Cc: list-en oekonux.org; Rufus Pollock; Yuwei Lin; peter square-1.eu;
Mayo.Fuster EUI.eu
Subject: [ox-en] Re: Report from OKCon 2011
Dear Stefan
Thanks for this feedback. We will definitely take your point in to account
when drafting documentation page for planning upcoming okcons.
Regards
Daniel
On 01.07.2011, at 18:55, Stefan Merten wrote:
Hi list!
I'm just going home from `OKCon 2011`_ in Berlin. I have to say it was
really a great conference and I'm really happy that I were there.
Knowing what organizing conferences like this means I'd like to say a
big thank you to the organizers.
I don't have exact numbers but would think that about 200 people
attended the conference.
The conference was rather big in terms of program. For two days there
were five parallel tracks from 10:00-20:00. A regular slot for a
presentation was only 30 minutes unfortunately so beyond some
superficial questions there was no room to discuss the things
presented. Also there were no time in the schedule between the
sessions so it was always a hurry to change rooms. As a result
everyone was in a constant hurry which made it difficult to talk to
each other.
Well, critique aside. As I said the conference was really great. The
program_ did not contain only OKFN core topics but for instance had
many presentations about Open Hardware. I attended some of them and
for me they were the most exciting ones.
Since this conference I'm convinced that the Open Hardware stuff will
be the next big thing in peer production. I'm watching peer production
since twelve years now and this branch of peer production is gaining
more and more momentum during the last years. There seem to be really
a lot of hackers out there who really want to hack that mechanical
stuff.
When I compare the current state of what I see in Open Hardware
movement with the history of Free Software then I'd say we are
somewhere around 1987. I.e. the Linux kernel has not yet been invented
and it's still twelve years until the general breakthrough of this
stuff. I'm really curious what will happen here.
What really strikes me is that very similar to Free Software the Open
Hardware movement starts with building the basic tools from which more
Open Hardware can be built. Remember that very early GNU software was
Emacs (an editor - well at least it can also be used as an editor
;-) ) and the GCC (a C compiler - a very basic tool to compile C
programs into machine language) with the accompanying toolset. These
are both very complex programs which are needed to write software -
proprietary and Free alike. For both tools it took time since they
matured.
Another interesting parallel which I learned about is this. Remember
GNU/Linux 15 years ago. It existed and you could install it but it
still was better you understood what you are doing. This is no longer
the case for many years now - nowadays every idiot can install say
Ubuntu on a normal computer and ends up with a running system. I
always argued that such a dynamic is possible because in software you
can automate things and this way obsolete special user abilities. I
think this type of dynamic is a very important feature to make a
family of peer products successful. However, I thought that this is a
special feature of software.
Today I learned that similar things are possible with mechanics. In
his presentation Lieven Standaert briefly compared the RepRap with the
MakerBot. Although it is possible to build a RepRap it takes weeks to
build and to fine-tune it so it gets close to some precision without
which the whole thing makes no sense. The parts of the MakerBot on the
other hand are created by a laser cutter which has itself a very high
precision. This high precision is "inherited" to the parts so it's
easy to quickly build a pretty precise machine even for a laymen. This
quite closely resembles the dynamic I described above for software:
you can design things in a way that obsoletes special user abilities.
Being not an engineer I wonder whether this type of dynamic is
applicable more generally or whether this is possible only in rare
instances like this.
I didn't take notes during the presentations but the slides from most
presentations were pretty good so you may check them out when they are
online (which I guess will happen at some point).
Here are the presentation and talks I attended and I found remarkable
with some short comments:
* `From Openness to Abundance`_ by Glyn Moody
* `Implementing an Open Data programme within government`_ by Andrew
Stott
Andrew gave a very good idea of what it means to implement an Open
Data policy in government.
