The UOC is jointly organising the Free Knowledge, Free Technology Education for a Free Information Society conference in order to debate the role of free technology in the knowledge society and, in particular, in the field of education. This event, which is to bring together dozens of international experts, is to take place at Barcelona’s Exhibition Centre from July 15 to 17. The UOC is jointly organising the event with the SELF international project consortium.
The Free Knowledge, Free Technology conference is the first international event focusing on the production and exchange of educational and training materials in the field of free software and open standards. It aims to promote free software and the sharing of free knowledge and will bring together dozens of people from around the world, including representatives from governments, secondary and higher education, companies dedicated to ICT, publishers and non-governmental organisations.
Participants are to include visionaries and world leaders in free knowledge and technology, such as Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation; Karel de Vriendt, Head of Unit at the EC’s IDABC; Carlos Castro, Director of Extremadura regional government’s ICT Department, and Stephen Downes, researcher at the National Research Council Canada. Likewise, project leaders from around the world are to share their experiences with free knowledge and free technology in the fields of education, public administration and society in general.
The aim of bringing people together from all these groups is to catalyse current and future collaboration between different disciplines, sectors and countries using free software and to share success stories related to free software and free technology.
The chairs of the organising committee for this event are David Megías, Director of the
UOC’s official Masters in Free Software, and Wouter Tebbens of the Internet Society and Free
Knowledge Institute, Netherlands.
SELF Platform
SELF is also to be presented during the seminar. It is an EC platform for the creation and
collaborative exchange of free educational and training materials based on free software and open
standards.