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Free culture: collaboration in digital citizenship conferences in Geneva and Lausanne area

Foundation Ynternet.org organized two multiplier events to contribute to the dissemination and exploitation of Open-AE project results. First one took place in Geneve on 29 September 2020 and the second in Lausanne area (Grandvaux) on 31 October 2020. Two events were necessary because interests for participation was higher than COVID-19 restrictions for face-to-face events allowed.

The event in Geneva was organized by Ynternet.org Foundation and the FASe – Geneva Foundation for Sociocultural Animation invited local trainers, facilitators and other stakeholders and local agents to an event that allowed discussions and exchanges around the culture of Free. Specifically, this event made an attempt to answer to: How can it strengthen collaboration, the pooling of resources and digital citizenship?

Athanasios Priftis presented the results of the Open-AE project, with an emphasis on our collaborative tools and methods (academy and toolkit), as well as project’s recommendations for educators / facilitators. The event was followed by representatives of the public administration including the Service Media Schools – SEM – DIP – State of Geneva, municipalities and members of the World Economic Forum.

Florence Devouard, former president of the Wikimedia Foundation and now manages the Wikipedia encyclopedia, led this conference. She joined in video conference mode. Florence gave us instructions and feedback for the practical activities of online collaboration. Athanasios Priftis facilitated the workshop and the exchanges between the participants.

The Yorg Foundation and its network of experts have as mission the promotion of open and free technologies and educational resources (OER). That is why for this Multiplier Event YORG collaborated with FASe, a local swiss partner. FASe is a public law partnership foundation that promotes and strengthens social cohesion in the canton of Geneva. It develops actions for, by and with all types of population.

This event was aimed at facilitators, social workers and trainers working in the education sector, formal or non-formal, but also adolescents and young adults. The goal of this event was not only to present the results and recommendations of the OPEN AE projects but also to strengthen the culture and digital skills of participants, through collaboration, pooling of resources and digital citizenship.

This event allowed YORG to:

Present and discuss the results of the Open-AE project results (Curriculum, Toolkit, Piloting report and Guidelines for transferability)
Approach the themes of “digital citizenship” and the culture of Free Software, in relation to Wikipedia, from three angles: generic, “how to fight against fake news?”, data protection oriented, “what uses and consequences?”, health focus, “digital technology: remedy and / or poison?”

The second had the same aim and was moderated by Théo Bondolfi (Social Entrepreneur) and Athanasios Priftis and it also counted with the contribution of Henri Poulain , one of the founders of Datagueule (France 4 television program and web series). The event took place in La Smala Living Lab headquarters, an ecovillage in Grandvaux. This was a good moment to strengthen the local partnership between Yorg and La Smala Livinglab, a strong stakeholder on the French speaking Switzerland with robust experience with Open and Free Software Culture and Floss tools as well as online collaboration and cooperation.

Both events were open to everyone, but had a special interest for people who regularly transmit, through their activity, messages and their knowledge: teachers and trainers, actors in the fields of health, politics, the environment and culture, etc. Participants included environmental trainers, eco community and cooperative members, as well as Living Lab facilitators.

Text and images: Foundation Ynternet.org

Open source software strategy 2020-2023 of the European Commision

On October 21st, the European Commission approved the new Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023 of the Commission. This is an important step towards achieving the goals of the overarching Digital Strategy of the Commission and contributing to the Digital Europe programme.

The internal strategy, under the theme ‘’Think Open’’, sets out a vision for encouraging and leveraging the transformative, innovative and collaborative power of open source, its principles and development practices. It promotes the sharing and reuse of software solutions, knowledge and expertise, to deliver better European services that benefit society and lower costs to that society. The Commission commits to increasing its use of open source not only in practical areas such as IT, but also in areas where it can be strategic.

The key objectives of the new strategy are to enable the Commission to:

Progress towards digital autonomy of Europe’s own, independent digital approach;
Implement the European Commission Digital Strategy;
Encourage sharing and reuse of software and applications, as well as data, information and knowledge;
Contribute to the knowledge society by sharing the Commission’s source code;
Build a world-class public service.

The implementation of the strategy will be guided by 6 principles: think open, transform, share, contribute, secure, stay in control. In practice, the Commission aims to reinforce an internal working culture that is already largely based on the principles of open source and achieve the goals of the strategy by the following concrete actions:

Set up an Open Source Programme Office in the Commission;
Set and promote the inner source default;
Enhance the software repository;
Revise software distribution practices;
Enable and create innovation with open source labs;
Develop skills and recruiting expertise;
Increase outreach to communities;
Integrate open source in internal IT governance;
Ensure OSS security;
Encourage and promote inner source;

Source: European Commission

Open-AE multiplier event in Italy

The multiplier event held in October 2020 in Foligno (Italy) was the opportunity to share the results of the Open-AE project and create meaningful connections with relevant stakeholders in the field of digital skills, adult education and FLOSS culture.

