[wsfii-discuss] Proposed WSFII streams

Wed Aug 3 15:34:33 UTC 2005

On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 12:01:39PM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>   * Though maybe not as in keeping with the general theme of the event 
> I think there would be a lot of interest in a Free Culture stream and it 
> has been proposed that the first UK meeting of the UK FreeCulture group 
> (http://www.freeculture.org.uk) take place at WSFII.

I definitely think this is a good idea. We should make a
time-and-motion plan for different uses of the Town Hall building and
the spaces available in it (main hall, capacity 150-200 at a push;
'annotation room' on ground floor, capacity maybe 20 with desks or 40
with chairs; 'map room' on top floor, best network facilities, capacity 10)

I have heard that around WSFII time Rob Myers is looking to host a
Musicbrainz meetup in London. I haven't written to him about his
plans, but as there are copyright, license and metadata issues very
much at stake, this could align with a freeculture gathering well. 

>   * Open Money stream: this is not included in above but there seems to 
> be quite a bit of interest in this both for sprint and for a panel. Who 
> is dealing with this?

I've been talking to the LETS dev community in London about this. We
are already having monthly-ish meetings in Limehouse Town Hall. 
There's a grassroots LETS conference happening in Boulder, Colorado at
the moment. I am in wait-and-see mode, as to whether the *technical*
side of developments the Denver conference indicates we should try to
have a community currency software sprint at WSFII.
http://dev.openmoney.org/tiki-index.php?page=SIGs%20Denver%202005

There is one local activist, Mary Fee, the organiser of letslink UK,
who i would like to offer a 15 or 20 minute speaking slot to during
the main weekend. Saul, through Shekhar, got in touch with Keith Hart
from http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/ and invited him to speak, too.

As we are still seriously proposing running the 'Lime' in a couple of
local cafes and shops for the duration of WSFII / a way of managing
sprinters' lunch expenses, i think we should definitely have a
community currency session or sessions over the main weekend. If we
also organise a sprint, i think it would be *after*, not before this
weekend, as one of the main London-based free software protagonists is
out of town til the 31st.

I have not yet made any invitations, as still unclear on the scope. 
Most people we do invite will be UK/southeast based and won't need travel
expenses. LETS/cc/openmoney people, as money-heads, tend to be
reasonably well off and not need subsidy.

A note: both 'LETS' and 'Open Money' are as much brands as they are
concepts and carry some political overtones :/ 'Community Currency'
is a neutral term in this domain which no-one is irked by.

>   * Is there any plan to have parallel 'lightning' talks of similar in 
> parallel with main panels? This might be a useful place for people to 
> talk about a personal project (panels are supposed to be quite general)

dear Rufus, i don't think there is any plan at all.

There's definitely space and scope to do a rolling demo-fest and
lightning sessions in the annotation room downstairs. 
Self-selecting scheduling (whiteboard with timeslots, people pencil
themselves in, negotiate socially) worked well at Foo Camp, and i
missed that sort of thing at OpenTech. (formalising the corridor
track, in essence?)

More soon about the geodata track and time commitments.

zx