RasterWeb!At Open Everything, at the end, after we wrapped everything up… there was this discussion of art. It went like this:
Mr. J: But what is art?
Mr. P: I could poop on the floor and call it art!
Mr. A: …And I could remix it!
Mr. G: …And I could mash it up!
I’m pretty sure at the point the conversation ended. In laughter…
(The names have been changed to protect us… er, the people involved. Also, I wasn’t exactly sure who said what.)
I attended Open Everything in Madison, Wisconsin on April 18th, 2009… Here are my thoughts on the event.
Oh, first of all, if you are coming to my house, do not turn on Wood Drive, keep going another 1/2 mile and turn on Wood Street. This is very important! That said, Todd and Marie managed to get to my house, as did Gabe, and we ventured forth to Madison for the event. (KeVroN bailed on us for some unknown reason…)
Even though KeVroN the Madison expert bailed on us, we managed to find the venue fairly easily, and since it’s Madison, we had the choice of parking really far away for cheap, or paying to park at the venue. Since we had video equipment to lug, we choose to pay. Well, I choose to pay. I know I’m a whiner, but I really do like free parking.
So we got there pretty much right at 10AM while things were still in the “setting up” phase and we didn’t really miss anything. Once we got started we did the “go around the room and introduce yourself” thing. I already knew a lot of people from things like BarCamp, etc. but it was nice to see some new folks as well. There were maybe 25-30 people there, which I was a little disappointed in. I was really hoping to see more, but hey, what can you do? Not everyone is passionate about open.
Once we did the intros, we started putting session ideas on the grid. I put one up titled “Apple, OS X, Open?” and that was the first session of the day I attended.
It ended up being a discussion of Apple, how open (or closed) they are in their hardware, software, practices, and what it all means. Does the user experience suffer, or is it improved by Apple’s practices? What about Linux, or Microsoft/Windows? There are always free software folks, and fans of open who use Apple hardware and software, and I wanted to find out why. The answers I heard seemed to be “ease of use” and “it just works” which again, I lump into the “user experience” category.
For the next session Gabe and I set up to do a few video interviews with people. We ended up not getting to talk to many people, since we wanted to do sessions, as well as do interviews. It’s hard to do both in a 7 hour event.
When it was lunch time we ended up walking to State Street to get lunch, and tried to turn it into a PhotoWalk. I really wish food had been provided at the event. I know, I’m just a cheapskate who loves free food. But really, I would have pitched in the money if food could have been delivered as well. For the *Camp like events I’ve been involved with, we always try to provide a meal for participants. The reason for this is that it takes the burden off of people to figure out what the heck they are going to eat, and with who, and where… Keep people at the event, focused on what the topic is, not having to run around town finding food. I don’t want it to sound like I’m blaming anyone, as we didn’t have sponsors for the event, and the organizers and participants did provide a bunch of snacks and such, but lunch was a distraction from the event. Of course many venues have a “catering rule” which says if you want food at your event, you have to go through them, and with no money, that was not an option. The PhotoWalk part of it did not work well as we had to walk non-stop to State Street, stand in line at a busy Chipotle, get our food, and head back quickly. PhotoWalks need time to stop and shoot. (Lesson learned on that one!) So, just to summarize, lunch was just a minor hiccup, nothing that was detrimental to the event, but hey, it all worked out.
We ended up watching part of Rip: A Remix Manifesto while we ate lunch, which was really interesting. I really need to watch the whole thing because it brought up issues that sparked a lot of debate, and while I’m a fan of open, I’m also a really big fan of respecting the rights of artists. I come from the creative arts world, and have been a creator of art, music, photography, film, etc… and how people use things I’ve created is of concern to me. This is an issue I will definitely follow up on…
After lunch we did a session Blake proposed on the democratization of media, which started with the story of CNN, Ashton Kutcher, and Oprah, and their use of Twitter, and since Gabe and I were involved, turned slightly towards the “Twitter hates you” discussion, your rights, context, and other related issues. Good times…
The CMS Smackdown ended up being a tour of various sites/CMS’s and a lot of questions and opinions. Nothing groundbreaking, but it felt like everyone walked away learning something new, which is always cool…
Sadly, Gabe and I were late for the “Creative Commons: You’re Doing it Wrong” session (scheduling times got screwed up due to lunch) so we tried desperately to steer the conversation to Creative Commons, though it focused mainly on photography, and since we both have experience in the publishing world (the old paper version) we shared a bit, and tried to answer some questions. I also told the story of my Creative Commons license being violated, and what I did about it… I honestly could have seen a Creative Commons session like this go on for two hours…
Wrap up! That was it… we did some closing business, and then we packed it all up and headed out. The locals went out to dinner (I think) but we had Milwaukee waiting for us to return, so we did.
I’m not sure how much interest there would be in doing an Open Everything event in Milwaukee. I’m really surprised there were not more people in Madison for this… But hey, keep an eye open, and maybe an Open Everything event will happen near you.
(Oh, I really should have mentioned Doug Whitfield and Alnisa Allgood, who were instrumental in making this event happen. Thanks to both of them, and everyone else who made it happen.)
Alright, it seems people just aren’t getting it. It’s not that I want to see Twitter die, or go away, or fail… and I don’t just want identi.ca to replace Twitter. That’s not the idea.
The idea is to further MicroBlogging.
That’s it.
Or more specifically… OpenMicroBlogging. Here’s a bit from the spec:
To allow users of one microblogging service to publish notices to users of another service, given the other users’ permission.
So what this means is, opening up the world of MicroBlogging to all… Having Twitter interact with identi.ca with your own server running Laconica (or some other new software yet to be written) or Facebook or Myspace, or whatever. Any site/software that follow the standards of the OpenMicroBlogging spec would be able to participate… and as a user of any of these sites, you’d be able to communicate across services with others. So maybe you prefer how Facebook integrates the OpenMicroBlogging spec into it’s platform, you use them… meanwhile, your friend uses Twitter, and that’s ok, you can still talk to each other as if you were on the same system.
