4th Oekonux Conference: Free Software and Beyond - The World of Peer Production

The attached audio is from some of the sessions held on 28th March, in time audio from all the sessions should be posted to the conference web site,  http://fourth.oekonux-conference.org/

Following are short descriptions of the sessions for which audio files are attached and links to the pages for each of the sessions posted -- from links pages you will be able to find further information about the people doing the presentions and hopefully the slides from the presentations:


Tatiana Bazzichelli
The Art of Networking
Networking practices in grassroots communities

Networking means to create nets of relations. Since the 80s, the platforms of networking have been an important tool to share knowledge and experience to create works of hacktivism and net art. As a practical example, I will refer to the concept of hacktivism and art through the description of some Italian underground interventions and actions.

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/36.en.html


Vinay Gupta
Ending Poverty with Open Hardware

What would a world without poverty look like? It is not a seven billion person suburbia. We'll examine realistic models for a post-poverty world, and how open hardware fits into that vision.

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/5.en.html


Marcin Jakubowski
Building the World's First, Replicable, Open Source Global Village
Theory, strategy, practice, and challenges.

We are building the world's first, replicable, open source Global Village. We are a land-based social experiment for creating unprecedented quality of life using on-site resources. Our working assumption is that open source physical infrastructure is the enabling prerequisite of such an experiment, and that the power of efficient, integrated, and ecological production must be seized in order for such a community to thrive and to be competitive with mainstream lifestyles. Initial technology development results have surpassed predictions, and we are currently developing a more rigorous program for a rapid-deployment, open source technology development pipeline. This pipeline relies on design of products that are simple, optimal, high-performance, low-cost, and therefore replicable. We observed clear indications of memetic replicability of such open source, technologically and ecologically integrated communities. Initial results, strategies, crowd-based support methods, and operational challenges are covered in this presentation. End goals are livelihoods beyond the ongoing struggle for survival, and personal evolution to freedom - and the first milestone to this is a complete, 30 person villlage - to be built by year-end 2010.

For the physical reality of our experiment, see the Distillation video series for an overview of the technology base:

 http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Distillations

Presentation slides:  http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Oekonux_4

Blog post about the presentation:  http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=593

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/39.en.html


John McKerrell
Open Street Map Session

The Open Street Map project aims to create a free and open geographical data set that can be used for many applications including streetmaps and routing based applications. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways.

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/21.en.html


Philippe Aigrain
Conditions for synergy between free non-market exchanges and the economy

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/8.en.html


Johan Söderberg
Ronja - Darknet of Lights
Homebrewed Anonymous Communication through Free-Air-Optics

Ronja is a hardware project for building interent communication through free-air optics. Unlike most other free hardware projects that still exist only in the planning stage, Ronja hackers have produced a fully operational technology from scratch. The whole development process has taken place among a group of hackers that has been active for more than six years. Their experiences give insights into the challenges that lay ahead of a possibly emergent, hardware hacking movement.

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/22.en.html


Smári McCarthy
The End of (artificial) Scarcity
The Failures of the Materials Economy and How We Fix Them

What is the functional model of our society and how can subtle changes to it's underlying principles alter it significantly? Are the assumptions we make, often unknowingly, correct, and if not, why are they so readily accepted and what can be done to change that? In this talk I aim to dismantle our conceptions about our sociopolitical reality and propose five alternatives fueled by a single uniting factor, providing a roadmap towards a new monetary system, a new economic model, a new legislative system, a new judicial system and a new executive authority system.

Presentation slides (not yet posted):  http://www.yaxic.org/talks/2009/03oekonux/slides.odp

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/37.en.html


Raoul Victor
Money and Peer Production

How can money and peer-production coexist? If we think peer production as a germ form of a future post-capitalist society, the answer depends on the step considered in the process which leads from the emergence of that new form to the entire reorganization of society according to its new principles. This is an attempt to set the problem and to envisage some answers using the framework of the "Five step model".

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/29.en.html


Silke Meyer
"Peer reproduction"?
Key signing parties between trust, subtle othering and control

Key signing parties are a ritual belonging to encrypted electronic communication. Talking about the participants' otherness is an integral part of those parties where the degree of belonging to the free software community is assessed by way of criteria that are deeply embedded in mainstream society.

 http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/events/26.en.html