Call for Papers

freed.in 20-21 feb 2009

The event:

This is the third year of http://freed.in, the largest Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community event in India. The FOSS movement is a juggernaut in the software industry, allowing people the freedom to use stellar software like the FireFox? browser, the OpenOffice? .org office suite, and the GNU/Linux operating system used in mobile phones, desktops, laptops and servers. At the same time, http://freed.in seeks to go beyond the confines of software to spread the ideals of the FOSS movement in related areas.

Theme for the 2009 incarnation:

Getting there together.

Focus areas:

The remarkable success of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, and the expansion of the Internet and communication technologies are dramatically changing how people work, interact, and live. freed.in seeks to focus on the way FOSS, and networking technologies are making new levels of collaboration possible. We are especially interested in:

• The Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) project (http://osdd.org)
• Open content: Sharing of audio, video, print, and new media content via Creative Commons and other similar licences
• Unfettered access to knowledge, especially for education.
• Open Scientific Data
• Technology: Ready-to-run free software

Tangibles:

• OSDD: Overview. Awareness. Call for participation from various stakeholders
• Management, and presentation of multimedia content in a web environment: Drupal, Joomla, Liferay, Wordpress, etc.
• Open content, open access:
  • Wikipedia, and similar projects like OpenStreetMap?
  • Open access to scientific data, and open publishing
  • Open courseware
• Building bridges between FOSS, and related communities.
• FOSS technology: Discover tips, techniques, and hacks for free software

Dates:

Fri, 20 Feb - Sat, 21 Feb 2009. 9:00am to 6:00pm.

Venue:

JNU Campus, New Delhi.

Format:

• Two concurrent tracks of talks from 11am to 6 pm.
• Each talk in each track: 45 minutes, with 15 minutes of Q&A.

Details:

• Free registration.
• Free attendance.
• Please note that this year we will not be in a position to cover speaker travel, board and lodging.

Talk details:

• Please provide a title and synopsis of about 50-100 words of your talk. Please
• Please add a url or a 50-word background info of speaker(s).
• Please provide 50mmx50mm photos of speaker(s) at at 72dpi.
• Talk synopsis submission deadline: 25th Jan., 2009.
• Your talk will be evaluated by our selection committee. On approval:
  • Please submit slides of talk(.odp or .pdf) by 14 Feb.
  • All talks must be under a suitable copyleft license.
  • By submitting talks, you agree to have your talk, your photos, audio, video, to be taken and freely published by organizers and delegates across all media.
  • You are welcome, and encouraged to share your talk over the web through self-publishing, and discuss it at the event. We encourage all personal initiatives to freely share knowledge.
• The decision of the organizers is final.

A scaled-back event:

Due to various reasons, including the economic recession, and the lack of a sufficient number of committed organisers, we have considerably toned down the scale of the event this year. In particular, we do not plan on approaching funding agencies for Freed.in 2009, and everything will be conducted on a shoestring budget. In particular, we are asking all participants, including speakers, to bear their own costs. We apologise for this, but strongly believe that the community will help carry us through these difficult times.

-- GoraMohanty - 20 Jan 2009