The event was held on the first of October 2020 at the DigiPass hub in Foligno which is based next to CSF premises. During the extraordinary circumstances caused by Covid-19, the event was held in a blended and spread format: the main event was organized in presence in Foligno and streamed online. At the same time, other DigiPass hubs organized the simultaneous events in their centers and streamed the main events. This allowed to have smaller events in presence with the facilitation of DigiPass staff.

At the main event organized in Foligno, several stakeholders participated and took part in the discussion both online and in presence. Among the external speakers the following people took part in the discussion:

Representatives from the Umbria Region
Responsible for the Digital Agenda at regional level
Coordinator of DigiPass initiative
Representative of the Ministry for Innovation and responsible for the initiative Repubblica Digitale
Stakeholders
E-facilitators and adult education trainers

After an initial presentation of the DigiPass and Repubblica Digitale initiatives, Luca Pagliaricci introduced the Open-AE project’s results to the audience. The synergies between the Open-AE projects and the FLOSS approach were deeply highlighted during the event especially with regards to public and open initiative that would very much benefit from it.

Despite the limitations due to the Covid-19 emergency, no major deviations were reported in the organization and implementation of the event. To cope with the limitations, different and simultaneous events, online and in presence, were organized in the region thanks to the DigiPass network and its hubs thus avoiding great gathering of people and increasing the impact reaching a wider remote public.

Have you heard of the Social Issues platform?

Socialissues.tech aggregates issues from Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE, way of producing, distributing and consuming people’s service, based on cooperation and the common good.) projects. The tool searches for issues in Git-based version control systems (so far Gitlab and Github, free software version-control systems for tracking changes in source code during software development. ) label with socialissues.tech.

By doing it, the platform takes advantage of the powerful communities that exist around Free Software (FLOSS) to enrich the SSE ecosystem by creating a bridge between the tech and social worlds, making these projects gain importance and visibility thus facilitating entry to new contributors.

Using this platform, the projects move forward and have more contributors; new synergies between projects are promoted and the importances of welcoming FLOSS projects is highlighted.

Single contributors can find issues with a direct impact on society and can bring their tech know-how and provide solutions to the SSE entities.

Projects can use the space to showcase their projects to people who, by other means, would not get to know their initiatives. They can also open their project’s code to new contributors and get more stuff done, thanks to external contributions.

Some SSE projects at Catalonia have allied to help each other evolve and improve our ecosystem. They have now shown interest in leading this initiative collectives such as Coopdevs, Adabits, Dabne, Col·lectivaT and LliureTic. Definitely, Colectic is also more than interested in joining this initiative. And you?

Technologies for social transformation … are they all good?

In a context of data capitalism, where our entire digital life is facilitated, monitored and audited by 5 major technology companies worldwide (what we call GAFAM: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft), considering the free and open alternatives is a priority. Many social transformation initiatives don’t do it, most of times they don’t do it because the lack of time or the lack of knowledge.

Colectic wants help these initiatives. For that, it is developing “Passa’t al FLOOS” (Go FLOSS) project, which will support migrations from GAFAM to FLOSS on a regional level.

What is FLOSS?

FLOSS stands for technological solutions Free / Libre and Open Source Software: free or open source software projects. There are plenty of interoperable initiatives and sources, and most of them have been tested by the community and have been validated by millions of users.

How to Go FLOSS?

The social and solidarity economy entities of Catalonia can take the big step (not so big, if mesured by the effort, but really big if taking into consideration the social benefits) and join the Colectic’s project.

Colectic is working with XES (the social and solidary network) to produce a document with the diagnosis of the current situation, regarding the use of GAFAM and FLOSS resources. What are the needs of the entities of the social economy? What are the obstacles they encounter? What are the most appropriate strategies to migrate to FLOSS? And, in parallel, they are helping and leading the change to open and free software.

Do it: migrate, now

The change to ethical solutions can only be done one way: by doing it. Migrate, and do so thanks to adequate support and advice. And who better to advise and accompany than an entity that uses FLOSS as a tool? Colectic wants not only to help social entities in Catalonia migrate to FLOSS, but also wants to provide capacitation and training to the people who work and are partners in these entities so that the transformation is real, it is a success story.

Explain it!

Check that Colectic’s project is not just about some specific cases and that they are committed to dissemination and multiplication mechanisms. Stay tuned on their website!

