Will the future of innovation be built on Open Foundations?

I am co-chairing one of the Local 2020 Summits, being held in Canberra today, on Open Source and Open Access. Presentations and discussion online. Podcasts and Vodcasts will be provided later.

MEDIA RELEASE

Senator Kate Lundy

Senator for the Australian Capital Territory

Wednesday 2 April 2008

***EMBARGO until 6am Thursday 3 April 2008***

Will the future of innovation be built on Open Foundations?

ACT Senator Kate Lundy and Tom Worthington, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University are co-chairing a Local Summit in Canberra today that will explore the opportunities presented by open technology and digital knowledge.

"Having a Local Summit on the Foundations of Open Technology and Digital Knowledge will shine a spotlight on the important public policy ideas that are built on the principles of open standards and genuine collaboration from a community, education, business, innovation and government perspective" Senator Lundy said.

Speakers include ANU Acting Vice-Chancellor of the ANU Professor Lawrence Cram, delivering the keynote address, Pia Waugh, President of Software Freedom International and will showcase some of the latest innovations using open technology.

"Open access is best known in the software development field with Open Source, where technology is developed publicly and openly and exposed for comment and contribution throughout development. The same techniques can be applied to the distribution of information for research and education, such as open access publishing with the creative commons." Mr. Worthington said.

Mr. Worthington will give the first public demonstration of a new open access research publishing system being developed by ANU in Canberra for worldwide use and show a disaster management system developed for the Boxing Day Tsunami, which has been ungraded with Australian technical assistance for use by developing nations.

Pia Waugh, a long term advocate for technology openness sees the event as a very important milestone for Australian government policy. "A baseline of openness provides many opportunities for socio-economic and business development, sustainable technology/information, international collaboration and global competitiveness. Openness underpins our very ability to maintain equal access to opportunities and to each other in a world that is increasingly dependent on technology for everything from work and socialising to voting."


The 'Foundations of Open' technology and digital knowledge Local 2020 Summit will explore, discuss and develop specific policy initiatives borne out of open access for information, technology, education and governance for the benefit of our society and economy.

Ideas from "Foundations of Open" will be collated and conveyed to the National 2020 Summit". Presentations from the Local Summit will be available online via Tom Wothington's Web site http://tomw.net.au/moodle and Kate Lundy's web site http://www.katelundy.info.

Members of the public can participate in the Summit virtually by registering on the website to participate in online discussions and ideas development. The Summit will also be podcast online.

For more information or details about location if you wish to attend contact Rachel Allen: 6230 0411 or 0418 488 295

Foundations of Open: Technology and Digital Knowledge Local 2020 Summit

Thursday 3rd April 2008

College of Engineering and Computer Science
The Australian National University

9.00am Welcome and Introductions
9.15am Outline and Objectives: Co-Chairs Senator Kate Lundy and Tom Worthington FACS HLM, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU and Director of Professional Development, The Australian Computer Society.

9.30am Launch and Keynote: Professor Lawrence Cram ANU Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice President BSc (Hons), BE (Hons), PhD Sydney

9.45am Jeff Waugh "Foundations of Open" The Foundations of Open is a model for understanding the different aspects of openness in a digital age including standards, knowledge, governance, source code and the market.

10.30am Darrell Burkey ANU "CASE" - a case study in community. Computing Assistance Support and Education (CASE) inc. is a non-profit organisation that was formed to assist Australian community organisations in making better use of information technology.

11.15am Ken Taylor CSIRO "VotaPedia" demonstration. VotApedia is an audience response system developed by CSIRO that doesn't require issuing clickers or need specialist infrastructure.

11.30am Coffee break
11.45am Pia Waugh "Open Source as a public resource" Specific ways we can better explore Open Source opportunities and innovations for business, government, broader social benefit and the Australian economy.

12.30pm Lunch hosted by ANU
1.00pm Demonstrations and networking time. Presentation by Andrew Tridgell
Tom Worthington will demonstrate carbon neutral and open source hardware, software and open access educational systems developed and used in Canberra, including a carbon neutral, energy efficient desktop computer, an open source software laptop and open hardware hand held computer as well as the first public demonstration of a new global open access research e-publishing system being developed in Canberra.

1.30pm Jessica Coates QUT "Creative Commons" Access to knowledge is often difficult through the use of ambiguous or non-existent licensing. Creative Commons is a mechanism for opening up knowledge for public benefit.

2.15pm Alan Smart ASIBA "Spatial potential" Geospatial information needs to be open so that Australian businesses can add value, innovate and commercialise in order to be globally competitive.

3pm Coffee break
3.15 Tony Hill ISOC AU "IPV6Now" IPv6 is a more powerful Internet protocol that can deliver a vastly increased scale Internet, with automatic security and autoconfiguration potentially producing substantial benefits for businesses, particularly in international e-commerce.

4pm Ann Steward AGIMO "Open Source in Government" A summary of the use of, attitudes towards and emerging trends of, Open Source in Australian Government.

4.30pm Concluding remarks; Senator Kate Lundy
Supporters: Australian National University, TomW Communications Pty Ltd