Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

31 Mar 2013, 9:17 a.m.

Open Tech New York City

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2013 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Yesterday I delivered a reasonably well-received talk at Open Tech NYC in which I introduced the crowd to their New York open tech neighbors. That is, I explained the four freedoms that define what make software truly free and open, and I gave examples of NYC people and institutions who make or use open culture and open knowledge, open data, open source software, open formats and open hardware.

Here are a bunch of links!

I hope the people listening understood that I was just offering a sample of the organizations in the five boroughs that work on or use open stuff! I opened and ended my speech with some thoughts about love and sharing (and how being a free software person is like or unlike being a vegan), which I reused from "A Slightly Disjointed (Due To A Five-Day Cold) Musing On Open Source, Fear, Motivation, And Witnessing", where I discuss my experience with the open source GNOME desktop environment.

During the coffee breaks and lunch, I also spread the word about Outreach Program for Women and Google Summer of Code internships available this summer; application deadlines are around May 1st.

Thanks to the sponsors and organizers of Open Tech NYC 2013. I enjoyed it despite getting over a cold, and appreciated the chance to learn from and chat with a variety of people interested in open stuff.

Update: Video is up.

Comments

Sumana Harihareswara
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Sharihareswara_%28WMF%29
31 Mar 2013, 10:40 a.m.

Photos of me giving the talk: 1, 2, 3.

Vanessa Hurst and Developers for Good tweeted: happy to hear @brainwane give an @OpenITP shoutout at #OpenTechNYC "that's something we can all get behind. that's all puppies and rainbows"

And several people enjoyed my line "Developing on a closed platform is like trying to fall in love with someone who won't talk to you."


31 Mar 2013, 12:04 p.m.

Makerbot is no longer "open"


06 Apr 2013, 0:03 a.m.

You should present at the in NYC on 27 April. Still accepting applications until 7 April for "featured" sessions or you can just show up and schedule a talk the morning of.

http://www.artstechmeetup.com/2013/03/28/everything-you-could-possibly-want-to-know-about-the-artstech-unconference/