CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
            -- Creating an Information Commons for Saskatchewan --

Are you concerned about the privatization of information as it affects
you in Saskatchewan? We want your input! We are a group of University
of Regina researchers, and we are organizing a conference
for the fall of 2005 to talk about the value of keeping
information public, of sharing with humanity information
that is of value to humanity.

We know that throughout the world, databases, scientific discoveries,
technological breakthroughs and even living entities are increasingly
becoming the property of private companies, or falling
under the management of for-profit enterprises. Because
we're connected with the university, we know how this
affects academic research.  We suspect this trend affects
many other people in Saskatchewan as well, in ways that we
may not anticipate.

For this reason, we're making this call for ideas.  Please distribute
this notice as widely as possible.  Whether you work in health,
information and communications technology, government,
education, agriculture, the arts, media (or any other
field), you may have had some experience with the
loss of public information, ideas and information systems,
especially in the past decade.  Maybe you've seen some
publicly-created discoveries and databases being
taken over by corporations. You may also have come across some good
ideas and networks for sharing information freely.  Please
send us your ideas for topics and presenters (including
yourself).  The only restriction is that the topics
must focus on Saskatchewan.  Send us a note (to
) if you'd like to stay
informed about the conference.

We are also hoping to hold an Information Fair concurrent with the
conference, at which people would be welcome to showcase
innovations  and alternative models that will help create an
Information Commons. We imagine a space where people
can meet, interact, share new ideas and show each other some neat
stuff. It would be advertised and open to the public, not
just for conference participants. If you have a display or
demonstration in mind about free knowledge or the problems
with unfree knowledge, please let us know the
basic details and what your needs would be (display table, internet
connection, A/V equipment, etc). It could be anything from
an interactive computer set-up to a popular theatre
presentation - we're waiting to hear from you
about what's possible. This will help us plan the scale and
scope of the Fair.

IMPORTANT: We need to receive your ideas (by post, fax, or e-mail) by
Friday, September 16th, but we would appreciate receiving as
soon as possible.

Daryl Hepting, Roger Petry, Patricia Elliott, Claire Polster, Philip
Fong, David Gerhard

The Information Commons Project
c/o Computer Science Department
University of Regina
CW308 - 3737 Wascana Parkway
Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 0A2
tel: 306-585-5210 / fax: 306-585-4745
e-mail:
web: http://uregina.ca/InformationCommons

Claire Polster

Comments

any interest? Written by oswald on 2005-07-21 17:09:00 Anyone out there interested in collaborating on a presentation on indymedia in Saskatchewan for this conference? Perhaps one specifically related to this site? It could be some great exposure for this site, particularly in terms of kick-starting a regina presence.

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