Hi all,
First of all, thanks to those who were able to make it to our holiday get-
together in Zürich last week. And thanks to everyone for your contributions to
the Zürich and Switzerland Fellowship groups over the past few months.
I'd like to summarise a couple of things that we have recently discussed in
the Zürich group, so that we may begin to plan them in more detail.
At the last meeting in Zürich (and over a few glasses of Glühwein), we refined
the concept of the breakfast briefing meeting that had been suggested before.
As well as the existing focus on direct advocacy of Free Software in
government, we thought it would be good to give something of a 'spotlight' to
Switzerland's FS industry, with a follow-up event around the 1st August
entitled 'Swiss Free Software Day'.
The approach of bringing in Swiss businesses is a good one. It gives us more
legitimacy when talking to politicians, and it also lets us show, in a very
practical way, how closed standards and procurement of proprietary solutions
by governments affect the economy.
It seems that 'open standards' and how they relate to FS might be the most
universal and appropriate theme to concentrate on, given that the audience
will likely have a relatively wide range of political views. It would be
particularly good if the Fellows on the Switzerland list who have been keeping
up with standardisation processes would consider contributing a talk on this
subject.
The outline for the briefing meeting would be something like this:
Time: Morning - 2 hours maximum, plus time for networking afterwards
Location: Bern
Date: ~April 2009
Audience: government officials, political party policy specialists, trade
union representatives, non-governmental organisation workers (e.g. fair trade,
charities), Fellowship members
Outline schedule:
* Briefing by Fellows or FTF on the relationships between standards,
'open government', and Free Software
* Briefing by FTF on methodology of Free Software business; business
opportunities in Switzerland, and the importance of licensing
* Briefing by one or two leaders of successful FS projects in Switzerland.
Explaining the key elements for success, and and (possibly) closed /
proprietary standards and lock-in impede their business
* Kaffee und Kuchen!
Therefore, we need to do the following things:
* Identify the people who we should invite, and find out what their interests,
biases and areas of expertise are
* Contact businesses who may be interested in talking about how they use Free
Software
* Find a venue in Bern and set a date. It may be good to schedule it around
OpenExpo 2009, which takes place on the 1st and 2nd April. FSFE will be
attending OpenExpo.
* Contact other organisations (ch / open, Debian.ch, and so on) who may be
interested in co-hosting the event.
* Begin producing briefing documents to distribute at the event, and to send
to potential attendees
I would be grateful if we could have volunteers to help with coordination and
talks.
After getting people interested at the briefing meeting, one idea was to
arrange a follow-up event for the week prior to Swiss National Day, entitled
Swiss Free Software Day. This would be an opportunity to create publicity
around the links we build with the briefing event.
We should work out the details of this if you think it's a good idea.
Oh, and have a great holiday break, everyone! I'll be in Scotland until the
3rd Jan, but feel free to send me ideas and suggestions.
Regards,
Graeme
--
Graeme West
Intern, Zürich office
Freedom Task Force
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship of FSFE! (http://fsfe.org/join)
Your donation powers our work! (http://fsfeurope.org/donate)
Hallo Fellows
For those of you who will be at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in
Berlin this year and who want to help planning some actions in Switzerland.
Please consider attending the Swiss Gettogether Workshop [1] on Dezember 28
at 10 am (in a near Restaurant still having to be decided). Last year's
Gettogether was a great success.
[1] https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Swiss_Gettogether
Cheers, Adi
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cia leute,
der regierungsrat des kantons zuerich hat eine neue it-strategie
verabschiedet.
interessant fuer uns ist insbesondere der ausdrueckliche verweis
auf offene standards, da koennte man gut bezug nehmen.
http://www.sk.zh.ch/internet/sk/de/mm/2008/326-1.ContentList.0002.Document.…
gruss
andreas
- --
________________________________________________
Andreas Burger
Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zuerich
Departement AgrL ISG
LFV E31 8092 Zuerich +41 44 632 68 54
andreas.burger(a)agrl.ethz.ch
_________________________________________________
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Hi all,
Sorry for not sending this earlier.
Just to re-cap on the action items we assigned at the last fellowship meeting.
Groups we identified as useful to target include: trade unions, political
parties and fair trade groups. Some initial research is needed.
* Georg: Will talk to Wolf Ludwig from Kommunika (media union) about getting
people from that organisation involved
* Graeme: Will research formats for a possible briefing event involving people
from the various groups who have been identified as responsible for standards
policy, consumer protection and suchlike within their organisations. Will
outline the event to the group.
* Andreas: Will investigate how to get a booth at Parteitäge, trade union
events and similar, and some investigation on who we should approach within
parties/unions
So, we will define a concept for a potential meeting, and using the research
we will gather over the next few weeks, we then can take it forward.
Please let me know if I have missed anything out.
I've also put up a Doodle to decide the date/time for the next meeting:
http://www.doodle.com/participation.html?pollId=3mdsviux62h8nqsu
The potential times are:
Thursday 11th Dec 18:00 or 18:30
Friday 12th Dec 18:00 or 18:30
We should have some glühwein and other holiday goodies, so we hope to see you
there!
Regards,
Graeme
--
Graeme West
Intern, Zürich office
Freedom Task Force
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship of FSFE! (http://fsfe.org/join)
Your donation powers our work! (http://fsfeurope.org/donate)