GoodGNUs

The Association For Free Software (AFFS) has been formally wound up this week. Founded at a meeting during the 2002 Sheffield Linux Seminar, AFFS was a membership organisation for UK supporters of Free Software - as distinct from a national chapter of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which would have been more official, and less member-led.

AFFS had some great early successes, including securing donations from UKFSN (apologies for the 3rd set of initials in two paragraphs) to support UK Free Software projects. Jason Clifford’s UK Free Software Network is a not-for-profit ISP created to support the local Free Software community.

I was co-opted to the committee early on to help with projects such as campaigns to get Free Software into schools, and served as chairman for a few months before family needs and conflicts with work led to me scaling back voluntary commitments.

Sadly AFFS had problems with membership renewals, and stalled somewhere along the way. Now it has been formally wound up I hope we can look back on the successes of the Free Software community in the UK, and ponder what comes next. A UK chapter of the FSFE perhaps (the UK being the only significant country without one), or some other form of membership organisation. Does the success of the Manchester Free Software Group show the way? After all, it’s always best to build on existing structures.

Free Software Funding

The residual membership voted to distribute the remaining AFFS funds as follows:

The funds remaining in its (the AFFS') bank account have been disbursed
as follows, two thirds, £2307, to the FSFE, and one third, £1154, as a
grant, to a UK project to develop software.

In more detail, that £1154 has been entrusted to me to disburse to the Free Software projects I’m working on for the Voluntary Sector. It will be mostly used to fund financial software for Credit Unions, and to help with a project trying to provide entirely Free Software cloud services for 3rd Sector groups.

Open Collaboration

More details of the projects will appear here, as part of my “Calls for Collaboration…” posts, however here’s the basics: We have begun work on flexible, web-based, Credit Union software. Development cost is currently covered, mostly through donated time, but incidental expenses need to be met.

For cloud services I have a server generously donated by Blue Fountain Systems. We’re hoping to get donated hosting (call me on 0779 456 0714 with your generous offer), but the project has expenses to meet in getting geographically-disparate volunteers together.

By funding projects that have actually started, but are at early stages, and by funding incidental expenses to supplement voluntary and otherwise funded coding, I hope to make the community’s money go much further. For this reason I may also consider other projects that arise over the next 12 months.

Transparency & Accountability

Regular updates will appear on Twitter, with occasional summaries published here. However, to be clear on what’s happening with the money, I will publish an interim summary of progress here next summer, and a clear summary of where the money has gone at the end of 2010.

• Digital inclusion, disabled audiences and web accessibility through personalisation
  “Government Digital Inclusion Champion Martha Lane Fox was the Big Thinker at COI last week. She announced the launch of her campaign to Race Online for 2012, which aims to get more people online particularly from socially excluded groups.”
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• Words & Eggs
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• grain edit · modern graphic design inspiration blog + vintage graphics …
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• SoyPrint Toner Cartridges
  “For every SoyPrint toner used, you save 2-3 litres of petroleum, and you keep 6 pounds of heavy plastic and a pound of metal out of landfills. This environmentally friendly SoyPrint black laser toner cartridge replaces HP item number 92274A and is compatible with HP 4L, 4P, and 4MP machines.”
  (tags: ecofriendly biodegradable printer peakoil officesupplies soya)
• Natural Economy - Resources - Reports
  “A suite of reports on Green Infrastructure looking at a number of issues; Green Infrastructure development based on the need expressed within the Region, the opportunities for GI to deliver sub-regional economic plans, an assessment of the CITYgreen computer model for estimating economic benefit, an outline strategy for linking green and grey infrastructure, and a collection of pioneering work on the economic benefits of Green Infrastructure”
  (tags: green eco reports economy northwest environment habitat naturaltourism)
• The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing | Copyblogger
  “Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away”
  (tags: socialmedia marketing tips blogging strategy advertising advice)
• 7 Mantras For Maverick Entrepreneurs | Sterling Performance | BNET
  “Throw out your business plan.” Like it :-)
  (tags: business advice entrepreneur socialenterprise marketing mentoring)
• BE LEGAL: Six things a hyperlocal blogger really should know about the …
  “…the potential for danger in the ice field of libel law is terrifying”
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• Geek Hub
  The Hub for UK Tech Events & Groups
  Born from ‘Wheres The Geek’, we decided on a brand change partly because we’ve shifted focus a little and partly because people kept moaning about the grammar!
  (tags: tech events geek geekup hub portal)
• Bespoke: Tailor-made local news
  “THE Bespoke project is an innovative collaboration between a number of different academic and commercial bodies around the UK, including the universities of Central Lancashire, Surrey, Newcastle, Falmouth and Dundee, the Lancashire Evening Post and Nokia Research.
  “Highly skilled Bespoke project members work across a number of different disciplines, and include anthropologists, product designers, engineers and mobile applications developers – as well as experienced multi-media journalists.

