[nycbug-talk] [Fwd: Andy Oram and Karl Fogel: free software advocates in NYC on August 30]

[George Rosamond]

Forwarded email from O'Reilly for anyone interested. . .

Could you let the various user groups that you work with (BSD user
group, Ruby-NYC, NYC Python User Group) know about an interesting
event coming up on the evening of Thursday, August 30? About a dozen
people are gathering for an informal dinner and chat. The out-of-town
guests will be:

   Karl Fogel, well-known free software contributor and advocate,
   author of Producing Open Source Software (which won a JOLT award),
   and currently a campaigner on copyright reform

   Andy Oram, O'Reilly editor (responsible for many Linux and Perl
   books,and most recently the best-selling Beautiful Code, which Karl
   also contributed to), and frequent writer on technology and policy

I'm putting a more formal description below. Anyone interested in
attending should keep in touch with "Seth Johnson"
<seth.p.johnson AT gmail.com>, because the number of people who attend
will determine where it's located.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

An informal gathering
with Andy Oram, Editor at O'Reilly Media
and Karl Fogel, free software developer and advocate
----------------------------------------

...to discuss open content and collaboration, funding models for
content, and the economics of digital networks (and numerous other
things)

Date:  Thursday, August 30th, 2007
Time:  8:00 pm
Place: TBD

Discussion will be kicked off by topics such as:

* Why do people contribute free content, and what can society or
   businesses do to increase participation and quality?

* In an age where many people can't afford books or don't want to read
   them, how do people learn technical skills?

* What characteristics distinguish the arts in digital media from
   twentieth-century and pre-twentieth-century media?

* How can writers earn a living from content in an age of free
   redistribution?

* How will new stages of high-bandwidth networking be funded (can
   advertising carry the cost?)

Biography:

   Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media, a highly respected
   book publisher and technology information provider. An employee
   of the company since 1992, Andy specializes in free software
   projects and software engineering. His work for O'Reilly
   includes the first books ever released by a U.S. publisher on
   Linux, the 2001 title Peer-to-Peer, and the recent best-seller
   Beautiful Code.

   Andy is also a member of Computer Professionals for Social
   Responsibility and writes frequently on policy issues and
   trends related to the Internet and to technical innovation and
   its effects on society. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents,
   business aspects of open source, and telecom issues are among
   the topics covered in his articles at:

   http://praxagora.com/andyo/professional/article.html

   He is currently doing research on free, online, technical
   documention, along with experiments in new tools, as described
   at:

   http://praxagora.com/community_documentation/

   An article he wrote about art on the Internet, titled
   "Characteristics of new media in the Internet age," is
   maintained as a wiki at:

http://commons.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Chapters_for_Characteristics_of_new_media