User:Gameguy43

From FreeCulture.org Wiki

Parker is a web team member (acting as the chief organizer). He also has the ability to approve a chapter.

Parker's first name is actually David, which is weird because everyone calls him Parker. He likes web development, frisbee, writing, photography, atheism, feminism, dadism, surrealism, coffee-shop discussions, F(L)OSS (including linux), cc-licensed tunes, and memorizing move sequences that will beat GNU chess (on "easy"). He has a site at madebyparker.com. He started Chadwick School's SFC chapter, which has had Nelson Pavlosky come and speak, petitioned for taxpayer access to government-funded research, and held a discussion about "piracy" on national Talk Like A Pirate Day.

I've been working closely with the web team and frequent the IRC channel, so i'd like to think i have a good feel for the dynamic of SFC national.

Platform from board election

Although I would be strongly opposed to an overall top-down structure for SFC, I'd like to see some more activity at the national level, in order to give chapters more resouces. The recent blog and wiki hosting given to chapters, from national, is a great step. Last year, the ATA National Day of Action went extremely well because the resources necessary for the event were sent down from national, to the chapters, so that they could participate easily, without devoting time and resources to preparation.

I would like to see more events like the ATA NDOA. Perhaps there ought to be a strongly urged suggestion (not a requirement) for chapters to report back to national after having an event--to write up a tutorial and publish posters or other materials to the wiki (this is already done sometimes, to an extent), or even arrange to guide a chapter-wide event. Info about these events could be sent out on the chapters mailing list, and a link could to be added to the wiki sidebar, reading "chapter events," containing the tutorials and materials. This would help give chapters ideas and materials for their own events.

I also think we could use a few more "teams." There ought to be a wiki team to maintain the content on the wiki and on the static pages of the main site. There is already quite a bit of good info on the wiki about starting a chapter and how to hold events, but it's often partitioned or duplicated, difficult to find, and outdated. There could be teams devoted to organizing (annually?) the national events described above. And, of course, we need to get the core team going.

Existing chapters that are going strong will not by any means be disrupted or taken over, but new or struggling chapters will be given a hand by national, and in turn asked (not required) to contribute resources back to national.

Seeing that everyone's platforms are very similar, I would simply add that, as a highschool student, I may be able to be able to bring a unique, younger voice to the board (and the movement in general). In chapter 13 of Free Culture, Don Ayer advises Lessig : "You have to make them see the harm—passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don't see that, then we haven't any chance of winning." He was talking about the Eldred case, but the point penetrates the movement in general. If we are to get more people in tune with the movement, we have to show them the harm--the harm of DRM, of overzealous copyright law, of closed access to gov't-funded research. As a student movement, our main audience is other students. We need to be in touch with the ways in which Free Culture issues effect students in their everyday lives. If elected, I would make sure that the younger age group is seeing the harm.