This weekend, I will hold a course entitled “Editing and Remixing Video with Free Software” in cooperation with Sensus, one of the many excellent adult education association in Sweden. Using the simple but powerful video editor Kdenlive, the participants will learn how to legally use freely licensed material to create their own music videos. The course will take place over two full days and is free of charge. With each participants approval, the resulting works will be shown in FSCONS’ Free Film Room.
If you would like to take the course, which probably will be held in Swedish, feel free to sign up here: http://sensus.se/[...]

Oscar Swartz teams up with the other speakers at FSCONS. Oscar will give a speech called The End of Free Communications?

I discuss initiatives to curtail free communications. I put the development in a broader cultural context where I see the Internet as undermining old authorities and hierarchies. The established powers respond by waging unwinnable wars against imagined enemies and ill-defined groups: “terrorists”, “pirates” and “pedophiles”. We should all think of “freedom-based” responses to cope with the cultural angst that the Internet apparently leads to for the old world authorities. We don’t have to - and should not! - abolish free communications. Techniques adopted by the state include surveillance of traffic, content filtering, data retention, criminal and civil (sue for damages) means of attacking Internet users and ISPs, even border searches of laptops. The most Orwellian law of them all was passed by the Swedish parliament on June 18, 2008. All Internet and phone traffic that passes the border of Sweden will be copied to the state “secret service” for analysis. “Lex Orwell” led to unprecedented protests from bloggers and activists. This finally spilled over to old media and the political establishment was put under serious pressure. At the time of the conference we might now the final outcome of this popular uprising. There is a possibility that the law will be overturned. I will cover this development.

John Buckman is coming over to FSCONS to give a talk, Squeezing the Evil out of the Music Industry (how we should rethink record labels by using CC licensing)

John will talk about new models for music & the music business, which hinge on open licensing, transparency, and the new ways that music is actually consumed & shared

John Buckman is founder of Magnatune, a Berkeley, California-based record label he founded in 2003 and which is known for its commercial application of Creative Commons licensing and overtly artist-friendly business practices. Buckman’s methods include forming non-exclusive agreements with musicians, sharing profits equally with them, and allowing them to retain full rights to their own music. This approach is sometimes referred to as “fair trade music.” An accomplished software programmer, Buckman is also thought to be the first to use the term open music, a term derived from the open source software community, in which he has been active. It refers to music that is shareable, available in “source code” form (individual tracks), permits certain forms of derivative works (i.e. remixes), and is made available at no cost for non-commercial use. Since founding Magnatune, Buckman has signed more than 250 recording artists across multiple genres. In August 2006, he launched the non-profit BookMooch, an online community for the exchange of used books, which—in combination with his work with Magnatune—has established Buckman as a prominent figure in the Free Culture movement.

Inge Wallin is coming to FSCONS to speak about KDE and Open Street Map. Today we’re focusing on the Open Street Map presentation.

The talk about OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an introduction to the subject of free maps in general and the OpenStreetMaps in particular. OpenStreetMap has in a very short time come up as one of the largest providers of free content anywhere. The talk will answer questions such as:

• How is the project organized?
• What tools are used to create the contents?
• How can I start to contribute to OSM?
• How can I use the raw data to create new interesting maps?

Andreas Ericsson (from op5.com) is coming to FSCONS to talk about Nagios.

Andreas started using free software when he was about 14. By then he had been trying to teach himself programming for almost 7 years. Getting access to source-code that actually did something rather than the pretty lame examples of cash-register programs found in library books was a real novelty, so he dug in and started trying out various modifications of his own. Some of them got accepted upstream, but most of them were dropped on the floor, although with helpful comments which slowly made him a better programmer.

Johan Thelin who is coming to FSCONS to give a talk called Qt for Embedded Linux and also to present the QtCentre Contest Award have been interviewed by the FSCONS team.

During the interview Johan shares his views on Free Software, Qt and Gtk, ubiquitous computing, eye candy and more.

Read the whole interview with Johan Thelin

Henri Bergius comes to FSCONS to speak about Midgard.

Midgard, a venerable open source content management system is now renewing itself to a new architecture. The plan is to provide a data management framework that can extend from web services to replicated mobile applications. This talk describes the approach taken by the Midgard community and showcases the developer possibilities provided.

Henri Bergius is a former Viking based in the Nordic country of Finland. When he is not exploring the cave cities of Georgia or running with bulls in Pamplona, Bergie works on web services built on top of the Midgard toolkit. His company Nemein provides web solutions for several major companies in Finland and abroad.…

Mike Linksvayer (Vice President of Creative Commons) is coming to FSCONS to give the talk How far behind is free+open culture?

Mike Linksvayer is Vice President of Creative Commons, where he manages core programs and operations. He joined Creative Commons as CTO in 2003. In 2000 he co-founded an early open content/open data company, Bitzi.com, which provides a file metadata service. He has participated in free software and related movements since 1990 and in 1993 published one of the first interviews with Linus Torvalds. Mike has a professional background in web, enterprise and multimedia software development and holds a degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Denis Rojo is giving a talk Free software and the freedom of creation at FSCONS.

Denis ‘jaromil’ Rojo is a hacker author of various free software applications (GNU/Linux/BSD), known as artist for his performances and creations, as well as activist for his social concerns and radical way of life. Online since 1991 (BBS CyberNet 65:1500/3.13) co-founded in 1994 the italian non-profit association Metro Olografix for the diffusion of telematic cultures. Later he migrated out of Italy and gave birth to the dyne.org foundation: creating software for the freedom of expression, to let people communicate free from capitalist speculations and expensive hardware.

Anders Kringstad is holding a SkoleLinux workshop at FSCONS.

Anders is a free software solutions architect, a computer addict and part time hacker. Currently he’s the leader elect of Free software in schools Norway (FRISK) - the organization overseeing development of the Skolelinux distribution in Norway. Besides free software related work and organizational activities he’s keen on road cycling, spending time with his wife and planning the world domination of geeks