[Asis-l] FW: First Monday Conference

[Richard Hill]

_____
Richard B. Hill
Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD  20910
Fax: (301) 495-0810
Voice: (301) 495-0900 

-----Original Message-----
From: Readership of First Monday [mailto:FIRSTMONDAY at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU] On
Behalf Of Edward J. Valauskas
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 9:13 PM
To: FIRSTMONDAY at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Subject: First Monday Conference

First Monday Conference
FM10 Openness: Code, science and content
15-17 May 2006, at The University of Illinois at Chicago

Celebrate ten years of First Monday!

Register at http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Send an abstract or paper to http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Thanks to a grant from The Open Society Institute, as many as 20 
participants from developing countries may receive grants to attend 
the Conference. An application form can be found at 
http://firstmonday.org/fm10/FM10_OSI_fundreq.doc. Deadline 10 
February 2006.

The Conference is generously sponsored by The Open Society Institute, 
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The University of 
Illinois at Chicago University Library and The Maastricht Economic 
Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), University 
of Maastricht.

About the Conference

Recent years have seen a strong interest among academics, policy 
makers, activists, business and other practitioners on open 
collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. In some areas, 
such as free software / open source, sustainable business models have 
emerged that are holding their own against more traditional, 
proprietary software industries. In the sciences, the notions of open 
science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of openness in 
the academic community that, despite its past successes, is 
increasingly under threat. And open access journals and other open 
content provide inspiring examples of collaborative creativity and 
participatory access, such as Wikipedia, while still in search of 
models to ensure sustainability.

There are clear links between these areas of openness: open content 
often looks explicitly towards open source software for business 
models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of 
the potential of openness, how it can work, as well as a warning of 
the threats it may face. Finally, open collaboration is closely 
linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation 
rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries.

Despite these clear links, there has been surprisingly little 
thoughtful analysis of this convergence, or of the real value of the 
common aspect of open collaboration. In particular, while open source 
software - due to its strong impact on business and on bridging the 
digital divide - has drawn much attention, it may provide false hopes 
for the sustainability of openness in other areas of content that 
need careful examination. The conference -- FM10 Openness: Code, 
science and content - Making collaborative creativity sustainable -- 
provides a platform for such analysis and discussion, resulting in 
concrete proposals for sustainable models for open collaboration in 
creative domains.

The Conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the 
foremost online, peer-reviewed academic journal covering these issues 
since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous papers 
by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration, open access, 
and open content in its various forms, it is itself an example of 
open collaboration in practice: for a decade, the journal has been 
published on a purely voluntary basis, with no subscription fees, 
advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The success of First 
Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers around the world, 
downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each month.

For more details, contact Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor of First 
Monday at ejv at uic.edu. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!