LibrePlanet: Conference/2014/Lightning Talks

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10:55 - 12:35 on Saturday, 3/22 | Room 32-144 | Facilitator: Donald Robertson

Lightning talks are five-minute presentations given by conference attendees on free software topics they're passionate about.

If you would like to give a talk, please add a title, short description and (optionally) your name to the time slot you'd like below. You'll also be able to sign up at the conference, if there are spots remaining.

Please make sure your lightning talks are about free software-related issues and projects, and don't advocate proprietary software or Services as a Software Substitute (SaaSS). There are many conferences focused on "open source," but we're proud that people come to LibrePlanet to be part of the free software movement. In your presentations, please use the term "free software" rather than "open source" to help us keep LibrePlanet focused on computer user freedom as an ethical social movement. We appreciate it, and your audience will too.

To ensure a conference that's safe and fun for everyone, we take our anti-harassment policy very seriously. We'd appreciate it if you looked it over before planning your presentation.

You're welcome to bring a slide deck, as long as it works without requiring proprietary software. We recommend PDF or the .odp format readable by LibreOffice Impress. If you are using slides, please bring them to the lightning talk facilitator before you plan to talk, to save time during the presentations. The lightning talks won't be streamed. If you'd like to suggest a topic, but not necessarily give a talk, you're welcome to make a suggestion on the Discussion area for this page.

Our tips for an awesome lightning talk:

• Be as selective as possible with what you cover. (In our experience, a 5-minute talk cannot cover what a 15-minute talk covers and still be effective.)
• Use a large, reader-friendly font for all your slides.
• Keep your number of slides low and take care not to visually overload them.

Sign up!

To sign up, please sign in to this wiki or make an account with the links in the upper right of this Web page, then click Edit and add you talk title and your name (optional) to an unclaimed time slot.

Session 1: 10:55 - 11:40

• 10:55 - 11:10: Introductions, giving slides to facilitator

• Talk 1 title: Catrobat: A free mobile visual programming language that promotes the free software philosophy among kids and teens on a massive, world-wide scale.
  • Short description: Catrobat (AGPL 3.0'ed) is a visual programming language inspired by MIT's Scratch but independently developed and entirely running on smartphones and tablets --- no Laptop or PC whatsoever is needed to develop or execute Catrobat programs. Kids share and remix their self-programmed apps through our website, and the programs created and uploaded by kids are also released under the AGPL 3.0. Catrobat programs run on all major smartphone platforms including FirefoxOS, with the Android version (called Pocket Code) already freely available on Google Play (other platform versions are still alpha). Google is heavily promoting Pocket Code in their Google Play for Education program where it is the only programming system for schools available directly on Android tablets, and Catrobat was just chosen for the fourth time as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. Catrobat has also been chosen as the official programming system on the OLPC Android tablets, with our own app-icon on the main screen. More than 250 volunteers from more than 20 nations have worked together to bring Catrobat to life. Pocket Code allows to program just using one's thumb, and a first app can be created in less than one minute. I will demo Pocket Code live during my talk (takes only a few seconds!).

• Talk 2 title: Denying our software and services to all persons involved in privacy violations and mass surveillance.
  • Short description: Faced with the unexpected extent of the international dragnet type privacy violations and the mass surveillance scandal that came to light last year thanks to Edward Snowden, including the ubiquitous compromising of soft- and hardware (absolute must-see: Jacob Applebaum's talk from December 30 at the Chaos Communication Congress), as well as the felt impotence even of seasoned security experts confronted with this situation, and the often weak and half-assed formulations of legal responses of the concerned communities, some of which sound as if they were co-written by the NSA, our free software project has decided to take action and deny its software and services to all persons involved in these privacy violations and mass surveillance. The legal text is intricate but airtight, and I will describe our strategy and hope to discuss it with other participants at the conference.
  • Speaker name: Wolfgang Slany

• Talk 3 title: Building a For-Profit Business Based on Free-software Model.
  • Short description: I'm a Free software End-user/supporter working a Project to launch my Tech-Startup here in the Silicon Valley before June 2015. The Business Model will be founded on Free software principles. After spending years in the Proprietary software world, I'm disillusioned by the fakeness of the Proprietary software Model. Like the immense popularity of GNU/Linux has shown, Free-software products are generally superior to Proprietary software; Also there is no shortage of talented developers in the Free-software world; yet they are not very well adopted in the Business world because there is a perceived 'Brand-Equity' problem with Free-software. Based on my experience, we can correct this perception if we can show Business-value by stitching an end-to-end software ecosystem instead of isolated/one-off software pieces. And this is the mission of my Business Project. My goal in attending 2014 LibrePlanet is to network with committed developers who would want to see greater adoption of Free Software in Businesses (especially SMBs) by combining with my Business-experience to write Custom Business Software and in the process make some money. In my talk I will share some ideas about how I think it can be done.
  • Speaker name: Mrinal Sarkar

• Talk 4 title: libreCMC : The libre embedded distro for the masses.
  • Speaker name: Robert Call / RISCi_ATOM (ThinkPenguin)
  • Short description: LibreCMC is an embedded GNU/Linux-libre distro with the goal of freeing routers, servers and other embedded devices. In order to ensure our freedom to communicate with one another, infrastructure is going to be a key part in solving the issues of free communication with one another. libreCMC currently works on 4+ routers, x86 and x86_64 machines. This talk will cover what libreCMC is now, its future goals and will allow for conversation with the developer at the end of the session.

