Saturday 20 September is Software Freedom Day. Creative Contingencies is providing pro bono assistance to this year's event management team.

The team has sourced and secured a new venue. The Hub@Docklands is the community centre for Melbourne's growing waterside neighbourhood, which has a great little cinema room. A series of interesting talks covering a range of topics around technology and freedom have been scheduled to run through out the day.

There's also a light filled Atrium where free and open source software demos will showcase the technology. Visitors can take home a CD filled with applications they can use at school, at home or at work.

The Parliament of Victoria's Economic Development and Infrastructure (EDI) Committee is conducting an inquiry to consider and report to Parliament on the potential application of open content and open source licensing to Victorian Government information.

Creative Contingencies has been invited to make a submission to the EDI Committee to express views on the Inquiry's term's of reference which are as follows... (emphasis mine)

Over the past couple of months I've presented this talk 3 times.

•  Linux Users of Victoria - http://www.luv.asn.au/
•  Ballarat Linux Users Group - http://www.blug.asn.au/
•  Melbourne Novell Users Group - http://www.mnug.org.au/

It's gradually improved with each rendition.

Download the ODP [3.8 mb] or PDF [2.16 mb] of the slides.

Over the past week I've been working with colleagues in the Open Source community on drafting a letter to the DPM and Minister for Education calling for greater consideration of Free and Open Source Software in the rollout of the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund.

The letter has been published in full on IDG's techworld site, and syndicated widely through tech news feeds.