Software Freedom Day New Zealand

Wellington Sneak Peek – Rainer Spittel

ruth — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 08:56:34 +0000

Software Freedom Day Wellington is being run as an unconference – but several of Wellington’s finest have already put their hands up for a tech talk / speaking spot. We’ll be telling you about several of them to give you an idea of what to expect.

Rainer Spittel: Ocean Survey 20/20 Bay of Islands project: Using open standards and open source tools for a GIS project

Rainer leads the development team at SilverStripe. He is an experienced software developer with deep knowledge of web standards such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. He is passionate about open data initiatives and implementing highly available, scalable distributed software solutions

SilverStripe has undertaken a number of portal and website projects aiming to publish geospatial data to the public in a transparent and standardised way. One of the key projects is the Ocean Survey 20/20 Bay of Islands portal project for NIWA and LINZ. It has been implemented on the principles of open data initiatives and supports international standards to make data available to the public in various ways. The majority of the data publishing services are compliant to international standards, such as Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO standards.

At Software Freedom Day in Wellington, Rainer will be talking about the underlaying infrastructure of the OS 20/20 Bay of Islands project, the open-standards and open source tools used to build this solution and how developers can use those tools to publish their data.

Install Fest at SFD Wellington

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:41:16 +0000

Once again, SFD Wellington will be hosting an installfest!
Bring your computers and our experts will set you up with all you need to discover the everyday benefits of Open Source! (Or just bring a storage device- we’ll give you the files you need and you can install them yourself!)

More info coming soon – watch this space!

Betty the Makerbot at SFD Wellington

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:15:03 +0000

Software Freedom Day Wellington has a very special guest this year: Betty.

BETTY is a 3D printer, a fine example of a batch 13 “Cupcake” CNC 3D Printer, actually.

Basically, 3D printers turn virtual (computer) models of things into real, physical objects. There are all sorts of different ways to do this. BETTY does it by squeezing out a strand of hot plastic, and building up lots of thin layers. In this way, you can create any object you can imagine and construct in 3D..

Cupcake CNC printers have a usuable print area about 100mm square, by about 130mm high. The name comes from the fact that this is roughly the size of a cupcake. Hence, BETTY make “cupcakes”. To date, BETTY hasnt printed an actual cupcake, but that’s not to say it can’t be done.

BETTY will be demonstrating opensource 3D printing live at SFD Wellington!

For a limited number of SFD attendees, we will be able to 3D print files they supply. These very special people will be able to leave with their original Makerprint print on the day!

Anyone interested will need to supply contact details, and an STL file of their object to: requests@bettymakescupcakes.com

Visit bettymakescupcakes.com for some background info, and tips for printing.

Wellington Sneak Peek – Danyl Strype

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:03:04 +0000

Software Freedom Day Wellington is being run as an unconference – but several of Wellington’s finest have already put their hands up for a speaking spot. We’ll be telling you about several of them to give you an idea of what to expect.

1130 – 12 : Danyl Strype - Hacking for Resilience: Free Culture, Permaculture, and Disaster Relief

Danyl has been interested in participatory media since high school, where he turned the school’s radio club into a a consensus-based collective, co-running a magazine-style show on local access radio station, PlainsFM. In 1997, he helped start Smog, a community newspaper for the inner-city east area of Otautahi (Christchurch). In 2001, he was one of the founders of Aotearoa Indymedia. He was active as a member of the development network behind the site for 7 years, and continues to contribute articles to the website. In 2007, he was technical co-ordinator, and a core management collective member, for the Oblong community internet space in the Left Bank, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

As well as developing Disintermedia, which he started in 2008, Danyl has been donating his community development skills to the Aotearoa/ New Zealand localisation of the CreativeCommons project, since it kicked off in late 2005. He also set up the Permaculture in Aotearoa project, to provide email lists and wiki spaces for Permaculture in NZ working groups, which were set up at their hui in 2010.

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From the hacking together of the Sahana (Shinalese for ‘relief’) software in Sri Lanka, to the ‘remote relief’ CrisisCamps of the CrisisCommons, and their concept of low-carbon aid work, geeks across the planet are responding to the needs of communities hit by natural disasters.

Permaculture-inspired relief efforts go back at least as far as 1999, with crews of permies helping communities across the world recover from a range of disasters. In Haiti, following the devastating earthquake there, both PermaCorps International and the Biotecture Institute are helping survivors rebuild their homes and become more self-sufficient in the process.

Both the free culture mission of creating freely available software, and networked information tools, and the permaculture mission of cultivating community resilience, embodied in projects like TransitionTowns, create infrastructure that can help people survive and recover from disasters. Both tend to prefer ‘crowdsourcing’ methods of organising, which empower people to help others from afar, and to help themselves locally.

Danyl Strype has been on the ground in Ootautahi/ Christchurch, in the wake of the recent earthquake in Waitaha/ Canterbury, contacting groups like CrisisCommons, the Lytellton Time Banking group, Unite Union, the Space of Love, and the Rainbow Relief Camp, to help synergise the diverse community responses to the disaster. He will be share a brief history of the ‘crowdsourced’ relief efforts run by both
geeks and permies, and talk about his recent experiences in the quake zone.

OLPC at SFD Wellington

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:53:38 +0000

Once again, the Wellington One Laptop per Child team will have some of the XO laptops at Software Freedom Day Wellington for kids (and adults) to have a play with!