• Talk 5 title: Snowdrift.coop — A new cooperative economy for Free/Libre everything
  • Speaker name: Aaron Wolf
  • Short description: How can we take all the funds that support proprietary works and move them to Free/Libre projects (and without compromising what already works)? Snowdrift.coop is an ambitious multi-faceted project built around a core element of a many-to-many matching pledge: "I will donate more if more people join me." The system isn't operating yet, but we're making steady progress with 18 months of dedicated work and research behind us. We can use help and feedback.

• Talk 6 title: LapMotion
  • Speaker name: Julian Daich
  • Short description: A network community focused on recycling and sending unused laptops to remote clinics and medical centers using Free Software and avoiding monetary or enivormental costs. Computers and IT are scarce resources for some caregivers providers in remote areas. In the other hand 50 million tons of E- waste are produced every year. We propose a network to connect laptops donnors, with people which recycle laptops, travelers and remote medical centers using Free Software usefull for clinical use and other existing resources.

Waiting list (add your talk here if the session is already full):

• Title: Advocating Free Software to Consumer
  • Speaker name: Ivan Zaigralin
  • Short description: I'd like to compare two kinds of arguments for the use of free software: the ethical one, championed by FSF, and a utilitarian one, to be described. I hope to show that when it comes to addressing the needs and aspirations of most software users, a straightforward consumer advocacy argument may be more fitting and more effective than an examination of moral ramifications of using non-free software. In the end, the utilitarian argument may also be seen as ethical in nature, but in a way that appeals mostly to pure users of software, as opposed to active contributors. [Either of the two Lightning Talks sessions would do.]

Session 2: 11:50 - 12:35

• Talk 1 title: Tiki Suite is a selection of free server, web, mobile and desktop apps with a concerted effort for greater interoperability and security, which is aimed at small & medium-sized organizations. The Tiki Suite is especially suited to decentralized and knowledge-centric organizations and offers the features that what 80% of the people use 80% of the time (collaboration, office productivity, publishing, etc.). Features include: Email + Wiki + CMS + Groupware + Commerce + Accounting + Document Management + CRM + Web conferencing + Desktop sharing + PBX VOIP Telephony + Instant messaging & presence + Video management + E-learning, etc.
  • Speaker name: Marc Laporte, tiki.org

• Talk 2 title: PeerLibrary – making knowledge accessible
  • Short description: PeerLibrary is a web platform for real-time discussion of academic publications. By bringing scholars together we help bridging gaps between scholars and their understanding of academic publications. Open access movement is trying to make publications readable by anyone, but this is not really enough. Publications have to be also accessible (and reusable). By capturing the knowledge created while reading publications and making it free for everyone, publications become seeds of knowledge to read and build upon.
  • Speaker name: Mitar

• Talk 3 title:
  • Short description:
  • Speaker name:

• Talk 4 title: Why OpenStack must be a Free Software ?

Today OpenStack is a business driven Software, I hope it should be also a Free Software. Why and How: I'm going to explain it !

• • Speaker name: Jonathan Le Lous is a Free Software professional and activist for 9 years in France. He's board member of April, association which promotes and defends Free Software in France, co-founder of French User OpenStack community, speaker and co-organizer of events. Also, he's cloud leader at Savoir-Faire Linux a Canadian company.

• Talk 5 title: ProteanOS: Liberating Embedded Systems
  • Short description: ProteanOS is a fully-free BusyBox/Linux-libre distribution configurable for a wide variety of embedded systems. This self-hosting binary distribution is developed from scratch with inspiration from other projects like Debian and OpenEmbedded.
  • Speaker name: P. J. McDermott

• Talk 6 title: Ohloh.net & VersionEye.com
  • Ohloh is a free, public directory of FLOSS projects and the contributors who create and maintain it. Ohloh.net is editable by everyone, like a wiki. All are welcome to join and add new projects, and to make corrections to existing project pages. This public review helps to make Ohloh.net one of the largest, most accurate, and up-to-date FLOSS software directories available. There is an Ohloh.net community day, the Monday just after LibrePlanet 2014
  • VersionEye is a cross-platform search engine for FLOSS libraries, which tracks more than 250K FLOSS libraries from Java, Ruby, Python, Node.JS, PHP, JavaScript, R and Clojure. Soon we will add other languages. You can follow any of the 250K FLOSS libraries on VersionEye and we will notify you as soon the next version is released. VersionEye helps you to stay up-to-date. VersionEye can actively monitor your source code and notify you about outdated dependencies in your project. Beside that it shows you which licenses your dependencies are using.
  • Speaker name: Marc Laporte

• 12:25 - 12:35: Wrap up

Waiting list (add your talk here if the session is already full):

• Title: Book downloading, and what a free as in freedom book library should look like
  • Speaker name: Nick White
  • Short description: I'm going to start by briefly talking about the getxbook tool I wrote to downoad books from Google Books and Amazon. However I've come to realise that this will never be good enough as the basis for a library which respects freedom and privacy, and allows you to ask whatever questions of the underlying data you want. I will present a possible good alternative model, which we should be able to get to even without the resources of an organisation like Google.

• Title: The NSA's Use of Free Software
• Without slides, this talk is going to coma-inducing.
  • Speaker name Saul Tannenbaum
  • Short description: Mission aside, the NSA is a technology organization that selects and uses software that meets organizational needs. This talk will survey what we know about the NSA's use of free software from public information and Edward Snowden's leaks. We'll look at one curious example of the NSA's contribution to the free software community, Accumulo, the NSA's Hadoop derivative. I ask the question: How should an ethical community react when its tools are used in ways we might find contrary to our core values?