freEtech is really shaping up to be awesome. I think that we might've picked too small of a venue even! ha!
Its been posted in the SD City Beat newspaper and emailed out to all Foundation 4 Change grantees. We've been getting lots of calls about it. A handful of people from hackbloc.org are coming and some MFA students from UCSD working on social software analysis are coming. Wow.
To all you radical techs out there. Lets start having these kind of open unconferences every couple of months. In europe they call them hackmeetings and they do them in big occupied social centers. If we did this with a wiki page, a space and two weeks, imagine if we took two months to plan it! Lets talk at freEtech about the next of these kinds of gatherings...
We're starting a schedule, so if you want to do a workshop or start a discussion or perform some music or show a film, go check out the schedule on the wiki and put your thing in! We also have flyers in english and espanol, so go print them out! All that stuff is here: sd hacklab wiki
If you're in san diego and want to help distribute flyers in english and spanish, please come by the City Heights Free Skool and pick them up! We have copies!
We also got an angry call from UCSD. That was funny. Good thing we decided to do it at the City Heights Free Skool, HOORAY for autonomous spaces!!!
me: hello?
caller: hi, i'm calling about freetech.
me: oh, great, how can i help you?
c: what's this for?!
me: ah, it's a free technology conference.
c: i'm calling from calit2. who are you? are with the group?!
me: i'm an mfa student, my office is on the 2nd floor.
c: you know there's a reservation process and fees...
me: yes, we reserved the two conference rooms on the second floor, but
we've decided to do it somewhere else, not at calit2.
c: oh. well. ok. bye.
me: bye.
Also, DIGG freEtech here!
So, here's Cory's (from boingboing.net) final response. No wonder we have such a problem with sexism, racism and homophobia in tech culture when the most famous people in the community are in denial that there's a problem...
technorati tags:linux, gnulinux, freesoftware, opensource, boingboing, slashdot, feminism, postcolonialism, sandiego, etech, hacking, hacklab, race, gender, racism, classism
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: no reply?
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:26:39 -0700
From: Cory Doctorow (doctorow At craphound (d0t) com>
To: Micha
Micha, your email rquired no response. It was full of baseless critique
(for example, characterizing ETECH as not being queer-friendly) and
devoid of a single substantive critique. ETECH is one of a spectrum of
ways that people can gather and talk about free software (I also note
for the record that though ETECH intersects with free software, it is
not a free software conference -- and it has never been a free software
confernce -- again, your critique is built on straw men). Your event
excludes the kind of person for whom an un-conference (especially one
couched in anti-capitalist rhetoric) is totally alienating. All events
exclude someone.
Your note below affirms that we have nothing to discuss. Calling
Slashdot a defender of O'Reilly is just risible -- and wrong. Slashdot
is one of the most persistent (and unfair) critics of O'Reilly on the
internet.
Basically, I don't spend a lot of time arguing with people who don't
know what they're talking about.
You don't seem to know what you're about.
Cory
///
Well, someone's a negative nancy, but that's fine because freEtech is going to be great. And hopefully, it'll be one of many, many free, open, radical tech conferences...
