WOS4 rocks
== please redistribute ==
Wizards of OS 4
Information Freedom Rules
International Conference
14-16 September 2006
in Columbia Hall Berlin
http://wizards-of-os.org/
Not even 60 days to go before the Wizards of OS 4. This time it will take place in Columbia Hall, one of Berlin‘s greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll venues, so WOS4 is bound to rock. In fact, netlabels and how they manage to make a buck with free bits is going to be one of WOS4’s featured topics. Some of the most knowledgeable people in the field including book authors Janko Roettgers and Mo Sauer, and Magnatune’s John Buckman will be discussing this fascinating new phenomenon. It will give us ample opportunity to rock your minds and bodies, not the least at the free music netlabel parties.
That‘s free as in speech, not as in beer. But even that old wisdom has become more complex since you will be able to *buy* free beer as well. Now don‘t get me wrong, WOS is not turning into a beer conference, even though beer-to-beer networking will be as important as ever. WOS will stay firmly rooted in the universe of bits where Information Freedom Rules. But which freedom, and which rules? Freedom is essential. Money matters. It brings forth laws and licenses, social and cultural networks implemented in technology and in business models. On the opening key-note panel of WOS4, Cooking Pot Markets (Rishab Ghosh) will meet the Network Economy (Hal Varian) and the Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler). With all those rules framing freedom there will also be no shortage of unruly behaviour, more of which in the next announcement.
WOS4 will be three days packed with panels, workshops and parties — five days, in fact, if you include the workshops at Tesla, c-base, New Thinking and Humboldt University before and after the conference proper. And there will be even more specials and projects like Wikipedia, Freifunk and Debian presenting themselves throughout the conference.
A novelty at WOS4 is the “Show des Freien Wissens”. The German-language programme is directed at a mostly young audience of those curious about where all this free culture is coming from and what they can do for you. So if your kid brother, your neighbour or your mother keeps bugging you about these things, send them here. TV anchor Helge Haas will lead them through an entertaining and enlightening afternoon, addressing what they always wanted to know about free knowledge but never dared to ask.
Finally we are happy to announce that the video and audio documentation of WOS3 is now completely online. You can revisit the 2004 highlights like the launch of the German Creative Commons licenses or the deep geek debate on the Unix paradigm and beyond. Maybe you want to download them to your mobile player for easy listening on the beach. In any case it‘s a nice opportunity to get in the mood for WOS4.
Don‘t miss it. Register now.
for the WOS team
yours Volker Grassmuck
September 4th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
[…] Pentagonik and Jahtari are two of the netlabels which will present their creative force on the netlabels party of the Wizards of OS conference, 14th to 16th september in Berlin - free culture, knowledge sharing, alternative licensing. Go! […]