I was invited to tell a story last night at Agora Rollberg – a budding community space in the old storage hall of Neukölln’s Kindl Brauerei. The event was bringing together practitioners of open source collaboration, and Alice & Simon, two of the organizers, suggested that I share how I got started down this road. I guess most people start out in open source with software, but my experience was a little different – so this is what I shared with the group: Around 10 or 11 years ago, in my hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, I was in need of a place to live, and heard from a friend about a beautiful old house with a large garden, available to rent, not far from town. With only a little embellishment, I told the landlord that I was a responsible young professional, as I had a stable job working for for a reputable firm (at the time I was the production runner on the [ahem] critically-acclaimed TV show Power Rangers). I also told the owner that I already had the perfect group of other responsible young professionals, keen to move in with me. So they let me have the house, and suddenly I had two weeks to find at least 8 housemates to share this huge place with me. Somehow, thanks to helpful friends and the magic of MySpace, it happened, though responsible young professionals these were not. I had found 8 guys and one girl, who stretched the entire spectrum from unemployed to underemployed. We had members of three different bands, with 12 guitars and two drum kits...
I gave a presentation at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s CE100 meeting in Berlin – it’s a relatively private event which connects representatives from the different corporations and industrial firms which participate in the network. There are no recordings or publications of talks, so I’m posting my talk here instead. Together with a talk from OSVehicle, it made up the last session of the event, called ‘Embrace Collective Intelligence through Open Source’. There had also been other presentations from OpenDesk, FabLab Berlin and Provenance, so the tech/open scene was well represented. Feel free to use and remix the talk, source files (SVG and ODP) are in the Slides and Illustrations folder, as usual. Hi, my name is Sam, I’m a co-founder of Open It Agency – we help businesses understand and utilize open source. My particular focus is on applying the Open Source idea to new areas outside of software, and for the last few years I have been part of a team building a diverse international network around the Open Source Circular Economy Days – people all around the world who share the goal of a Circular Economy, and believe that Open Source is the best methodology we have to get there. Together we’ve been running events, exchanging knowledge, and building the foundations of an open source circular economy. I’d like to share our perspective with you. Since the industrial revolution we have been steadily accelerating our linear economy. Only recently have we realised that we have to not only slow down, but change direction entirely, and create an economy that might look something like this… It’s a...
Mark Fonseca Rendeiro and Wikimedia Deutschland have started an in-depth podcast about open source people and projects in Berlin! Subscribe! download! rejoice! Mark interviewed me recently about all sorts of things I’ve been up to in the last couple of years: open source in video, our experience with Open It Agency, making my own open source clothing and an introduction of our new initiative, Open Source Circular Economy Days. Download the podcast:...
The Mission Statement for the Open Source Circular Economy Days is online! It was written by me and Lars, but it is based on the ideas, discussions and perspectives of the whole team (Erica, Sharon, Tim, Alice & others coming on board…) What do we mean when we talk about an Open Source Circular Economy? We share the vision of a circular economy. An idea for a truly sustainable future that works without waste, in symbiosis with our environment and resources. A future where every product is designed for multiple cycles of use, and different material or manufacturing cycles are carefully aligned, so that the output of one process always feeds the input of another. Rather than seeing emissions, manufacturing byproducts, or damaged and unwanted goods as ‘waste’, in the circular economy they become raw material, nutrients for a new production cycle. Right now we have a linear system – we take resources out of the ground, and transform them into (often hazardous) waste. We consume and destroy our own planet faster than it can possibly recover. We’ve known about these problems for decades and despite increasing public awareness we are still nowhere near comprehensive solutions. Current ‘green’ approaches merely act as an ineffective brake on this destructive trajectory. A more radical shift is needed – in how we collaborate, and how we design, produce and distribute our products and the services around them. One way to illustrate the circular economy is to think of cycles in the natural world. A simple representation might be a seed, which grows in nutritious topsoil, becoming a strong adult tree –...
(click on CC for English subtitles) Frag den Staat (Ask the State) is a website for submitting, tracking and archiving Freedom Of Information requests in Germany- making it easier and more efficient for citizens to ask their public authorities for information. Software: Animated with Synfig, a vector-based 2D Free Software program. Initial vector illustrations were created in Inkscape, the video was assembled in Kdenlive, and audio was mixed in Audacity. The project files are open source, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so that any other Freedom of Information site (such as those run on Alaveteli or FROIDE) can adapt, remix and improve the video for their own language and location. Fork the project on Gitlab! Credits & Attribution Video CC-BY Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e.V Concept, Illustration & Animation: Sam Muirhead | @cameralibre Additional Illustration: Judith Carnaby | @judithcarnaby Text: Maria Reimer | @malienamadrina Stefan Wehrmeyer | @stefanwehrmeyer Stimme & Aufnahme / Voiceover & recording: Fiona Krakenbürger | @arduina Music: XXV CC-BY Broke For Free | @brokeforfree Toneffekte/Sound Effects: The following sound effects can be found on FreeSound.org, a community of audio enthusiasts who create, share and remix sounds – the majority of these sounds are available under libre licenses such as Creative Commons Attribution, Attribution ShareAlike or the ‘no rights reserved’ public domain mark, CC0. Check out the artists’ other sounds, or consider contributing yourself! Sounds used under Creative Commons Attribution: letter-box.flac CC-BY qubodup peugot-206-car-exterior-engine-stationary-horn-claxon-reverb.wav CC-BY jorickhoofd spring-door-stop.wav CC-BY liamq deep-air-woosh.wav CC-BY cosmicmembers whoosh.wav CC-BY ztrees1 envelope-handling-rustle-vtkproductions.wav CC-BY vtkproductions-com chev-350-start-then-die.wav CC-BY lonemonk flashlight-switch.wav CC-BY jesabat stickwhoosh.wav CC-BY plingativator vent-wind-1.wav CC-BY glaneur-de-sons writing-with-pen.aif CC-BY jasonelrod clock-fastticking.wav...
