Free Knowledge, Free Technology
Education for a free information society
First International Conference
July 15-17, 2008
Barcelona, Spain

http://fkft.eu

Register here!

The FKFT Programme has confirmed important keynote speakers and received a wealth of submissions from international participants. The selected sessions can now be found online at http://FKFT.eu/2008/

The pioneer of the concepts of Free Software and copyleft, and initiator of the GNU project, Richard Stallman will open the FKFT Conference on the 15th of July. This session can be attended free of charge, previous registration. Just send an e-mail with the subject "RMS registration" and your name to registrations[AT]fkft.eu.

In the educational track, there is a keynote from Stephen Downes, one of the most important thinkers of how technology changes education these days. There are presentations, discussion panels and workshops, e.g. from educational software projects, Free Software in schools, Higher Education and training. And of course there will be sessions about various aspects of the SELF Platform and the future of SELF.

In the governmental track, there are two keynotes: Karel De Vriendt from the European Commission (IDABC) will talk about open standards and Free Software at European level, while Carlos Castro will give the regional perspective of Extremadura, the Spanish region that keeps inspiring many governments around the world with their strategic plan on Free Software and Digital Literacy. Besides, there will be presentations from Cenatic, the Spanish national reference centre on Free Software, and various others.

For those who want to know all about the technology behind SELF, the developers team will hold a day-long pre-conference workshop on Monday July 14th, and a sprint session parallel to the FKFT. Those willing to code or contribute to the course materials for SELF during the sprint can request a scholarship to get their entrance fee waived. See: http://ftfk.eu/en/ExtraC

Registration is still open.

The FKFT 2008 organisers highly recommend to make reservations for hotels and flights as early as possible as July is high-season in Barcelona. Register now at http://fkft.eu/register!

The SELF Consortium (Internet Society Netherlands, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Free Software Foundation Europe, Gothenburg University, Internet Society Bulgaria, Fundación Via Libre and Tata Institute for Fundamental Research) and the Free Knowledge Institute will collaborate to organise the content of the conference and to build strong relationships between attendees. The conference partners recognise the vital importance of the collaborative creation and sharing of free educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards. Our conference host is the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

The SELF Platform, a collaborative authoring tool inspired by Wikipedia, will play an important role in achieving this goal. SELF is an international project, initially supported by the European Commission, which has developed a platform to encourage the creative cooperation and the sharing of educational materials, paying special attention to Free Software and Open Standards. The SELF Platform is open to the contributions of all those who like to bring their knowledge to it, and share this knowledge without restrictions.

Free Software, as opposed to proprietary software, can be copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restrictions. Moreover, Open Standards, and the capacity they offer for exchanging knowledge and sharing information, have become essential because they allow business and administration processes to function in a more flexible, transparent and cost-efficient way. The expansion of Free Software has brought together a continually growing community of developers.

General Co-Chairs:

David Megias (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Wouter Tebbens (Free Knowledge Institute)

Program Chair:

David Jacovkis (Free Knowledge Institute, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Conference information
Organising team
For Papers
For Registration
For Sponsorship

Contact Addresses:

David Megias, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
dmegias[AT]uoc.edu
Tel: (+34) 933 263 735
Fax: (+34) 933 568 822

Wouter Tebbens, Free Knowledge Institute
wouter[AT]freeknowledge.eu
Tel: (+31) 20 8910 319
Fax: (+31) 877 844 107