[opentextbooks] Invitation to OKCon 2011 in Berlin

[Jason Kitcat]

Dear working group members,

The 6th Annual Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place on 30th June – 1st July 2011 in Berlin, Germany.

	Website: http://okcon.org/2011
	Call for participation: http://okcon.org/2011/cfp/

We are delighted to invite you to OKCon 2011. It's of great importance to have a good representation of all Working Groups and their work at OKFN at OKCon 2011. 

We would like to encourage you to get actively involved with OKCon! Especially it would be great if you could contribute with submissions for presentations and workshops to make sure the work of this WG is present and shared with others at OKCon 2011! There are several ways to participate (the deadline is May 1st). Please have a look at the How To Participate Section below. 

We also want to make sure that all Working Groups are represented in the Programme Committee. Please see

	http://wiki.okfn.org/okcon/2011/committee

If you think your Working Group is not jet represented in the committee, please let us know your suggestions directly at: okcon at okfn.org

We are looking forward for your participation! It would be great to meet some you at OKCon 2011 in Berlin. 

Regards,
Jason


[Apologies for cross-posting]


Announcement

The 6th Annual Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place on 30th June – 1st July 2011 in Berlin. OKCon is a wide-ranging conference that brings together individuals and organizations from across the open knowledge spectrum for two days of presentations, workshops and exchange of ideas.

Open knowledge promises significant social and economic benefits in a wide range of areas from governance to science, culture to technology. Opening up access to content and data can radically increase access and reuse, bridge gaps, improve transparency and thus foster innovation and increase societal welfare.

In Berlin, we will be surrounded by a variety of interesting communities. These include open access and open bibliography communities to the OpenStreetMap, hacker and artist groups to the various free culture and commons research communities. We look forward to jointly discussing with all of them the latest developments and aspects of open knowledge in their work.

This is a time of great change. In addition to high profile initiatives such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the Human Genome Project, there is enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all levels and in many countries. Moreover, in the last year, many governments across the world have begun opening up their data.

And it doesn’t stop there. In academia, open access to both publications and data has been gathering momentum, and similar calls to open up learning materials have been heard in education. Furthermore this gathering flood of open data plus content is the creator and driver of massive technological change. How can we make this data available, how can we connect it together, how can we use it to collaborate and share our work? We will explore these issues, and more, at OKCon 2011 in Berlin.

Topic areas

We welcome proposals on any aspect of creating, publishing or reusing content or data that is open in accordance with http://opendefinition.org. Topics include but are not limited to:

Open Data Technology
	• Storage and processing tools including nosql, triplestores, ETL and analytics
	• Visualization tools
	• Semantic Web and Linked Open Data
	• Platforms, methods and tools for creating, sharing and curating material
	• Light-weight, adaptive interaction models
	• Open, decentralized social network applications
	• Open geospatial data

Open Science and Open Data in Academic Research
	• Open license models for scientific data, adaption of licenses for special domain requirements
	• Supporting scientific workflows with open knowledge models
	• Open models for scientific innovation, for funding and for publication (‘open-access’)
	• Tools for analysing and visualizing open data

Open Law, Society and Democracy
	• Open licensing, legal tools and the Public Domain
	• Open government data and content (public sector information)
	• Open knowledge and international development
	• Opening up access to the law and lawmaking processes

Open Culture, Education and Commons Research
	• Open educational tools and resources, open textbooks
	• Public Domain digitisation initiatives
	• Incentives and rewards for open-knowledge contributors
	• P2P production and sustainability models for open content
	• Governance of the knowledge commons

Important Dates
	• Submission deadline: Mai 1st, 2011
	• Notification of acceptance: June 1st, 2011
	• OKCon: 30th June & 1st July, 2011

How To Participate
OKCon 2011 will have several formats and ways in which you can participate:

	• presentation sessions
	• lightning talks
	• hands on workshops
	• open space
	• exhibition spaces
	• open design and fablab
	• hackspace

We are especially interested, if you want to organize a an event in one of the above formats and topic areas. You are also more than welcome to propose additional formats and topics. If you would like to organise, participate or have a proposal of another format please submit your ideas and proposals here: http://okcon.org/2011/submit/

OKCon Formats & Submission Details

Presentation Sessions
To reserve a slot in one of the presentation sessions you can apply in the following manner: You can submit an extended abstract of 2-4 pages describing the topic of your presentation. OKCon also has an academic stream and will publish proceedings. If you additionally want your submission to be included in the conference proceedings please prepare an extended 5-10 page paper submission and format it according to the LNCS Style

Please Note: Proceedings of OKCon will be published at http://ceur-ws.org.

To make a submission for the presentation session and proceedings please visit:https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=okcon2011

Lightning Talks
Lightning talks are short presentations, which last 2-3 minutes with 2-3 slides. Submission of lightning talks can be done directly at the conference up to 5 minutes before the Lightning talk session starts. Make sure you get your message through and please: don’t be boring ;)

Hands-on Workshops
The hands on workshops is the format where you can intensively work with a relatively small group of people on your presented topic or project. This is not for lectures but for hands-on collaboration, exchange and skill sharing. If you are interested to run a workshop on OKCon 2011 please submit your proposal here: http://okcon.org/2011/submit/

Open Space
The open space offers a place for all kind of spontaneous interventions, meetings and the like following the concept of the open space technology. The open space area will be close to the exhibition space area and is open for you all the time. The open space can be used all times by anybody without submission. However, if you would like top run an event at the open space you might submit your idea here: http://okcon.org/2011/submit/ to help us planning.

Exhibition Space
The exhibition space is an open area where people, projects and organisations can present their ideas and projects to the public. Projects can have a permanent desc for a point of reference of their project. If you want to be present in the exhibition space at OKCon 2011 please submit your proposal here: http://okcon.org/2011/submit/

Open Design and FabLab work area
The open design and Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory) is an area dedicated to open processes in creating, sharing, reusing and producing of all kind of art, designs and other products. If you are interested in contributing to the open design and fablab work area at OKCon 2011 please submit your proposal here: http://okcon.org/2011/submit/

Hackspace / Hackathon
The hackspace is a dedicated space for you hackers. This is the right place to get your hand dirty and organise your hackathon. A hackathon is a collaborative decentraliced event of short timespan like one or two days with the aim to having a lot of fun with code & data. If you are interested to run a hackathon at OKCon 2011 please submit your proposal here:http://okcon.org/2011/submit/