Cost: Free! Location: Wellington Convention Centre Date: 2009-09-20
http://softwarefreedomday.org.nz/
Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a annual worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The principles behind FOSS are underpinned by the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Wellington celebrated Software Freedom day with near 300 people visiting the Wellington Convention Centre in the central city. We had hackfests, installfests, markerspace expo/workshops, an even bigger barcamp than last year, tech talks, and for the first time a full day of kids' activites, and a students programme.
Barcamp
At a barcamp attendees govern the agenda. We provided rooms and a flipchart and a schedule of times - the attendees decided on the discussions to be held around topics that interest them at the start of the day.
Here are some session summaries:
SF Books - Read any good ones?
A lively group discussion ensued where people who were interested in both FOSS and reading science fiction talked about great books to read, with a special focus on books where technology plays an important role.
It was widely agreed those who are interested in SF and FOSS should read: John Brunner's classic "Shockwave Rider" which coined the word (and possibly the concept) of the computer worm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockwave_Rider) Neil Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon), Charlie Stross' Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_(novel)), and Cory Doctrow's "Little Brother" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Cory_Doctorow_novel)).
Doctrow's award winning book clearly demonstrates open source and free software principles in a fictional setting, is targeted for "young adult" readers and is downloadable for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license here: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
Getting FLOSS into Organisational Procurement process
A very well attended and informative round-table discussion, with an array of people present including those in government.
The fact is, govt is set-up for vendors selling widgets (or boxes) to knock on doors and sent proposals to sell them. No process exists for getting free products into governemnt and anything that isn't costly is often viewed with scepticism if not outright disdain. No solutions were arrived at, alas, but great discussions and information sharing took place.
Open Government 2.0 - Transparency and beyond
Another wide-ranging discussion or great depth, including as panelists Nat Torkington and former NZ Govt CIO Lawrence Millar who each had just returned from the Govt 2.0 conference in Washington DC.
Special note was made of a miniconf called "Open in the Public Sector" (http://open.org.nz/lca2010-open-government-miniconf/) happening before Linux Conference Australiasia in Wellington in January, 2010.
More barcamp sessions (please add summaries)
- Open source OIS - build nice maps for the web
- Wanting to build an open source online tool to enable community organisation and resilience
- Open source in education - LTSP, thin clients in schools. Overcoming resistance to OSS in schools
- NZOSS - why join? And Public Sector Remix
- Open Source CMS What's best for what purpose and security - risk if not upgrade?
- Git
- Davical - Cal Dav Server
- epub - books for mobile phones
- Kids and students - the future of technology and other exciting topics
- Freedom in the cloud - Web 2.1, Distributed Open source, Private data
- Saving lives with free software - Sahara disaster management system
Kids Programme
A kids programme for primary school aged children will embrace all that's going on at Software Freedom Day, giving them the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities - taking the first steps into programming at the installfest, testing OLPC laptops at the hackfest, a barcamp brainstorming session about where they think the future of computing is going, and more! Games, prizes and more!
As part of the kids programme Nat Torkington will be running an hour long 'Introduction to programming' session for parents and kids as part of the installfest. We will have some computers that kids can use during the day. If you do decide to bring you laptops, parents, it would be great if you can prepare for the session by downloading scratch from http://scratch.mit.edu before you come along.
see http://softwarefreedomday.org.nz/Kids-Students-Programme
Students Programme
Students (secondary and tertiary) are encouraged to attend Software Freedom Day. Showcase technology you are interested in by registering to do a techtalk and bring your projects along to the makerspace. Hear from tech heros who will be there to address students about working in the industry and learn about how understanding open source solutions can enhance your job prospects. Bring along your laptop and get experts to help you to install open source software and operating systems on your laptop at the installfest, and learn about the work of One Laptop per Child and DigitalNZ how you could contribute to their projects at the hackfest.
Tech Talks
This year there will be a separate room for techtalks. Rather than a discussion-based format like the barcamp sessions, the talks give attendees the opportunity to present a technical presentation about free and open source software. The tech talk schedule will be decided on the day, with each session broken into shorter timeslots, if needed. A projector will be provided, but those wishing to give a talk will need to provide their own laptop.
Solar network and global distributed power generation - Matt McGoffin
- What are these distributions and how should I choose one? - Stuart Yates
- Starting free software projects - Francois Marier
- How free software grows my business
- Careers in free software (Panel discussion)
- Use of FOSS in game development industry - Cameron Hart
- The use off FOSS at Weta - Adam Shand
- What's new with Firefox and HTML - Chris Double
InstallFest
The installfest is being organised by WellyLUG, the Wellington Linux User Group, for those wishing to install free and open source software on their laptops, or home computers. Bring your own machines/laptops along and get advice and support from a team of experts, while you install software. Copies of some popular free and open source software will be available to take away as well.
Hackfest
The Software Freedom Day hackfest is hosted by SuperHappyDevHouse, One Laptop Per Child, and DigitalNZ - a chance to put the DigitalNZ APIs into action! Come hang out all day on our sofas, drink large amounts of coffee and work on your favourite piece of free and open source software. You can also learn about the work of the amazing team from One Laptop Per Child who will be showcasing their machines, and participate by helping to test them.
Maker Fest
Wellington has a growing community of makers who share a lot of the same principles as FOSS, using open source technology to create craft, sharing tools and skills when working on solutions to technical projects.
We will have a room set aside at Software Freedom DAy for makers, so come along and showcase your creations, whether they are gadgets or open source crafts, or work on something you've been dreaming up for months. Attendees will be expected to supply their own materials and tools.
