[wos] wos4 is happening, help wanted

[Volker Grassmuck]

Dear wos community,

it's high time to let you know what has been going on behind the 
curtains. There is good news at last. We have found a venue. Now we 
have to pick the best possible date, for which we want to ask your 
help.  

Two weeks ago, our partner Volksbuehne had uninvited us. Stefanie 
Carp, the new chief dramaturg (Engl.?), cancelled our partnership for 
scheduling reasons. We then had to find a new venue for wos4, which 
given that we're quite a bit into the year already wasn't easy. We 
are therefore happy to announce that we have found just the right 
place for wos4:  

Columbia Venues in Berlin Tempelhof, a former sports hall, now one of 
the largest concert halls in Berlin, and a former movie theater 
opened in 1951 by the US Air Force. 
http://www.columbiaclub.de/
http://www.columbiahalle.de/

The place is very flexible and friendly. I'm sure you'll like it as 
much as we do. It is only a few minutes from a lively night-spot in 
former West Berlin. And if you happen to be flying into Berlin's 
inner-city airport Tempelhof, you'll just have to cross the street 
and you're there. 

The following dates are available:

7.-9. September
14.-16. September

We now have to check for events during that time that might interact 
with wos negatively, e.g. competing for speakers and participants, or 
positively, e.g. in temporal and geographic neigbourhood so that 
people who, say, go to ars electronica in Linz (31.8. - 5.9.) might 
go on to Berlin for wos4. Thematically close events are most 
interesting, but also completely unrelated things like the football 
world cup might affect wos.  
 
These are events we are seeing during that period.

31.8. - 5.9.: ars electronica, Linz
http://www.aec.at/en/festival2005

September 4 - 6, 2006: Future Matters: Futures Known, Created and 
Minded, Cardiff University 
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/futures/conference/

18.-21. September: O'Reilly's EuroOSCON in Brussels

Could you please check your schedules and let us know what you are 
seeing so that we can identify the best wos date?

Finally, the most interesting question: what will the issues of wos4 
be? Some topics have emerged already: licenses (GPL v3.0, CC), Brazil 
the Open Source Nation, the Treaty on Access to Knowledge, Wikimedia, 
and netlabels are some of them. Soon we'll put a first sketch up for 
discussion. Also, this time we really want to get a call for papers 
out. 

Also here we would very much like to invite you to join us in 
identifying crucial issues from free software, free content and free 
infrastructure to be disussed at wos4. 

all the best
Volker