[wos] Wizards of OS News

[Volker Grassmuck]

Dear all,

one week to go, before the Wizards of OS 2 will start. Everybody on the team is busy 
making last arrangements, for catering, computing and networking, partying, and all 
the other things you need to think of to provide the frame for a dense, creative, 
comfortable and fun three days. Time to update you on the latest news.

We are happy to confirm that there will be simultaneous interpretation of German (and 
one French) presentations into English. At WOS1, the non-German speaking 
participants were excluded from a significant part of the conference. We did learn our 
lessons and most of all we did manage to get together the resources to make WOS2 
truly internationally accessible. 

The panels and the schedule are pretty stable by now. There might be a last-minute 
addition to a panel or two, and  maybe smaller changes in the workshops and 
tutorials. BTW, if you are thinking of presenting something within the context of the 
WOS, we can still fit in smaller workshops (10-15 people) and BOF sessions. 


What's new on the panels?

Erik Moeller's panel "P2P: Collaborative Writing" had a recent addition, Timothy Lord, 
editor of slashdot.org. Ingo Ruhmann and Werner Roth on the panel on open source 
software and content in schools was joined by Hans-Peter Prenzel, who runs 
OpenWebSchool.de. The university panel will have an additional written contribution by 
Christoph Oehler, Professor emeritus for sociology and research in higher education, 
Gesamthochschule Kassel.

The "Open Source Content Management Systems" panel has veiled itself in secrecy 
until recently. What Herbert Meyer now presents there, looks like a serious free CMS 
summit, the first of its kind, to my knowledge. Not only will the seven CMSs deemed 
most interesting after a careful survey present themselves on the panel and in 
individual tutorials, and discuss different approaches to common design issues in a 
joint workshop, this track will also be the launch of an even more ambitious project. 
'Free Online Systems' (FOS) <http://fos.bpb.de/> will be a demo and evaluation 
environment for, well, online systems under a free license. At the WOS2, the FOS 
team (Thomax Kaulmann, Heiko Recktenwald and Herbert Meyer) will conduct a study 
of four selected CMSs. They will collect as much multimedia content as they can get 
their hands on, and process it four times in parallel to see how the CMSs compare in 
usage and performance. 

On the "Standards" panel, we had hoped to not only address technical but also 
classification standards. Therefore we are happy about the contribution by Susanne 
Dobratz from the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). "Open Music" is now being edited by 
Sascha Koesch from WOS partner De:Bug. It will cover a range of issues from theory 
and practice of musical collaboration to copyright and licensing. 

"Capitalism and Beyond" changed its name to "What else? Thoughts on Societies and 
Capitalisms on the Net and Elsewhere". Paschutan Buzari, the moderator of this 
panel, brought in a third perspective next to the GPL society and to NAM: Yann 
Moulier Boutang economist and editor of the publication "Multitudes", Paris.

As we learned only yesterday, Brigitte Zypries, Under Secretary at the German 
Federal Ministry of the Interior, is kept busy by the current security situation to a 
degree that will not allow her to speak at WOS. eGovernment was one of the most 
difficult panels to begin with. All invitations of speakers we had hoped to include failed. 
I don't think it's because governments don't like wizards. Well, ok, maybe some like 
them less than others. My guess is governments are too busy right now with 
themselves, with fighting terrorism, with elections and the like. Anyway, dropping the 
eGovernment panel allows us to give more space to the panel on Freedom of 
Information which was joined by Manfred Redelfs, Head of the Research & 
Investigations Unit of Greenpeace Germany.

You've probably noticed that some other people also disappeared from the list of 
preliminarily confirmed speakers. Some of the cancellations were due to health and 
other personal reasons, but some were also indirectly linked to the events of 
September 11. As the whole world is under the impact of the attacks in New York and 
Washington, so is this conference. Especially the sessions on security and on digital 
signatures will address some of the implications for open and anonymous 
communications, and for the information environment as a whole. 


Specials

The WOS 2 is not all talks and discussions. During the opening reception on Thursday, Matt Fuller will invite everybody to take part in a Human Cellular Automaton. The performance is based on John Conway's Game of Life, w
ith each cell's state depending on those of its neighbours, with patterns changing in every generation. People who participated in the two earlier times that Matt organized such an automaton, say it's a lot of fun, like a
 Mexican Wave in two-dimensions. So if you're there, we hope you'll join in.

On Friday and Saturday nights there will be lounge parties organized by WOS partners De:Bug and C-Base. Please visit the specials page on our website for line-up and other information on these. 

Another special that I would like to point out is the Ganesha's Project. This group of young activists will bring computers, free software and computer literacy to a school in Nepal. They are still looking for donations o
f computers to take there. So if you have a 133 MHz machine collecting dust in your basement, please do bring it along. http://www.ganeshas-project.org/>


CD-ROM Pack, WOS2 Special Edition

And yet another highlight will be the special edition: debian GNU/linux 3.0 (pre) plus. This 6 CD set contains brand-new versions of Debian GNU/Linux and of Knoppix, plus the complete proceedings of WOS1, July 1999, with 
all the video recordings, as well as the manuscripts or transcripts of all presentations and panel discussions. 

Thanks for this project go to Frank Ronneburg for the debian release and for mastering the whole set, to Klaus Knopper for the fresh release of Knoppix, and to Bernd Sommerfeld for publishing it with Fachbuchhandlung Lehm
anns. The set will be selling for half price during the conference. The savings you'll get might be a reason in itself to come to WOS2 ;)


Center for the Public Domain grant for WOS

And, since we're talking money, a word on the funding of WOS. Don't worry, I won't bother you with the hair-raising financial ups and downs of the WOS 2, but I do want to mention that we are very proud to have received a 
grant by the Center for the Public Domain. 

The Center formerly known as Red Hat Center is a philanthropic foundation based in Durham, North Carolina, dedicated to the preservation of a healthy and robust public domain. Through grant making, original research, conf
erences, and collaborative programs, the Center seeks to call attention to the importance of the public domain and spur effective, practical solutions and responses. Its work is animated by the conviction that new legal r
egimes, social institutions and transparent technologies must be created to fortify the information commons. 

In other words, it has basically the same aims as the Wizards of OS. The Center is a natural partner for the WOS, and we're very proud to be among the academic and activist institutions that Bob Young, James Boyle, John G
ilmore, Larry Lessig and the others on the board of directors have decided to support. Do browse around this great network of activities, and the valuable resources the Center itself maintains. 
<http://www.centerforthepublicdomain.org>

Of course, all of our other sponsors are doing wonderful things as well, and also deserve your attention ;)



What to bring?

Your laptop and your wireless card, if you like -- there will be a wave LAN throughout the House of World Cultures --, lots of ideas on how to improve and promote open cultures and free knowledge, and, of course, an open 
mind. 


Live Streaming

We hope to see you all at the WOS2. For those of you who will not be able to make it to Berlin, there will be live video streams of at least parts of the panels. Please watch the WOS website for announcements of current s
treams. And for those who will not have the time to watch the streams either, the video documentation of all the sessions of the two main tracks will be available for on-demand viewing after the conference.

Another way of remotely participating in the conference is the web forum that BUUG (the Berlin Unix User Group) and WOS provides for presenting and discussing materials relevant to the WOS mindspace. <http://www.buug.de/w
osindex.php>


See you there or on the net

yours
Volker



|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

   Wizards of OS 2 -- offene Kulturen & Freies Wissen
   October 11-13, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
   http://wizards-of-os.org

   http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||