OLPC’s mission is to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

The Wellington testing group is a part of a group of New Zealand educators, technologists, polyglots, and more who contribute to the One Laptop Per Child project.

Their goal is to get a laptop loaded with educational tools into the hands of every one of the world’s poorest children. OLPC has shipped to millions of children around the world, given laptops to every child and teacher across entire countries. The work continues.

They write software, test other people’s software, design educational activities, and translate text. They are part of a global effort of professionals, volunteers, students, and people like yourself.

They also are deploying pilots into New Zealand schools. Come talk to them about the olpc hardware and the Sugar educational software.

The Wellington group meets every Saturday, 11AM at The Southern Cross. Everyone is welcome to join us. We have brunch, drink coffee, and enjoy conversation while continuing the good work.

Learn more at http://www.laptop.org.nz

Wellington Sneak Peek – Rochelle Furneaux

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:38:29 +0000

11 – 1130 : Rochelle Furneaux - CAOS: Commercial Adoption of Open Source

Rochelle Furneaux, Intellectual Property and web lawyer talks about how Intellectual Property works in relation to software and dispels some common misconceptions about Open Source.

Wellington Sneak Peek – Joel Pitt

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:17:35 +0000

230 – 3 : Joel Pitt - OpenCog – an open source framework for artificial general intelligence

Dr. Joel Pitt is a multi-disciplinary scientist who has contributed to work in bioinformatics, ecology, and artificial intelligence. Over the last three years he has been involved with the open-source artificial general intelligence framework OpenCog, and will soon be moving to Hong Kong to develop software that assists game designers create dynamic and life-like game characters.

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Since computers have existed, researchers have asked to what extent the mind can be represented inside a machine. While we’ve had a myriad of machine learning and narrow AI advances since those early days, a truly generic intelligence still seems beyond humanity’s grasp. Or is it?

OpenCog is an open source framework for developing integrative
cognitive systems with the eventual goal of a fully functional digital
mind. The first goal is to function at the level of a toddler and from
there allow it to learn as a human does about the intricacies of
language and common-sense. Not via a massive hand-coded data set, but through embodied experience in virtual worlds and within robots.

This talk will introduce the OpenCog framework, some of the modules that exist within and their role in the overall architecture of the mind. It will also discuss the motivations of making a formerly proprietary system, open source, and some of the challenges of maintaining an ambitious OSS project.

Don’t forget to register for Software Freedom Day Wellington at our website!

Wellington Sneak Peek – Nic Cave-Lynch

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:16:21 +0000

3 – 330 : Nic Cave-Lynch - Creating a Lighting Desk with Open Source Tools

Nic Cave-Lynch is a freelance software and hardware engineer who primarily works with embedded systems: the computers that don’t look like computers! He’s developed systems for many fields including touring rock bands, multi-megawatt power conditioners and nationwide radio networks. Through much of this he’s preferred open source over proprietary tools.

A recent project has been the development of a lighting control desk aimed at smaller venues. This has been developed using open source tools (as far as possible) and used another open source project to jump start some areas. The project is getting to the point where it could be a commercial product, or released as an open source project or, perhaps, both.

Nic’s talk will cover aspects of this lighting control desk project, including choice of tools, experiences using an open source project to jump start some of the development, and some of the factors he’s considering as he tries to decide whether to open-source the project.

And there should be some shiny, flashy lights to look at, too!

Don’t forget to register for Software Freedom Day Wellington at our website!

Demo Spaces Still Available in Wellington – With Prize Opportunity!

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 22:19:53 +0000

There’s still time to sign up to demo your Open Source product at Wellington’s Software Freedom Day!

If you have developed an Open Source product, or used Open Source tools to create your product, then this is your opportunity to show the community what you have to offer!

Your $150 donation will help us pull off another successful SFD Wellington event – and in return, you will:

Be listed as a Bronze sponsor on our website
Be acknowledged during the event
Have the opportunity to demo your FOSS product, project, or service during the Demo Stream
Be given exhibition space to provide further demos if desired, and to use for advertising your FOSS product

In addition, Scoop is once again offering an advertising prize worth $2000 to the Wellington company that can best pitch how the use of free and open source software has helped their business! That right there is a great opportunity that you shouldn’t miss!

Last year, Wellington’s SFD was attended by about 300 members of the community. Show the wider community what you have to offer – and support a great event while you’re at it!

Contact Ruth (ruth@getsussed.co.nz) or Bex (bex@amberdms.com) to get your chance!

Wellington Sneak Peek – Dan Bishop

Software Freedom Day New Zealand — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:16:24 +0000

2 – 230 : Dan Bishop - Giving children metatools to play with. Seriously.

We’re beyond asking whether some of the new free software offerings for children – like MIT’s “Scratch” platform – have any educational value. These are metatools, so stand back please and give the kids some room! This discussion will look at how tools are being used to build tools, and will ask, somewhat meekly “where does it stop?”.
Hint: it doesn’t.

———–

Dan Bishop swapped a career in road freight in Zimbabwe for the
then-new field of digital printing in London, then got swept up by the dotcom boom and bust, had a couple of great children, and landed somehow in New Zealand with one foot in education, the other in software development project management. Dan is a consultant on the practical application of emerging digital technologies.

Don’t forget to register for Software Freedom Day Wellington at our website!