June 10th, 2009
This month’s talk will be given by Jon “The Nice Guy” Spriggs. He will be talking about Microblogging (uBlogging), specifically citing Identi.ca and Twitter, some of the conventions used in microblogging, microblogging services and how you can use microblogging in your projects and social networks. He’ll then open the floor to questions.
Jon can be found on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jontheniceguy, so feel free say ‘hello’ to him!
The meeting will take place at the usual time, 7pm, at the
Lass O’Gowrie pub on Charles Street in Central Manchester. We will be located in the Salmon Room upstairs, although there will be people around a little earlier downstairs(probably sampling the food and drinks on offer). Just ask at the bar if you can’t find us. Their
website has full details of how to get there and the fine selection of food and drink available. The venue also provides wifi.
General information about Manchester Free Software meetings can be found on our
meetings page.
If you would like five minutes to tell us about something, please contact us.
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June 1st, 2009
The June administrative meeting will be on the second Monday of the month at the usual time and place:
The meeting is open to everyone and normally lasts about an hour. We stay around for a social meet up afterwards, so it’s a good opportunity to meet up with people and have a chat.
The agenda and the minutes of May’s meeting will be available on the FSF Groups wiki before the meeting. If you have any thing you’d like included please contact us.
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May 25th, 2009
The elections for the European Parliament are very close. The action started by Manchester Free Software has been taken up by the Free Software Foundation. See the Euro Elections 2009 wiki page for a sample letter, drafted by our very own Dave Page, with explicit references to software patents and the Stephen Fry software video.
Please propagate this far and wide—the elections are not far away, but we can at least raise awareness of free software among the new MEPs.
Subject: [FSF] Free Software Action Alert!
From: Peter Brown <peterb@fsf.org>
Dear Free Software Supporter,
The upcoming European parliament elections give the free software movement an opportunity to educate the candidates to the importance of protecting free software from bad legislation involving software patents, interoperability and net neutrality. The French free software association April has organized the Free Software Pact initiative, but they need your help. In particular, candidates in the UK need to be contacted immediately.
Mark Taylor, the coordinator for the Free Software Pact in the UK, said, The current UK Government is embarrassingly behind the rest of Europe in formulating public policy on the use of free software. Across the rest of the continent we see significant adoption and political support for free software. The Free software Pact is therefore an ideal way to draw attention to the reform the UK public sector needs and the enormous cost savings yet to be realized. For too long the UK has been dependent on the relationship with proprietary software companies like Microsoft, who are hell-bent on keeping our politicians confused on this matter. If you care about this situation, and the resulting cost to our economy, society and political culture, please contact the MEP candidates in your region and ask them to sign the Free Software Pact.
Help the campaign now by visiting: http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Euro_Elections_2009 .
–
Peter T. Brown
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org
Tags: action, campaign, election, Europe, European Parliament, Free Software Pact, FSF, manchester free software
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May 12th, 2009
Substance, a local cooperative, are working to free local government and other data so that the information can get to the people who really need it. The project is called Plings and Steven Flower will be talking about about their experiences over the past two years and their plans for the next two years. Free software and freedom of data are the goals – but they have to jump through and negotiate a few hoops along the way!
*New Location*
The meeting will take place at the usual time, 7pm, at the Lass O’ Gowrie pub on Charles Street in Central Manchester. We will be located in the back room on the ground floor. As normal, there will be people around a little earlier (probably sampling the food and drinks on offer). Their website has full details of how to get there and the fine selection of food and drink on offer.
General information about Manchester Free Software meetings can be found on our meetings page.
If you would like five minutes to tell us about something, please contact us.
Updated: The slides from this talk are now available under a Creative Commons cc-by-sa license.
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May 4th, 2009
The May administrative meeting will be on the second Monday of the month at the usual time and place:
The meeting is open to everyone and normally lasts about an hour. We stay around for a social meet up afterwards, so it’s a good opportunity to meet up with people and have a chat.
You can find the minutes of April’s meeting on the FSF Groups wiki. An initial agenda is also available. If you have any thing you’d like included please contact us.
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April 23rd, 2009
Ian Forrester (from BBC Backstage) has booked the BBC Manchester Bar on Friday 24th April for the Ubuntu-UK Manchester release party. The party will start at 7pm and go on until late (although after 10pm we may have to move to another pub on Oxford Road).
If you are interested in attending you need to sign up before 9am 24th April. You can do this by emailing us, adding yourself to the Facebook page or adding yourself to upcoming yahoo page.
The address is: New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester M60 1SJ.
The nearest train station is Oxford Road, although it’s within walking distance of Piccadilly and Victoria stations.
For car parking, the Cornerhouse is just down the road and their website has some useful information.
When you arrive just wait in reception where someone will meet you to take you up to the bar.
Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think maybe interested. It’s time to show the London lot some competition!
Rock on Ubuntu 9.04!!
Lucy
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April 19th, 2009
This month’s talk be given by Des Gregory from green h, a with-permission-free-franchise-social-enterprise based in Manchester. They sell low cost, reconditioned computers to communities, schools and small businesses (to name but a few), earning money for Ubuntu ‘techies’ in the process.
PLEASE READ THE DETAILS ABOUT A CHANGE OF LOCATION!
Location
———-
We will meet in Bar Odder just across the road from the BBC on Oxford Road.
As usual things will start at 7pm. The pub serves a good selection of food and drinks.
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March 29th, 2009
The April administrative meeting is a little earlier this month due to Easter and is on Monday 6th, at the usual time and place:
The meeting is open to everyone. The meeting normally lasts about an hour and we stay around for a social meet up afterwards, so it’s a good opportunity to meet up with people and have a chat.
You can find the minutes of March’s meeting on the FSF Groups wiki. The agenda will be published closer to the time of the meeting.
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March 14th, 2009
Date: 27 – 29 March 2009
Venue: University of Manchester
The Oekonux project, together with the P2P Foundation will have its
4th international conference which will take place on 27-29 March 2009
in Manchester, UK.
This conference, titled “Free Software and Beyond: The World of Peer
Production”, will allow delegates to share their experiences with
peer-to-peer collaborative activities in contemporary society,
including free and open source software development, Wikipedia,
blogosphere, open publishing, social networking, sharing platforms
such as Flickr and YouTube. Moreover, it will encourage delegates to
develop methods and theories for understanding how these activities
take place and their impacts on modern society.
Manchester Free Software will be there selling books and badges from the FSF.
The conference programme is now available at
http://www.oekonux-conference.org/program/index.html
The conference is free to attend and everyone is welcome. To register,
please visit http://www.oekonux-conference.org/registration.html
For more information please visit the conference website
http://www.oekonux-conference.org/
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March 10th, 2009
John Adams will be giving a talk called “Waking up to an open world”. The talk is based on the one he recently gave to the Manchester Linux User Group. In it John outlines the roots of free software, using wide ranging examples including American anti-war protesters and their realisation that technology can liberate as well as enslave. The talk is a call to arms as well as showing what an open world could look like.
The meeting will take place at 19:00 in the Manchester Digital Development Agency on Portland Street. More about the meetings and venue can be found on our meetings page.
If you would like five minutes to tell us about something, please contact us.
Posted in Events | 1 Comment »