  “We are currently arranging a series of digital storytelling workshops with members, users and clients of groups and organisations as diverse as the Ablaze Youth Group, Callon Kids Community Club, Contour Housing, Fishwick Rangers Youth Development Scheme, Preston FM and Preston College’s Elev8 initiative, as well as individual members of the public”

  (tags: digitalstorytelling community hyperlocal collaboration journalism radio media film)
• #ECOSYS
  “demonstrate that virtual collaboration can drive social innovation, adapting our collaboration process for improved results as experience is gained”
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• Winston Churchill’s Short Guide to Life: 6 Essential Fundamentals
  “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” “I never worry about action, but only about inaction”
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• Same ol’ g? Think again: A visual study of the lowercase g
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• Recycling Lives; the recycling charity (Reg. No. 1116562)
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  There is some hope, but not much. The depressing reality of “An economy predicated on constant growth cannot be the engine of a change that urgently demands less of it”
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• Monbiot.com - The Population Myth
  Population Control / Reduction = “Way too many of you, just enough of me”. The world can support a huge population, just not on a European/US consumption pattern
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As the second day of Open09 closes in a (somewhat muted) panel session, what has come out of this?

For me, every session seemed to point towards greater need for collaboration within and across sectors. Creative people, whether artists, coders or web designers, need to let go of the fear of losing control of their ideas, or having them stolen.

There are risks, but the potential benefits for individuals & micro-businesses of sharing ideas, and trying to build on them together are huge.
This is best shown by the success of Free & Open Source software. Projects like Debian GNU/Linux (the foundation on which Ubuntu is built), comes from open sharing with big companies like HP, local governemnts like Extremadura, and small companies and individual programmers.

Network Effect

Techies have the advantage that since the advent of the Internet they’ve collaborated online. Now the whole world’s doing it, so what’s stopping creative people following the Free Software model? No, really, what’s stopping them?

Let me know why you’re not collaborating more. We can only break down the barriers to change if we know where they are.

It's behind you - robot fun at #bcMan2

This weekend saw the 2nd BarCamp Manchester - an unconference that carries on through the night. Like all unconferences, attendance implies participation, and therefore giving a talk. I gave three.

The first, on permaculture, sustainability, & forest gardens, was quite poorly attended - not something one worries about in general at barcamps, as there’s so much going on it’s impossible to be everywhere. However it did lead to some discussions late into the night on the disconnect between the techie community and those working for a more sustainable future (something we tried to address with #SmallSteps, & will return to in the future). Sorry, NO SLIDES, but plenty of info online.

My session with Paul Robinson of Vagueware on collaboration, co-working & virtual boards, entitled Profitable Collaboration for Freelancers, brought together freelancers eager to learn more about co-working, and to build better businesses through smart collaboration rather than taking on more employees. This is something the local tech sector really gets, but those paid by the government to support small businesses don’t seem to understand at all. It also made me realise I should probably get round to joining Fly-the-Coop.

Saturday night’s revels (which didn’t stop at all during the 6 hours I slept) meant Sunday morning started fairly quietly, but still brought a number of people to my third session, on organisation “for those who are really bad at it”. In this I count myself, which is why I have developed systems to allow for that, as well as adopting GTD. Conversations between two of the participants on this were still going on when I left the event an hour later.

Again, no slides, but this poster is more than tangentially related. Also, you can:
buy David Allen’s GTD book [affiliate Amazon link].

"Sleep is ones & zeroes"

Far better than running sessions is going to others’ talks, and hearing about things about which people are really passionate and knowledgable. Also the talks which lead to great discussions, leading you to new areas of familiar topics. Even better, the conversations in the bars & corridors, as BarCamp brings together 200 great people with so much to say.

There’s far to much to list the highlights, so I’ll just mention the very first session I went to on Saturday morning: the Surrealist writing exercise. This involved writing nouns (techie & abstract) & their meanings, then swapping them round with often startling results.

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End of the first day: catching up on micro-blogging [CC by-nc-sa image from yajamesu