rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

I wrote before about what a great Free Software + Free Culture conference would look like. In response to my, “Is anyone interested in this,” I chatted with Mirko Lindner from CC Sweden, the upcoming FSCons conference in Sweden seems to get most of these ideas right!

One of my favorite “get it done” people, Michelle Thorne from CC, wrote a nice plug for the conference on the CC site:

Free Culture, Free Software, and Free Content will join forces under the banner of “Free Society” at FSCONS on October 24-26 at the IT University of Götheborg, Sweden. The orgnaizing trinity, Creative Commons Sweden, Free Software Foundation Europe, and Wikimedia Sverige, see FSCONS as a chance to reach out with their respective communities and build joint projects with like-minded activists and organizations.

A strong speakers lineup provides the rhetorical food-for-thought in the Free Culture track. Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons) asks, “How far is free culture behind free software?” as he charts key indicators and historical factors in the progress of each. Eva Hemmungs Wirten argues that the digital commons extends back to nineteenth-century London, while Oscar Swartz keynotes the events with the warning that Sweden’s controversial “Lex Orwell” may usher in “The End of Free Communication”.

In chatting with Mirko, he mentioned that they are still seeking travel sponsorships for the conference. In putting together Libre Graphics Meeting over the last three years, it is pretty obvious that the most important thing that a conference like this can do is provide travel sponsorship to the people making free culture happen. It gives the much needed face time that developers don’t get and provides a source of collective memory making to further focus development and personal relationships.

If you can help support the conference corporately or personally, please do contact Mirko and the other organizers to make a nod. Yes, I know this comes at a problematic time with the global economy, but please, contribution brings stability

@mlinksva just put out a great slide show, albeit the over-use of bullet points ;), that is an overview of CC as well as a general look at the historical trajectories of Free Software and how Free Culture Movement is approximately 10 years behind. This is a great beginning at the more intimate look at where WE are heading collectively, because of course, Free Software and Free Culture’s paths are intermingled. It would be quite interesting actually to write a book about these paths with major highlights and where WE are heading.

Yes, I know there are many books analyzing Free Software and then some coming out like David Bollier’s Viral Spiral that looks at Commons production overall including rise of Creative Commons, but actually one looking at the larger scope of Free Culture would be quite interesting.

Check out the slides and throw em up if you have any comments:

BTW, I wonder if we should collectively be working on a more finite conference about the Free Culture Movement for next year. This would be one targeted towards production of content, assessing failed projects, live events, and no eunuchs to assist in cultural production. The idea is that this conference would directly fit into the trajectory of Free Software. This conference would be in the optimal location globally for most people to attend for the least amount of expenditure, such as Amsterdam, Vancouver, Singapore, or a better optimized location. I think we can learn from Wikimania in Cairo and conferences in Sapporo as absurd for more than the usual suspects on the conference circuit (of which I am a part).

Free Culture Conference (”Get your FreeCon”) would be a meeting of specific projects to hash out interrelationships and collective trajectories for the coming year. We have had great success with the Libre Graphics Meeting which is not about people hand waving and armchair philosophizing about every single person’s movement, but specific projects coming together to their roadmap, challenges for interoperability, and real hacking on projects more than just declarations.

What would it take to put on a proper Free Culture Conference and who would need to be present. I would say:

Free Software Foundation
Creative Commons
Wikimedia Properties
Gnome Foundation
Open Courseware Consortium
Internet Archive

And the list keeps going on…please add to, as this is just off the head…the number of companies that would be interested in this intermixing would be quite high IMO. I’m particularly interested in this being a place for companies interested in Open Hardware and Specifications to intermingle (aka, Openmoko, VIA, Intel)

The idea is that this is a place where project roadmaps are compared, integrations resolved (like Wikipedia BY-SA compatibility), and real hacking would take place. Also, this conference would be 2-3 days max and marked with conversions of projects to more liberalized licensing as affirmations each day to pump up participants [0]. The goal of the event would be to produce actual statements showing resolutions with implementation to back them up, and to announce the next 5-10 free culture priorities for the year.

Is anyone interested in this?

[0] I’ve called this Freedom Day before, but it needs a better name without the negative associations with Freedom in many asian countries - aka, freedom means free as in destroy the government, which this is NOT. Rather, the idea of Freedom Day would be for projects to announce using free licenses and/or moving from more restrictive licenses to more free licenses. What would a better name for this annual day be? What about SHARING DAY, or Global Day of Sharing

If anyone is at CC Legal Day and Sapporo this week for various events, I’m microblogging at rejon on identi.ca (which then posts down to twitter via http://ping.fm). Also, using #cc on irc.freenode.net for any direct discussions.

Lets meet up and talk shop! All my social networks are on the sidebar of my site.