Archive:2006-03-02

Meetings are good for making friends!

Agenda
The basic topic of this conference call is, how can you help FreeCulture.org and how can FreeCulture.org help you? Please bring your ideas! Here are some to get us started:

Concessions from Colleges / Universities

 * Any US student movement's greatest power lies in its ability to influence the policies (and budgets) of colleges and universities
 * There is a broad set of policies and spending practices that freeculture.org chapters could put in place.
 * Concrete victories each semester build moral within the group and help recruit more students
 * Where do the priorities of your organization intersect with university policy and spending practices? Possible examples:
 * mainstreaming F/OSS software
 * recommended open licenses on student / faculty work
 * patents (esp. drug patents)
 * privacy rights

Propaganda / Street team

 * How can you give us goodies/propaganda that will be useful to us in recruiting and spreading our ideas?
 * How can we serve as an effective street team for your org?
 * How can we do things like the DRM protests better in the future?

Speaker's bureau

 * We began working on this idea with Sarah Brown from PK a long time ago, but when she left PK the project stalled. We began creating a list of potential speakers, I don't know how many of them we'd actually want to have in a free culture speakers bureau.
 * Both Gavin and myself have mentioned this idea to Lessig recently, he asked CC to help make it happen
 * The idea is to begin with a simple contact database for speakers, along with their location and usual asking price, perhaps like http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/31/speakers_bureau_for_.html
 * Eventually I'd like to get something more ambitious going, more of a booking agency, perhaps like http://www.eviltwinbooking.com/
 * It would be best if it could even help with speaker funding, although I know that would be asking a lot... basically, we want to make it as easy as possible for you to get a free culture speaker wherever you are
 * This would not just be for FreeCulture.org chapters, it would be for anyone who wants a free culture speaker
 * Perhaps what we should do is begin by asking several speakers if they'd like to be on the speakers bureau, and then begin testing it on those guinea pigs?

Policy Paper

 * We've been working on a rough draft of a policy paper at 2006-2007 Policy Paper, please give it a quick glance if you can
 * We'd like to have something to give to legislators and other policy makers if they ask what we believe in, and establish some official positions. Do any of your organizations have anything like this?  If so, could we see them?  Are we going about this correctly?

Summit at Swarthmore College, April 21-23

 * In celebration of FreeCulture.org's birthday on April 23, we will be holding a conference at Swarthmore April 21-23, beginning Friday afternoon and going until Saturday afternoon.
 * All of your organizations (CC DHB EFF PK) are invited, both as speakers and participants. Obviously if everyone speaks then you'll each have a shorter time slot, but don't let that stop you... we're going to let the speakers go for most of Friday evening, while Saturday is reserved for more participatory / workshop-like stuff.

Friends of Free Culture mailing list?

 * Let's start putting groups that want to work with FreeCulture.org (including those on this call) on a mailing list to start planning things

Minutes

 * Determined that our supporters should create "best practices" guides for our colleges and universities. At this point, it can just be general ideas and advice, e.g. "All academic journals should be open access", rather than specific legal language.
 * Bring awareness of FC/OS ideas to more campuses - Promote use of existing OS areas: MIT open courseware, Harvard's digital archive; Organize events; Start discussions with university law departments
 * Propaganda ideas: Incorporate FC logo on supporters' websites & blogs; Distribute usual sticker, flyer, buttons (plus, CC media kits) for supporters
 * FreeCulture.org should work on a "primer", laying out the basic concepts of free culture, e.g. copyright, fair use, why fair use is good... this can be copied and pasted from our supporters' websites, Wikipedia, etc.
 * Summit planning: Speakers - Friday; Workshops - Sat (similar to NYC FC meeting format in Jan 06) Creative Commons will be representing!