On 16/03/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just putting some stuff together before I head out for this tomorrow - is anyone else from the list going?
London E14, 11 to 6.30. Looks quite interesting.
Did anyone go?
I saw the open media and science sections (1400-1800) which were both interesting. A general theme seemed to be increasing access to free information: better search engines, awareness, taking it to the public, sharing, &c. BBC's failings when it comes to the Creative Archive were expounded.
Science was particularly good (but then, I'm a scientist) - discussed importance of free science. Both increasing access to already free materials and freeing currently non-free things (journals) were brought up. Pharmaceutical patents were mentioned. The power of the semantic web was brought in (in reference to the annotated human genome, chemistry).
I'm not sure there was much of a message there for Wikimedia since the creation of free content was barely touched. Wikimedia Commons could perhaps take something from the Open Media talks: collaborating with similar projects, making it easy for other projects to use it's information, interoperability.
Maybe we should start looking to the potential of the semantic web... (Semantic MediaWiki).
The talks were recorded so hopefully they'll be made available to watch online.