[wsfii-discuss] worries and list membership

[Saul Albert]

Dear All,

I'm afraid I'm a bit worried about sending out the invite - because I've only
got feedback from Jeurgen here. What do others on this list think? There are
only a few of us on this list:

    * arunlists at gmail.com
    * consumercitizen at informal.org.uk
    * j.neumann at xorxe.net
    * jo at frot.org
    * rufus.pollock at okfn.org
    * saul at twenteenthcentury.com
    * sebastian at less.dk
    * shekhar at crit.org.in
    * t at wire.less.dk 

Perhaps it would be good to review the members of this list (only 6 or so of us
joined) and see if others can be pulled into discussions before sending it out
- or perhaps we should just start sending this out personally... If it looks ok
to you all..

What do you think?

Cheers,

Saul.
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                       For Distribution Far and Wide:
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                            WSFII PREPCON '05
                                    ~
          ~ World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures ~

Every year for the last four years, Free Networkers from around the world have
organised summits, the last one being the Freifunk.net Summer Convention 2004
in Djursland, Denmark where Free Networkers, free infrastructure pragmatists
and community network builders from 32 countries got together, shared ideas,
made plans and forged alliances. 

This year, we are widening the scope through an association with the Open
Knowledge Foundation (okfn.net) - we want to invite people from all areas of
free infrastructure development to participate in a world summit, trying to
cross the streams Free Hardware, Free Software, Open Geodata, LETS trading
systems, Open Licensing, Community TV/Radio, Public Knowledge Infrastructures,
and other areas of research and activity that we haven't thought of yet.

                                ~ why ~ 
    
Because Free Infrastructure developers don't really have to ask this question.
We have this in common - that FIIs come from pragmatic application and problem
solving rather than being led by policy or law. By meeting and joining forces,
we can do what we do more effectively.


                             ~ structure ~

The structure is a 2 day public conference in a central accessible location
during which the various FII groups can present their activities and the
specifics of their FII domain to other groups and the public. Prior to that
weekend event (1st/2nd October for the London WSFII) there will be a week
during which a venue will be available to groups if they wish to hold
preparatory meetings, workshops, talks and social gatherings.

                              ~ prepcon ~ 

This might not be a 'world' summit with as many international delegations as we
had in Denmark last year. Instead, this is a call to FII groups to organise
summits on their continents around the same time, to feed into a more ambitious
WSFII scheduled for summer 2006 in India. 


                        ~ How to get involved ~

If you are involved in research and activity in one of the knowledge domains
we've already listed as FIIs, or you work on one we've missed out, please get
in touch and help by proposing someone, or some group to come and represent
that FII. 

The first confirmed WSFII venue is London - which will be a Western European
hub for this year's WSFII prepcon If you would like to set up a WSFII prepcon
in your locality, please get in touch via the mailing list:
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss and we can set you up a
subdomain.

We are developing a programme on our wiki and taking registrations for
participation in the london WSFII on the website: http://wsfii.org, so we look
forward to hearing from you and your FII group there.

All power to Free Infrastructures!

the WSFII provisional organisers.