I met Bre Pettis at Software Freedom Day. He’s a NY tinkerer and he’s got a new show up on the History Channel called History Hacker. He’s not actually hacking history itself so much as hacking on historical inventions.
Check out the pilot Friday Sept. 26th at 8pm (and again at midnight). If enough people Tivo it, he’ll get to make more shows. If not, this might be the only one.
Over the course of the show I learn about the inventors and inventions of the past and then hack the inventions together out of stuff in my closet.
The first pilot episode is all about Nikola Tesla who is an amazing character. He’s the man responsible for the current that comes out of your wall sockets. He battled Thomas Edison in the war of currents and won. He had over 300 patents and besides figuring out AC power, he came up with radio control and mucked about with electricity more than anybody.
In the show, I blow a glass tube from molten silica with Kevin at Scanlan Glass and then fill it neon gas with Dave of Tecnolux. I made an AC generator with my pal Raphael of NYCResistor. It got enough pedal power going to power a neon tube!
If you like the show, Bre has a blog post on how you can help turn this one-off into a series.
Title: FreeCulture2008
Location: UC Berkeley
Link out: Click here
Description: WHAT: A conference with keynotes, talks, workshops, activism, and parties.
WHEN: Oct. 11th 2008, with a smaller and more focused student workshop on Oct. 12th
WHERE: International House at Berkeley, University of California
WHY: It’s time for our community to spend time and learn from each other.
WHO: You, other free culture activists, professors, students, artists, musicians, coders, organizations like EFF and Creative Commons, and anyone interested in our community.
DETAILS: We’ve booked Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Prof. Pam Samuelson, and John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla as our keynotes with many more panels and presenters lined up.
Take a look at the schedule, read the about page, or register today!
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2008-10-11
24 September 2008
| RemyD |
Title: Creative License – Future of Music
Location: The Public Theatre
Link out: Click here
Description: Schedule
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Cocktail Hour in the lobby of The Public Theater
7:00 PM – 7:20 PM
Conversation with Kembrew McLeod, documentary filmmaker, associate professor, University of Iowa and co-author of Creative License and producer Steve Stein (aka Steinski) of Sonic Boom
7:20 PM – 8:30 PM
Panel discussion about music, sampling and fair use with:
June M. Besek Executive Director, Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School
El-P Recording Artist & Owner/CEO, Definitive Jux
Peter Jaszi Professor of Law, American University
Moderated by Kembrew McLeod, documentary filmmaker, associate professor, University of Iowa and co-author of Creative License
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-10-06
24 September 2008
| RemyD |
Mixing frequent event listings into my usual low-traffic feed made some non-New Yorkers unhappy. So: if you want everything but the events, you want this feed. The events are still available as a standalone feed. Of course, you can subscribe to everything if you want.
Also, feeds don’t help you figure out what’s happening on a particular date. I’ve added a calendar. It’s ugly. That might won’t change.
One thing hasn’t changed: if there’s an event that belongs on the community calendar, please drop an email to James at this domain.
One of the way Creative Commons fosters sharing culture around the world is to hold a series of salons. They’re doing one Tuesday, September 30th in NYC at the TOPP space. 7 to 10 pm, with presentations from Ground Report, Aviary, and Meerkat Media Art Collective.
A bunch of NYU and Columbia Free Culture students have teamed up with Wikipedia, CC, and TOPP to illustrate Wiki articles about NY landmarks with photographs. They’re conducting a picture-taking scavenger hunt this Saturday— people will fan out across the city to get the perfect angle on some historic NY sites.
Makes me wish I was in town this weekend. Go register and take some good ones for me.
Software Freedom Day was a great success. About 100 people joined us over the course of the evening, and as far as I could see, everybody had a good time. Some combination of quality people, weather and beer were all it took to keep folks smiling well past our planned 9 pm shutdown time.
Some big thanks are due to a lot of good folks for putting this together. First, I want to thank LimeWire and TOPP for hosting us in their rooftop garden. We’ll surely be seeing them at more community events in the future. At SFLC, Remy, Ian Sullivan, and Aaron Williamson did the heavy lifting, and none of this would have happened without their hard work. Eben was kind enough to direct some remarks to the assembled guests (we’ll have audio up shortly). Forrest Mars brought lots of initial energy and helped with much parallel planning. It was a good team that came together quickly and worked well. Thanks to all.
During the event, there was an overwhelming sentiment that we could profitably put some energy toward bringing together the disparate corners of NYC’s free software and free culture movement. I’ve been talking to various people about how we can do that in a lightweight, low-cost way. The first step is probably some sort of events feed. I will add a section to this blog that will list NYC free software and culture events. You can grab the rss or just browse its blog page. If there is a desire for a read-only email list, that can be arranged.
If you’re planning an event and would like to invite the community, let me know and I will add it to the feed.
The Software Freedom Law Center cordially invites you to the 2008 NYC Software Freedom Day Reception! Industry leaders, lawyers, advocates and hackers alike will be gathering to commemorate and celebrate the state of the movement; from the inception of the GNU Project 25 years ago to the present day, the lives of millions of people all around the world have been forever changed by software freedom.
We’re doing this Saturday, September 20th from 6pm to 9pm at a swell Tribeca rooftop garden.
Activities will include guest speakers from around the movement, as well as music and a raffle, with a focus on mixing, meeting, and greeting. The reception is a rooftop affair, providing ample time and space to celebrate, meet new people and reconnect with old friends.
RSVP required. Just drop me an email at vasile at softwarefreedom dot org.