[esocialaction] CFP: Openness: Code, science and content

[Ann Light]

Wow, it would be great to send someone. What a shame the formal network
was only for a year...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward J. Valauskas <ejv at uic.edu>
Date: 18-Jan-2006 02:12
Subject: First Monday Conference
To: FIRSTMONDAY at listserv.uic.edu


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!


--
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~sthomas/

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