On 16/03/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm just putting some stuff together before I head
out for this
tomorrow - is anyone else from the list going?
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
London E14, 11 to 6.30. Looks quite interesting.
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
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.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)