Announcement of 4th Oekonux Conference

Free Software and Beyond
The World of Peer Production
4th Oekonux Conference
in cooperation with
P2P Foundation

Invitation

Project Oekonux researches the economical, political and social forms of Free Software and similar forms of production we collectively call peer production. In Project Oekonux, different people with different reasons and different approaches get together to build something new. A lot of participants want to know, whether and if so, how, the peer production can serve as a basis for a new society.

For the 4th Oekonux Conference Project Oekonux cooperates with the P2P Foundation. The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives researches, documents and promotes P2P practices in every domain of social life. It’s a global cyber-collective and aims to be a knowledge and internetworking platform for open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented initiatives on a global scale.

During the past decade the phenomenon of Free Software has become successful and well-known. It is still amazing how in the realm of software the creativity of so many volunteers leads to products which are useful for the whole mankind. Ten years after Project Oekonux was founded the world has changed. As expected by us the principles of the development of Free Software are spreading out to other fields. Wikipedia and Open Access are two of the most interesting examples among many. It is time to look at peer production from a broader perspective.

The 4th Oekonux conference
Free Software and Beyond
The World of Peer Production

takes up this development and widens the perspective from Free Software to other fields of peer production. Project Oekonux and P2P Foundation are proud to welcome nearly 30 invited contributors which will share their experience, studies and insights with us on the following topics

Peer production beyond Free Software

• Free Design of material goods for less industrialized countries
• Open Source Car
• Free Science with Open Access
• Open Street Map project
• Peer production in art
• Free Farming
• Free Knitting

Aspects of Free Software

• Free Software in Latin America
• Innovation in Free Software
• „Others“ in the community
• Communities and single developers
• Women in Free Software

Peer production and social movements

• The Hipatia project
• Social movements and peer production
• Indigenous movements and cyberspace

Theories on peer production

• Patterns in peer production
• Market and peer production based economies
• Peer production and the concept of truth
• Organization in peer production

Future of peer production

• Current limitations of peer production
• Money and peer production
• Ideas for expanding peer production
• Political scenarios for expanding peer production

Please see the program page for detailed information and some more contributions.

After the inspiration of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Oekonux Conference we hope and expect that in an open atmosphere critical voices as much as the enthusiasm of the hackers of all kinds once more will merge into a creative process. We hope and expect, that again the wide range of presentations contributed by international participants from science and practice will lead to new insights and broader understanding for all. We hope and expect, that as before we will have a lot of fun 🙂 .

4th Oekonux Conference
March 27th-29th, 2009
University of Manchester

Please register for free: http://www.oekonux-conference.org/registration.html