You may or may not remember the old days of silos, when systems could not easily interoperate with each others. Sadly, that’s where we could be headed unless we decide otherwise. I am interested in open source, and open data, and open systems. Freedom from lock-in, freedom to control your data, freedom for new services to come along and challege the establshed services.
How would the world look today if all blogs depended on Blogger? I’m thankful that projects like Movable Type and WordPress (and others) exist, so people have a choice, and the ability to innovate.
I often fear that most people just don’t care about these things, and to those people, I don’t know what else to say. There is a chance you use open source software in some way and may not even realize it, or care. Do you use Firefox? Mac OS X? Google? All of these depend on open source software.
So in the end, I care about MicroBlogging (OpenMicroBlogging to be exact) much more than I care about Twitter or what ever comes out next week.
I’ve been using open source software for over 10 years now, and I’ve been publishing for over 20 years. I tend to be one that likes to share what I create with the world, and also appreciates when others share what they have created. To me, this is much of the basis of open source software – the creation and sharing of not just code, but ideas and ideals. When I say I’ve been using open source software for many years, I don’t do so begrudgingly, I do it because I believe in it.
(Photo by Janet Towbin)
When Creative Commons came along, I immediately saw a benefit to it. again, I’m not just a consumer of things, I am a creator of things, and I’ve published music, and created videos, and images and words, that I’ve carefully chosen a license for. I want others to be able to properly use my work, as I want to be able to use theirs.
BarCamp is a great example of open culture, and I’m proud of being one of the people who brought BarCamps to Wisconsin. Our local group, Web414 is modeled very much on the way a BarCamp works, ad-hoc and open. (In fact, we even declare our meetings a “Creative Commons Zone” and request that media created at the meetings use a Creative Commons license when published.)
(Photo by Leo Reynolds)
Almost all of the feedback on things like BarCamp and DrupalCamp and Web414 has been positive. Now, I did say almost, because there exists this small group of people who seem to exist to take and not give, to do nothing but shoot things down instead of lift things up. They’re similar to trolls, but really, they are like leeches in that they tend to suck things out, and give nothing in return. They don’t share, they aren’t open, and they are negative to those who do, yet… they are more than happy to take what they can (for free) while never seeing the contradiction in their actions. Even those who make a living on the net, which was largely built on the ideas of openly sharing, don’t get it.
(Photo by Chris Dunphy)
And that’s where I’m done. I don’t want to deal with these people. They won’t change their minds, and I waste my time trying to get through to them. What’s the point? I’m more interested in positive and creative people who are doing interesting things, making the future happen, and willing to share that with the world. People who get excited about the work they are doing, whether they get paid for it or not. The people who care only about creating things in exchange for the almighty dollar, I have no time for you. Leave me be…
I’ll continue my pursuit of people and ideas and cultures that are open. That’s where the future is, or at least the future I want to be a part of.
I’ve learned a lot more about Flickr in the last month or so. This is due to two things, me pushing Creative Commons and Creative Commons at BarCampMilwaukee2.
Here are my settings for Privacy & Permissions in Flickr. I’m pretty open. Others are not so much. There are various reasons people are not open on Flickr. For the professional photographer, or someone hoping to be a professional photographer, they sometimes think people will “steal” their photos. Welcome to the publishing world. People steal things all the time. I’ve chosen to deal with ths by trying to educate people about copyright issues. Anyway, I don’t have a solution for that, but what really bothers me is these great photographers who want to protect their work, and upload lo-res images. The photos are awesome, but I just can’t see them in their full glory. I hate that. Meanwhile my photos suck but you can view them large and do a dozen different things to them without even asking me.
Here we see my settings for who can download, print, and blog my photos. Everyone can. That’s it. Full access. As long as you respect the license for each photo, and the Flickr ToS, you are good.
Hiding? Why hide stuff? EXIF data is what your camera embeds in your photos: things like the date and time a photo was taken, but also technical details about your camera and it’s settings. I find this useful when I want to do research on a camera. Since I find it useful, I assume other do as well. (See an example.)
Wanna see my photos? Cool! Everyone can. I post them on my blog, and elsewhere. I like to share. Want to comment on something? You need to have a Flickr account, they don’t allow outsiders to comment (but they can on your own blog hosted elsewhere.) If you want to add notes and tags to my photos, you at least need to be someone I consider a contact on Flickr. You can open that one up to ‘Any Flickr User’ though I haven’t yet.
Ah, the license. You can choose from any of the Creative Common licenses, or the old ‘All Right Reserved’ if you don’t want to give out any rights without people chasing you down and asking you. Choosing a Creative Commons license does not mean you give up all your rights. It means you selectively allow certain uses without having to grant permission for each case. You still maintain copyright of your work. I usually choose the NonCommercial license for my stuff. I figure if someone wants to make money off of it, they should talk to me first. But if someone wants to use it for personal use, or to promote something that is not a money-making venture (BarCamp, Web414, etc.) I am cool with that. Since others use a CC license, it allows me to build things like this BarCampMilwaukee2 flyer.
Since I am also a geo-nerd, I like to see and show where my photos were taken. I put most of them on a map using Flickr’s mapping tool. That last one, about EXIF location data, that’s for cameras that support GPS. While some people might say “Egad! My camera knows where I took the photo?” I know a ton of people who have been saying “Why the hell can’t my camera automagically geotag my photos!?” But then, maybe it’s just the crowd I run with. :)
Ultimately, only you can decide how open you want to be. I’m hoping some people who never thought about it before read this post and put some thought into opening up a bit.