During three days working for FSFE I did the following:
= Summary =
This week my time was primarily spent publishing the June Fellowship interview, making travel arrangements to various upcoming events, and travelling to London to attend the Open Rights Group's (Re)Connect meeting.
= Detail =
== Editors == - Edited, formatted, published, and promoted June Fellowship interview - Wrote exhaustive guide to preparing and publishing Fellowship interviews for interns to use in future (internal SVN Fellowship/interviews/task_description) - Obtained access to Fellowship interview Wordpress account for interns and M. Kirschner
== Fellowship == - Enquired on behalf of a UK Fellow about profile pages for each fellow on fellowship.fsfe.org (M. Kirschner referred me to http://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows) - Sent UK Fellow instructions relating to FSFE team member GPG keys
== Community == - Travelled to London to Open Rights Group (Re)Connect meeting (report below) - Attended Manchester Free Software talk on PostgresSQL by founder of 2ndQuadrant. I took the opportunity to make notes on the speaker's views and experience of Free Software business models and his attitude to public sector use - Arranged meeting with local Free Software advocate and Wikiversity founder - Sent notification of upcoming Manchester Fellowship meeting, including proposals for discussion topics - Researched Arts Council Digital R&D funding, arranged meeting with potential co-applicant - Made multiple travel plans for my attendance at DebConf 2011 before abandoning them due to problems with flights, changes to my conference registration, and time limitations
== Other == - Added new contacts to press-release-uk@ list - Handled relay of Brussels based journalist's enquiry to M. Kirschner regarding AVM vs Cybits case
== Web == - Proposed new solution to integration of join and donate buttons on every fsfe website page
== Preview == - Take a day off to reflect extra hours recently worked - Run Manchester Fellowship Meeting - Create list of software related community groups in Manchester on wiki.fsfe.org - Add events for future Fellowship meetings to fsfe.org - Get leaflets printed - Follow up on contacts made at ORG event - [carried over] Begin planning of UK Fellows meeting - [carried over] Plan PDF Readers sprint, arrange venue, send notifications - [carried over] Confirm travel arrangements to Strasbourg
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ORG (Re)Connect report:
On Friday 24th June I travelled from Manchester to Liverpool Street in London to attend an annual community event hosted by the UK based Open Rights Group (ORG). ORG is a prominent digital liberties group apparently similar to the EFF in their mission, with 27,000 members of one mailing list, four full time staff [1] and an advisory council including Cory Doctorow, Alan Cox, and Heather Brooke [2].
I engaged in three workshops discussing ways for ORG to improve its communication and campaigns, most of which was also relevant to FSFE, and engaged in particularly useful discussions and networking with the following attendees:
- Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group - Peter Bradwell, Campaign Officer, Open Rights Group - Nishma Doshi, Community and Events Officer, Open Rights Group - Dj Walker-Morgan, Editor in Chief, Heise Media UK Ltd. - Joe Pettersson, Founder & Creative Director, 8-bit - Rob McKinnon, Founder, whoslobbying.com
Workshops:
- Improving ORG's communication with its members - Methods of online activism - Technical tools ORG can use to highlight campaign issues
I felt that I was able to provide useful ideas and information regarding Free Software tools and platforms (such as YaCy, status.net, Appleseed) and also using social media. I agreed to join the ORG-tech mailing list and have since provided feedback on ideas for Free Software that the organisation could use to further their goals and campaigns.
It appeared to me that ORG has several shared goals with FSFE, and that any collaboration on projects and campaigns in future could be desirable for both parties.
1. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff 2. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/advisory