[Air-l] FWD: First Monday Conference - FM10 Openness: Code, science and content, 15-17 May 2006, Chicago, USA

[Steve Jones]

Those of you who couldn't make it to Chicago for AoIR 6 last October,  
here's your chance for a visit, and those of you who were here, it  
would be great to see you again (when I'm _not_ running around in a  
daze!).

Sj

> First Monday Conference
> FM10 Openness: Code, science and content
> 15-17 May 2006, at The University of Illinois at Chicago
>
> Celebrate ten years of First Monday!
>
> Register at http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/
>
> Send an abstract or paper to http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/
>
> Thanks to a grant from The Open Society Institute, as many as 20  
> participants from developing countries may receive grants to attend  
> the Conference. An application form can be found at http:// 
> firstmonday.org/fm10/FM10_OSI_fundreq.doc. Deadline 10 February 2006.
>
> The Conference is generously sponsored by The Open Society  
> Institute, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The  
> University of Illinois at Chicago University Library and The  
> Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology  
> (MERIT), University of Maastricht.
>
> About the Conference
>
> Recent years have seen a strong interest among academics, policy  
> makers, activists, business and other practitioners on open  
> collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. In some areas,  
> such as free software / open source, sustainable business models  
> have emerged that are holding their own against more traditional,  
> proprietary software industries. In the sciences, the notions of  
> open science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of  
> openness in the academic community that, despite its past  
> successes, is increasingly under threat. And open access journals  
> and other open content provide inspiring examples of collaborative  
> creativity and participatory access, such as Wikipedia, while still  
> in search of models to ensure sustainability.
>
> There are clear links between these areas of openness: open content  
> often looks explicitly towards open source software for business  
> models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of  
> the potential of openness, how it can work, as well as a warning of  
> the threats it may face. Finally, open collaboration is closely  
> linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation  
> rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries.
>
> Despite these clear links, there has been surprisingly little  
> thoughtful analysis of this convergence, or of the real value of  
> the common aspect of open collaboration. In particular, while open  
> source software - due to its strong impact on business and on  
> bridging the digital divide - has drawn much attention, it may  
> provide false hopes for the sustainability of openness in other  
> areas of content that need careful examination. The conference --  
> FM10 Openness: Code, science and content - Making collaborative  
> creativity sustainable -- provides a platform for such analysis and  
> discussion, resulting in concrete proposals for sustainable models  
> for open collaboration in creative domains.
>
> The Conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the  
> foremost online, peer-reviewed academic journal covering these  
> issues since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous  
> papers by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration,  
> open access, and open content in its various forms, it is itself an  
> example of open collaboration in practice: for a decade, the  
> journal has been published on a purely voluntary basis, with no  
> subscription fees, advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The  
> success of First Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers  
> around the world, downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each  
> month.
>
> For more details, contact Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor of First  
> Monday at ejv at uic.edu. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!
>