This Monday, August 24, your Students for Free Culture board will be holding an IRC question & answer session for all chapters.  This was suggested earlier, and we think it’s a great idea, and a good opportunity for everybody to get on the same page before the school year starts.

So, at 6:00 PM Pacific / 9:00 PM Eastern, we will all be meeting in the #freeculture room of freenode.

For those of you who need a refresher on what IRC is and how it works, there’s a quick howto after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Later this year Barcelona plays host to the world’s first Free Culture Forum. Over four days (October 29—November 1st), activists and researchers will convene to define an action agenda for Free Culture issues in the next decade.

This conference will follow the 2009 OXCARS, an alternative awards ceremony for Free Culture artists.

This is an opportunity to discuss, dance and work together. It’s also a chance to celebrate global perspectives about knowledge, culture and creativity that may differ than those promoted by media and entertainment conglomerates.

The Spanish state is quickly becoming a hotbed of activism, scholarship and research around Free Culture issues, making it a great place to launch a world Free Culture forum. But Spain’s national politics make the Forum an even more ripe opportunity for progress on Free Culture issues:

Why Barcelona? In January 2010, Spanish State will take up the European Presidency of the European Union. Spanish Government has already announced that one of their flagships will be reinforcing the control of the Internet and criminalizing the sharing culture in the digital environment. The consequences of those decisions will be noticed in the rest of the world. Furthermore, within this context, Barcelona is closing agreements with cultural institutions to set new agreements to get a fairer sharing of copyrights. These agreements will be spread to other institutions in Catalonia and Spanish State.

In October 29th this year Barcelona will hold the Second Edition of the Oxcars Festival, an international event to honor the defense of culture and to show that other creation channels, as good and with as much quality as traditional ones, exist. The last edition was a success with more than 2000 participants
. Several worldwide voices have recognized the necessity to create international spaces for networking, coordination and building of a global frame for free culture and knowledge issues: the Free Culture Forum of Barcelona aims to create such a space.

The organizers have secured the participation of a number of great FC voices and they’re announcing more by the day. Plus, the OXCARS awards will be a guaranteed blast. Many universities provide funding for members of student groups to attend conferences. Check with your department, student union, special activities, or financial aid office to see if they can fund or subsidize your trip. The SFC board and the organizers of the FCForum will happily provide letters of recommendation and other resources.

Students for Free Culture is a partner in the World FCForum, but it’s not the follow-up to SFC’s Free Culture 2008 conference in Berkeley—it’s a brand-new international gathering. We’ll be announcing details about our next SFC conference, Free Culture 2010, in the coming weeks.

Conference schedule:

October 29th: Celebration of the Oxcars Free Culture Awards Festival.

October 30th: Panel presentations

October 31th: Working groups (Legal, Education, Economic, Free Software, Political)

November 1st: Plenary meeting to draft common agenda

More information

Website: http://fcforum.net/

Newsletter: 
http://openfsm.net/projects/freecultureforum/lists/freecultureforumbcn

Organization contact: info |at| fcforum.net

OXCARS 2008: The Movie

oXcars, The Movie from eXgae on Vimeo.

Hello!

The five of us are thrilled to join (and rejoin) the 2009-2010 board of directors. We’re very excited about guiding Students for Free Culture over the next year—there’s plenty of awesome stuff in store.

You’ll hear more from us over the coming days about what we’ll be doing to re-energize SFC and the Free Culture movement. For now, we want to take the opportunity to (re)introduce ourselves:

Kevin Driscoll completed a Master’s degree in Comparative Media Studies at MIT last semester where he was a member of the MIT Free Culture chapter and part of the YouTomb research project. Kevin is concerned with encouraging everyday creativity and highlighting unexpected uses of consumer technologies by young people – especially in resistance to systemic oppression. In the fall, he will continue graduate work at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC. You can see his digital traces on his superfeed.

Ben Moskowitz co-founded the SFC@Berkeley chapter of Students for Free Culture and created a seminar on the cultural dimensions of piracy. He also co-organized the Free Culture 2008 Conference and the Open Video Conference in NYC.  He is currently a student of Mandarin language at NYU SCPS and serves as General Coordinator of the Open Video Alliance, promoting openness in online video. See http://openvideoconference.org for more. Ben wants to see SFC become a force on campuses all over the world—let’s make it happen!

Kevin Donovan is a rising junior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, majoring in Science, Technology & International Affairs with a certificate in International Development. He started the Georgetown chapter of SFC and has worked on technology policy issues at the World Bank’s infoDev program and is currently working on an OpenCourseWare pilot program. He writes about technology policy at Techdirt, his personal blog, and on Twitter.While in South Africa recently Kevin had the chance to go sandboarding, which is easily the coolest sport ever devised.

Christina Ducruet graduated from Brown University in May 2008 with a degree in Modern Culture and Media. While an undergrad, she founded the Brown chapter of Students for Free Culture in reaction to the RIAA lawsuits that hit 20+ campuses in Spring 2007. She’s been involved with SFC ever since, creating resources and organizing campaigns to rally people to the Free Culture movement. Christina is excited and honored to serve on the SFC Board for a second term and thinks the best is yet to come for SFC. She currently lives and works in Connecticut.

Parker Higgins is entering his senior year at New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study.  He is the president of the NYU chapter of Students for Free Culture.  Stemming from his previous work with the Participatory Culture Foundation, creators of the Miro HD video player, he runs the occasionally updated internet TV channels Free Culture TV and Yes We’re Open.  The channels feature freely-licensed FC-related content and highlight emerging issues for the community. This summer he is volunteering for Creative Commons.

So, what’s next?

You can review the notes of the first 09/10 board meeting here.

The nominations page contains each candidates’ thoughts on SFC and its future. Here is where the five of us agree that our time should be focused:

• Ensuring that the Open University Campaign is a success, potentially through a stand-alone site or committee-based action;
• Collaborating with other organizations and establishing SFC as a key public voice on free culture issues;
• Planning the next Free Culture conference; and
• Making involvement in SFC as user-friendly and accessible to new members and chapters.

Of course, SFC’s strength lies in the awesome people and projects of its local chapters. Chapter leaders can expect to hear from us shortly as we work to bring everyone up to speed with our plans to revitalize SFC. In the meantime, we want to hear from you—what do you think is necessary to keep SFC going strong through this year and beyond? What’s next for SFC? How can we improve? Sound off in the comments.