[Nettime-bold] Volker Grassmuck: Wizard of OS news

["geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

From: "Volker Grassmuck" <vgrass@rz.hu-berlin.de>

Dear Nettimers,

Just a few days to go before Wizards of OS 2 <http://wizards-of-os.org>
begins.
Everybody on the team is busy making final arrangements for catering,
computing and
networking, partying, and all the other things you need to see about in
order to provide
the framework 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 translation 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
learned our
lessons and, most of all, we managed to gather 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 a few small 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 with the panels?

Erik Moeller's panel "P2P: Collaborative Writing" has 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, have been 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 at the Gesamthochschule Kassel.

The "Open Source Content Management Systems" panel has veiled itself in
secrecy
until recently. What Herbert Meyer is now presenting 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 careful scrutiny be presented on the panel and
in
individual tutorials, and not only will their representatives discuss
different approaches
to common design issues in a joint workshop, but 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 have been hoping to not only address technical
but also
classification standards. Therefore we are happy to see the contribution
from 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
the
theory and practice of musical collaboration to copyright and licensing.

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

As we learned only yesterday, Brigitte Zypries, Under Secretary at the
German
Federal Ministry of the Interior, has been kept so busy by the current
security situation
that she will not allow be able to speak at WOS. eGovernment was one of the
most
difficult panels to begin with. All the invitations we sent to potential
speakers we had
hoped to include have not worked out. I don't think it's because governments
don't like
wizards. Well, ok, maybe some like them less than others. My guess is that
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 has been joined by
Manfred
Redelfs, Head of the Research & Investigations Unit of Greenpeace Germany.

You've probably noticed that a few other people have also disappeared from
the list of
previously 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.
Just as the whole world has been impacted by the attacks in New York and
Washington, so, too, has this conference. In particular, 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, with each cell's
state
depending on those of its neighbors, with patterns changing in every
generation.
People who participated 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 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 of 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 set of 6 CDs 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 Lehmanns. 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 from 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 grants, original research, conferences and collaborative
programs,
the Center seeks to call attention to the importance of the public domain
and to spur
effective, practical solutions and responses. Its work is animated by the
conviction that
new legal regimes, 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 Gilmore, 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 that 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
culturres 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 streams. 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 via 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/wosindex.php>

See you there or on the net

yours
Volker

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   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

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