This is an editable survey to get an idea what our community is in need of when it thinks about the FSFE summit. You can answer one or more questions, long or short text. Please use one bullet point for each argument and put your (Fellowship-)name in brackets, so we can come back on you for further questions.
Background
The FSFE summit will be the first summit by the FSFE that is organised by and for the community. It will be in the same year as FSFE's 15th birthday. It will happen in the Berlin Congress Center on September 2 - 4. We will offer 100+ tickets for sure. Tickets shall be for no cost or a minimum charge.
Survey
On Friday we are thinking about running a business-orientated smaller event during the day. We think about talks of successful Free Software implementations, about business practice, deployments etc. Would this be in interest of you? If so, what topic would be most interesting for you?
- How can we compete with proprietary vendors who expand into schools by offering zero license costs? (example point made by eal) (seconded by floriansnow)
- Is really there a successful business model for FS (rubi)
- How good is the "free knowledge" idea expanding to hardware? (rubi)
- I would be interested to hear about any serious "fully" Free Software based company/business (hjacobs)
- How to make a living (ao)
- How can we get away from the misguided question for the FLOSS business model? (mirko)
- How to complement Free Software with a Free Business Model? (rijkr) (seconded by floriansnow)
Your point
Would you prefer to hear talks or to visit workshops?
- talks in the morning and workshops in the afternoon (example point made by eal)
- both (ao) (rijkr)
- Both have their place. EALs example actually makes good sense. (Mirko) (seconded by floriansnow)
Your point
What would be the main cause you are coming to the ECM? Social contact, expert talks, hands-on sessions, building of networks and teams inside FSFE or anything else?
- I like to meet my people from the edu-team and host a workshop with them to find new people that will expand our team (example point made by eal)
- Meet people, to reinforce my motivation (rubi)(Guido, floriansnow)
- Meet people and hear their experiences: how does "Free Software" as a personal guiding principle work out? (hjacobs)
- Everything, plus the opportunity to revisit free Berlin (ao)
- Mainly networking with the non-Berlin-centric FSFE contributors. And some great talks. (Mirko)
- Meeting people and absorb as much as possible (rijkr)
- having some high-profile speakers will draw a lot of fellows (maybe that could be arranged in combination with the other organizations there) (floriansnow)
Your point
Would you be interested to hear a panel of other Free Software related initiatives than FSFE to see what we can achieve together?
- Yes, please invite Hispalinux (example point made by eal)
- From the ECM16: Timeslots for different FSFE teams (i.e. Sysadmins, Legal, Translators,…) to present themselves and tell Fellows how they can help (seconded by floriansnow)
- Yes, proceed with what began the Friday before fosdem, but in a bigger room (rubi)(guido)
- Yes, please invite Bits of Freedom, bof.nl (ao)
- Yes, we should join forces, e.g. to make an appeal to politics and non-profits who defend Human Freedom to take a stand for Free Software. (rijkr)
Your point
Would you be interested in trainings, like succesful campaigning, PR, policy advisory?
- I like to have a training to better influence my local stakeholders (example point made by eal)
- From the ECM16: How to do fundraising properly/successfully
- Good and bad experiences in talking with politicians and PA decision makers (rubi)
How to break the continuous cycle where management in Quango's forces the choice for dumb-down unfree software? (ao)(guido)
- How to increase participation in FSFE local groups and how to motivate people who are active to work on projects. (floriansnow)
Your point
What is the main topic you are interested in?
- DRM (example point made by eal) (seconded by floriansnow)
- How to reach non-technical people (rubi) (topic++ by bandie) (Guido, floriansnow)
- How to defeat the argument "All_the_companies™ are using proprietary software (esp. office applications) so we use it in our schools!"? (bandie) (seconded by floriansnow)
- How to make developers value freedom over convenience (I'm looking at all the Apple fanboys who develop OSS..) (hjacobs)(Guido, floriansnow)
- Defending Fellows against social and political undermining (ao) (seconded by floriansnow)
- wasn't aware that this is happening and be interested to hear more about it (Guido)
- How to build an economically viable Free Software Practice (rijkr)
Your point
Would you be interested in licensing, compliance, legal questions?
- I try to convince my company to free their software but I need more understanding of licensing to better convince them (example point made by eal)
- How to explain to companies/institutions that the free software licenses are not a loss of support of applications in practice? (bandie)
- From the ECM16: How to license my project?
- How do you communicate compliance if there is not a word for it in your language? (ao)
- Only at a level where it does not become a legal discussion. (Mirko)
Your point
Would you be interested in technical talks?
- Yes, about large-scale deployment (example point made by eal)
- Yes, about "run your own network services", strong and weak points (mainly strong) (rubi)
- Emigrating your data to foreign countries, a good idea? (ao)
- There should only be a few and very good technical talks. There are plenty of technical conferences. (Mirko) (seconded by floriansnow)
- Not my main interest, technical issues can (should) be addressed at other occasions (rijkr)
Your point
Would you be interested in a questions&answers panel with FSFE's GA or other internal sessions?
- yes (example point made by eal)
- From the ECM16: Would be interesting to work on How does FSFE work internally? How can we improve communications across teams?
- yes (ao) (rijkr)
- yes (Mirko)
- no because I think we would probably run out of questions very quickly (floriansnow)
Your point
Would you be interested in ... (leave your own point here) ?
- I like to know about how to grow FSFE in my own country (example point made by eal)
- From the ECM16: Build something tangible: Infrastructure, Puppets,… (seconded by floriansnow; I also have some ideas if we decide to do something like this)
- From the ECM16: Lighning talks and unconference style (Guido)
- From the ECM16: poster session
- Keysigning party (ao)(Guido, floriansnow)
- High quality content from all over Europe. (Mirko)
Your point