* `Global open data: a threat or saviour for democracy?`_ by Chris
Taggart
* `Scholarly Publishing Reform: What Needs to Change?`_ by Björn
Brembs
Björn gave us an interesting insight in how the current scholary
rating works - and how flawed it is. Björn also gave some idea of
what needs to be changed. This may be of special interest for CSPP.
* `Structural changes of the information economy ? Google Books as a
Blueprint?`_ by Jeanette Hofmann
Jeanette gave us some very good insights into Google Books and how
it changes the way of using books. One only can hope that this will
not be the blueprint of information economy.
* `The emergence of a free culture movement`_ by Mayo Fuster Morell
Mayo interprets the things going on around free culture as a social
movement. In her talk she highlighted similarities and differences
between classical social movements and this social movement.
I found it interesting to see things this way. As you may know my
approach is to see this movement more as the new "class" which is
already part of the new society. Its main interest in this society is
to support their own interests. This is similar to the early
capitalists which supported their own interests in the feudal system.
They were more part of the upcoming form of society than the feudal
one. I guess it was just as difficult to classify these early
capitalists in terms of feudal notions as it is today for the peer
production "movement". I talked to Mayo afterwards and I understood
that basically she agrees with this perspective.
* `We are the Creators!`_ by Till Kreutzer
Certainly Till's presentation was one of the most entertaining ones
because he gave us some funny videos of mixing culture. Beyond this
Till gave interesting insights in how copyright and the need to
license stuff prevents culture to flourish. He finished with some
suggestions on what needs to be changed on copyright. The most basic
measure would be to change the focus from the rights of the creators
to the rights of the public.
* `Developing open & distributed tools for Fablab project
documentation`_ by Anu Määttä
One of the main ideas of Fablabs is that you can produce designs you
find elsewhere. Anu gave us some insights in the difficulties on how
to organize a proper documentation so this is actually possible. She
also presented solutions to this problem.
* `Repairable machines: lessons learned developing open hardware`_ by
Lieven Standaert
That was the session I talked about above. Check out `Lieven's
website`_ (link is from my memory so might be wrong).
* `Open data as business model`_ by John Sheridan
Instead of what the title suggests John gave us reasons why there is
a need for a business model for high quality government data: Cuts in
public budget which make it increasingly difficult to have high
quality Open government Data. He argues that for this it is necessary
to develop a business model to fund creation of high quality Open
government Data.
Unfortunately I had to leave so I missed presentations from Benjamin
Mako Hill, Stefan Meretz and Christian Siefkes. @Mako, StefanMz,
Christian: May be you can tell us about your presentations here.
Well, I also have to say that if I see the level of the more
theoretical discussion on the conference the level we reached here on
Oekonux is still quite ahead...
Grüße
Stefan
.. _OKCon 2011: http://okcon.org/2011/
.. _program: http://okcon.org/2011/programme
.. _From Openness to Abundance:
http://okcon.org/2010/programme/from-openness-to-abundance
.. _Implementing an Open Data programme within government:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/implementing-an-open-data-programme-wi
thin-government
.. _`Global open data: a threat or saviour for democracy?`:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/global-open-data-a-threat-or-saviour-f
or-democracy
.. _`Scholarly Publishing Reform: What Needs to Change?`:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/scholarly-publishing-reform-what-needs
-to-change
.. _Structural changes of the information economy ? Google Books as a
Blueprint?:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/structural-change-in-the-information-e
conomy-in-the-shadow-of-copyright
.. _The emergence of a free culture movement:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/the-emergence-of-a-free-culture-moveme
nt
.. _We are the Creators!:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/we-are-the-creators
.. _Developing open & distributed tools for Fablab project
documentation:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/developing-open-distributed-tools-for-
fablab-project-documentation
.. _`Repairable machines: lessons learned developing open hardware`:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/repairable-machines-lessons-learned-de
veloping-open-hardware
.. _Lieven's website: http://www.repairablemachines.org/
.. _Open data as business model:
http://okcon.org/2011/programme/open-data-as-business-model
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de