Monday, 16 March 2009
Conference in Retrospective
The organisers of the Internet for Activists conference will get together over the next few days to look at what was good and what was imperfect. Meanwhile, we welcome your views: here are blogs from UCL Computer Science MobBlog and speaker Laurie Penny and lecture notes from Kevin Gillan to help your memory! Just in: three other speakers have posted: Karin Robinson, Richard Seymour and Sara Hall. Interesting reads!
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Free Our Books online. Campaign launch
We at The Internet for Activists head office (communal computer room at SOAS!)are pleased to announce the details of the launch of this very important campaign. We have re-arranged our timetable to accommodate the move of people from SOAS to IOE (just across the road. See you all there. This is the power of effective, combined online/ground activity.
Launch time: 1pm, Saturday 14th March 2009
Logan Hall, Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.
Free Our Books – announcement (version 0.1)
Academic work is publicly funded. Both Research Councils UK (2005,2006) and a parliament commission (2004) recommended that all “Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.”
Two universities have already implemented a version of such policy, through mandatory online open access self-archiving: Stirling (UK, 2007) and Harvard (USA, Feb 2008).
This campaign calls for this recommendation to be fully implemented across all academic institutions.
We believe that all academic research output has to be available online for public use free of charge through institutional mandatory self-archiving policies.
Most theoretical and ideological commitments to equality can not be implemented easily, this one can.
We call upon all academics and students to support this call for action by both putting their own work online immediately and by taking decisive further steps to make their departments and universities implement mandatory online open access self-archiving policies that would make all academic research outputs available online free of charge – this includes both books and journal papers.
Get involved: start a campaign at your institution, let us know about it, use our action pack to build the support and implement institutional policies.
Free Our Books: Make citizens' books and research papers available to them.
http://www.freeourbooks.org.uk/
Toni Prug (student, Queen Mary) and Clare Solomon (student, SOAS)
Launch time: 1pm, Saturday 14th March 2009
Logan Hall, Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.
Free Our Books – announcement (version 0.1)
Academic work is publicly funded. Both Research Councils UK (2005,2006) and a parliament commission (2004) recommended that all “Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.”
Two universities have already implemented a version of such policy, through mandatory online open access self-archiving: Stirling (UK, 2007) and Harvard (USA, Feb 2008).
This campaign calls for this recommendation to be fully implemented across all academic institutions.
We believe that all academic research output has to be available online for public use free of charge through institutional mandatory self-archiving policies.
Most theoretical and ideological commitments to equality can not be implemented easily, this one can.
We call upon all academics and students to support this call for action by both putting their own work online immediately and by taking decisive further steps to make their departments and universities implement mandatory online open access self-archiving policies that would make all academic research outputs available online free of charge – this includes both books and journal papers.
Get involved: start a campaign at your institution, let us know about it, use our action pack to build the support and implement institutional policies.
Free Our Books: Make citizens' books and research papers available to them.
http://www.freeourbooks.org.uk/
Toni Prug (student, Queen Mary) and Clare Solomon (student, SOAS)
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Location
http://www.soas.ac.uk/visitors/location/maps/
Our conference is based in the main building of the Russell Square campus of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The rooms will be signposted on the day.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Our speaker Hicham Yezza has been charged and sentenced to 9 months.
I have just received a call from his agent who has given me the small bit of information above. Of his nine month sentence they expect him to be incarcerated for 4 1/2. The charge is “securing avoidance of immigration control using deception” and comes under the Immigration Act.
This is an absolute outrage. What sort of civil liberties do we have when a well known activist and columnist is charged with this farce of an excuse?
We would like to send a message of solidarity to him and thank him so much for going out of his way to find time for us for our conference.
Please also send messages to: emailaprisoner.com
Read Lenin's Tomb comment HERE
Friday, 6 March 2009
Booking Enquiries
We've been getting enquiries from people wishing to book a place at this conference. This is just to note that there is no formal booking procedure necessary: just turn up at SOAS to the sessions you wish to attend and we'll have a sign-in sheet with the option to leave your email address for occasional future updates to the project.
However, please turn up early to avoid disappointment.
However, please turn up early to avoid disappointment.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Provisional Conference Lineup
| Provisional Line up for conference | ||
|
| Room G2 | Room B104: workshops |
| 10.00-10.30am | Registration | |
| 10.30-11.30am | Opening plenary: On the political uses of the internet Speakers: Hicham Yezza. Ex-Nottingham student and Guardian columnist Fiona Osler of Red Pepper and author of "The Activist's Guide to the Internet" Dr. Kevin Gillan, Sociologist, http://www.antiwarresearch.info/ Activists Stewart and Patrick of video Blog: The Road to Gaza return and report back. Chaired by Clare Solomon of Solomon's Mindfield | |
| 11.30-11.45 | Break | |
| 11.45-12.45 | Internet Security Speakers: George Danezis, Microsoft Research Security Group Rep from the Open Rights Group | Effective online organisation: Widgets, live and micro-blogging & co-ordination Speaker by live link-up from Egypt: Hossam el-Hamalawy of Arabawy blog |
| 12.45-1.30 | IN LARGER VENUE - LOGAN HALL, Institute of Education Free Our Books Campaign Launch: Speakers: Toni Prug and special guests tbc. | Workshop: Using Humour Effectively Online Speaker: Kate Smurthwaite, Cruella Blog |
| 13.45-14.30 | Lunch. Available in common room | |
| 14.30-15.45 | Blogging for Building Campaigns Speakers: Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads Laurie Penny of Penny Red Please bring plenty of your own examples and questions as we will have plenty of time for discussion and sharing tips. | Workshop: Video Activism Speaker: Ady Cousins Bring equipment if you want to get started straight away |
| 15.45-16.00 | Break | |
| 16.00-17.00 | Effective Online Campaigning - Success Stories Rep from Encyclopedia Dramatica on the anti-Scientology movement David Semple from ThoughCowardsFlinch and Liberal Conspiracy Karin Robinson, Political Consultant, blogger and regional director of the Americans Abroad for Obama campaign. Sara Hall from the successful "Stop the Deportation of Guy Njike" campaign. | Workshop: "Be the Media" With members of Indymedia UK. |
| Laptop surgery will be run all day in SOAS JCR. Please bring your own equipment to participate in the workshops and your own experiences or questions to participate in the plenaries. | ||
| 17.00-23.00 | Entertainment, Ugandan food and networking in SOAS bar | |
| Stalls and bookshops all day | ||
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