Contents

1. SELF Open Documentary Contest
2. Free Software Conference in Colombia
3. SELF in Sweden
4. SELF in Croatia
5. Accessibility Conference and SELF
6. Agenda
7. About

1. SELF Open Documentary Contest

In the first half of 2008 SELF will organise an Open Documentary Contest to encourage visual artists around the world to participate in the production of a short documentary about Free Software and Open Standards. The aim of the contest is to allow amateurs as well as professionals to engage in the process of documentary creation in competition with one another, thus create high quality short documentaries. The awarded works, assessed by a panel of prominent people from the Free Software and art fields, will be available at the SELF Platform as part of the SELF collection of educational materials on Free Software and Open Standards.

If you already want to receive updates please send an email to self@selfproject.eu or watch the SELF Project website. More information will be announced early January 2008.

2. Free Software Conference in Colombia

The first International Conference on Free Software, Technological Literacy and Solidarity Economy took place in Bogotá (Colombia) between the 13th and the 15th of November. During these three days more than 80 speakers and 600 assistants shared the facilities at the Tequendama Hotel, a traditional meeting point in the city.

In Amsterdam, life takes place around sea level, either a few metres above or a few meters below. Thus, getting used to an altitude of 2.640 m takes a couple of days. Even talking for more than a minute can leave you breathless, something you don't want that to happen in the middle of your talk. Fortunately we landed on Sunday and the conference wasn't due to start until Tuesday morning, which gave most of us time to get used to the general lack of oxygen.

The organiser of the conference was the DanSocial department of the Colombian government. The Spanish region of Extremadura, known for its commitment to free software in many areas, also played an important role both in the organisation of the event and in the programme.

The opening session was held in the main room of the hotel, for an audience of around 400. It had moments of heated debate between the panel and the audience, specially after the Communications Minister defended software patents as a means to help young entrepreneurs get financial support for their projects. Some voices from the audience demanded better access infrastructure for rural areas, and in general asked for a stronger commitment towards free software from the government.

In the three days that followed, talks and panels were divided in three main tracks: free software, technological development and solidarity sector. Around 60 sessions with topics ranging from models for social and cooperative banking to voice over IP, from cooperative production of goods to success stories of free software in educational institutions.

The talk on SELF [2] was attended by a mixed audience of free software advocates, policy makers, educators and SMEs, around 100 people. The questions had to be cut down to three or four due to the tight agenda of the session, but many interesting conversations and contacts arose after the talk.

Contribution by David Jacovkis , UOC / ISOC.nl

3. SELF in Sweden

The FSFE and Göteborg University has been busy during the month, holding several presentations about SELF and Free Software in Sweden. The first presentation was held at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm on the 7th of November, followed by presentations at the University College of Borås, Umeå University, Mid Sweden University, Karlstad University and Linköping University.

All events were well attended, with a mixture of students, teachers and other members of the faculty. The first presentations were aimed more towards the student populations, whereas the later presentations focused more on the teachers. All presentations led to an increased interest of the SELF project, which will hopefully continue with active collaboration of the universities in the SELF project.

Contribution by Jonas Oberg, UGOT / FSFE

4. SELF in Croatia

During the Open Translation Tools Convergence 2007 in Zagreb, Croatia, Nov. 29 - Dec 1, people from around the globe are gathering to map out Free Software Translation Tools and discuss Open Content Use Cases. OTT07 is organised by Aspiration and MI2.

While usually conferences and workshops follow an agenda with presentations, keynotes and panel discussions, the set-up of this event is to stimulate and facilitate the participants to drive the dialogue, to interact with each other and to exchange and share knowledge and experiences.

Hinde ten Berge from ISOC.nl joined the workshop to not only share ideas about the SELF Platform, but also to talk about several issues such as community building, the use of open standards and work flow management. She facilitated discussions about quality assessment and problems around (SELF-)sustainability and working business models for Free Software and Open Content. Other interesting (and highly interactive!) sessions included SpeedGeeking and sessions on regional and cultural issues, machine translations, managing distributed volunteer communities, and a lot more.

As we still work on the outcomes, please check the event wiki!

5. Accessibility Conference and SELF

The SELF Platform will be presented at a conference on Accessibility and Web Accessibility for people with disabilities. The conference will take place in Belgrade, Serbia on December 3-5, 2007.

Vedran Vucic, from Gnu Linux Centar Serbia, who is also contributing within the SELF Project will present his experience in working with distance learning software package Atutor while Dessi Pefeva will present the SELF Platform.

Expected guests at the conference are representatives from the Serbian Telecommunications and information society, the Ministry of Labour and Social Politics, the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Governments.

Contribution by Dessi Pefeva, ISOC.bg

6. Agenda

5 Nov - 8 Dec 2007, various cities

3 - 5 Dec 2007, Belgrade, Serbia

4 - 8 Dec 2007, National Science Symposium Centre, IISc, Bangalore, India

• Nagarjuna G.: “SELF Platform”

7. About

SELF News is a monthly newsletter about the SELF Project and related issues. SELF aims to be the central platform with high quality educational and training materials about Free Software and Open Standards. It is based on world-class Free Software technologies that permit both reading and publishing free materials, and is driven by a worldwide community.

Information about SELF:
http://selfproject.eu/

Consortium Partners:

• Internet Society Netherlands
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Free Software Foundation Europe
• Goteburg University
• Internet Society Bulgaria
• Fundación Vía Libre
• Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
  

Newsletter editor:
Hinde ten Berge

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