[wos] World Summit on Free Information Infrastructure (WSFII) London 2005 / India 2006

[Juergen Neumann]

Hi all,

I am happy to be able to present to you the invitation to this year's free
networks event. This is the (european) prepcon to the WORLD SUMMIT ON FREE
INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE in INDIA 2006.

The topics arround Free Information Infrastructure include much more than Wi-Fi
of course. We think we should widen the views and get in touch with other people
dealing with other aspects of FII. The London meeting will be an attmept to make
this happen in Europe this year. So please spread the word and let's meet in
London and outside Europe please also start with local meetings. And let's all
meet (again) in India 2006!

To those of you who had joined the our summer convention in Djursland: we had
tryed to make the 2005's event happen in eastern europe, but unfortunately we
didn't manage. As time went by we descided to get back to our first plan to all
meet in London this year but at the same time try to make something bigger
happen: a World Summit on Free Information Infrastructure (WSFII) in India 2006.

So the Idea is now, that there shall be prepcons all over the world. This year's
freifunk.net summer convention will be dedicated to the european prepcon in
London. To us (freifunk.net) this also means to return the baton to those who in
the first role initialized the German movement all arround freifunk.net and to
say thank you very much for this inspireing meeting you people from consume.net
and bootlab had organized with the BerLon event in October 2002.

The meeting in India will be launched arround October 2006 - possibly in Goa. We
are wanting to make it happen and hope that you can redistribute the idea and
try to organize prepcons in your part of the world. We will also need a lot of
money to get people to India and to make the event happen there. So please those
of you connected to foundations or with other good ideas on this: please help!

It will also be a good idea to visit each others precons as far as possible. To
those of you willing to come to London from outside europe, please let us know.
But please understand that until now we have no budgets for flying people over
and it might get impossible to organize this in the short amount of time. Also
we want to concentrate on asking for money to get people to India next year.
Saul has registered the domain http://wsfii.org. This could become the place for
international exchange and the preparation.


tbc ...

JuergeN

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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.org) - 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 London 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 the 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.


Registration: http://okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/WsfiiRegistration
Discussion / Announcement List:
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss

All power to Free Infrastructures!

the WSFII provisional organisers.

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