FLOSS vs GAFAM? Are you still thinking about it? Do it, migrate, now!

“Passa’t al FLOSS” is an initiative of Colectic implemented in Catalonia with the collaboration of the City Council of Barcelona and Barcelona Activa.

“Public Money? Public Code!”

Free Software Foundation Europe reports that a coalition treaty in Munich (Germany) includes a positive statement on the use of Free Software: the principle “Public Money? Public Code!” should apply in future. Munich thus joins the FSFE’s initiative. Read more…

The “Public Money? Public Code!” initiative aims to set Free Software as the standard for publicly financed software. The Free Software Foundation Europe together with over 180 civil society organisations and more than 27.000 individuals signed the open letter. We will use the signatures to contact decision makers and political representatives all over Europe and convince them to make public code the standard. You are invited to add your signature to make a bigger impact on https://publiccode.eu/.

4 innovations we owe to open source

Matt Asay wrote an interesting commentary about the open source innovations. Most common answers to the question about which innovation has been contributed by the open source range from Linux to Kubernets and some other projects.

Matt took a different approach and listed:

Legal innovation
Process innovation
Tool innovation
Business model innovation

Learn more about them here.

Image: Image: uriz, Getty Images/iStockphoto

Colectic asks for the collaboration of e-facilitators for a European project

They will have to participate in a ‘focus group’ that aims to discover what training needs digital trainers and facilitators have. The call is part of the European project Open AE, in which the entity participates, and which seeks to promote free software in the field of non-formal adult education.

The focus group aims to build a resume to work learning digital skills using open technologies and free . The curriculum and tools that will be developed will be aimed at trainers and facilitators and will be completely free.

In order to make a good diagnosis of the skills needed for professionals with the profile of trainer and digital facilitator to continue doing the work they do with better conditions, Colectic asks facilitators of the Red Punt ICT participate in a ‘focus group’. Those interested in doing so must fill out this online form by March 29th. Colectic will contact them to specify the date, time and place for the face-to-face meeting. In return, they will be offered free training (to all those who collaborate)

Open AE is a European project that aims to promote free software in the field of non-formal adult education through three main challenges.

Promote access and learning through open educational resources .
Promote open source technologies in the non-formal education sector to support the advanced training of adult education professionals and students.
Aimed at trainers working in the non-formal education sector to reinforce digital skills and competences .

Do you want to be trained in “Open-AE” technological sovereignty?

With the aim of creating awareness and deepening the use of technological tools based on software and open source educational resources, we offer digital facilitators and trainers online training on technological sovereignty through the CampusLab de Punt TIC within the framework of the Open-AE project.

Technology is not just a tool. It reproduces power relations in design and development decision-making, while at the same time building its own imaginaries and transforming reality in a profound way. We have been told that the direction in which this change is heading is already marked, but it is not true. Only the public can redirect it.

Aiming to empower and help people facilitators and trainers digital in the use of digital tools open source , we offer a free training intensive for 60 hours

There are many contrasting quality open source (FLOSS ) tools that exist today. With this training, you will learn to take advantage of the freedoms granted to us by free software and prepare material for the activities of your point. We will study some of the most popular in different fields.

The course will be held through the CampusLAB training platform of Punt TIC and will be available from March 30 to June 30, 2020. Participants will receive an accreditation from the Punt TIC as they have completed this training action. You can register here .

Program

The DigCompEdu framework for a shared and open education
The emergence of copyleft and FLOSS licenses
E-Learning and FLOSS
Online entrepreneurship with FLOSS tools
Wikidata
How to create a Fablab

Open-AE is a European project that aims to promote free software in the field of non-formal adult education through three main challenges.

Promote access and learning through open educational resources.
Promote open source technologies in the non-formal education sector to support the advanced training of adult education professionals and students.
Aimed at trainers working in the non-formal education sector to reinforce digital skills and competences.

2020 State of Open Hardware

OSHdata, an independent project that launched in 2020, started by taking a look back and generating a static report about the state of the Open Source Hardware (OSH) ahead of the 10th Annual Open Hardware Summit in March 2020.

OSHdata’s findings are for the community. For the founders, engineers, developers, artists, customers, suppliers, and all the other stakeholders who make this community what it is.

The report is authored by Harris Kenny and Steven Abadie, two members of the Open Source Hardware community who have contributed to the certification of dozens of products over the past five years

The authors envisioned five different use cases of the OSHdata report (in alphabetical order):

Certified a product
Considering certifying
OSH customer
Researcher/Press
Supplier/Reseller

You can find the report here.

Image credit: OSHdata