October 11th, 2007
Conference Report: OpenMind & MindTrek 2007
OpenMind 2007 and MindTrek 2007 were excellent mid-sized (400+ participants) tech events that brought together a great mix of people - academics, working developers, activists, senior IT management, public servants, industry veterans, innovators and even pirates [0].
Some presentations were lackluster, but the informal discussions were awesome. There was a good balance between academia, business, community and government interests.
Final verdict: Well worth the cost, effort and time.
Activities
On the first day of OpenMind, I focused on attending and liveblogging sessions. Liveblogging - blogging as an event is happening - is a good way to both get content out and to occasionally stick one's foot in one's mouth. Anyhow, I liveblogged these sessions:
- Opening Plenary by Petri Räsänen
- Novell Keynote by the clueful Carlos Montero-Luque
- Standardization, Industry-Community Cooperations and Mobile Linux
- Monty on the Future of DBMS
- Open Source and Standards in the Finnish Public Sector
- Public Sector Benefits from Open Source by Carlos Montero-Luque
- Monty on Building a Successful Open Source Community
- Michael Shiloh's clear and accessible OpenMoko presentation
- A solid, but somewhat dull, presentation on G(PE)2
On day two, I skipped out on liveblogging and presented my Age of Literate Machines keynote. Though I wasn't happy with the presentation, over a dozen people found me after the presentation to provide positive feedback. Given the size of the event, I'm quite happy with this level of feedback.
On day three, I focused on networking and on following up discussions from earlier in the events.
People and Discussions
During the event, I met (or caught up with) the following people (my apologies in advance for people who I missed in the following list):
- Aleksander Farstad, CEO of eZ Systems AS (makers of the eZ Publish CMS and early sponsors of some of the my Nordic electronic frontier development work I'm involved in) - we chatted about changing my involvement with eZ (more on this in another post) and about the electronic frontier work in the Nordics.
- Amy Jiang, Canonical's representative in China
- Carlos Montero-Luque, VP at Novell - I liveblogged Carlos' session (and he responded)
- Fredrik Syversen, IKT Norge's Director of Industry Development
- Heidi Arnesen Austlid, newly chosen Director of the Nasjonalt Kompetansesenter for Fri Programvare (Norwegian National Center for Free Software) - we briefly chatted about ideas around the Kompetansesenter, such as upcoming events and ideas for international cooperation.
- Henri Bergius, Finnish programmer and adventurer. Partner in Open Source consultancy Nemein, hacker on Midgard and all-around cool guy. We chatted about life, the universe and everything.
- Henrik Ingo, Finnish writer and programmer. Author of Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source. Another neat chap. We chatted about life, the universe and everything.
- Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation - Jim helped me understand the logic behind some recent corporate happenings in the IT world, shared some smart thoughts about revenue models for FOSS projects and turned me on to the oom H2 recorder.
- Jouni Linkola, an anthropologist and consultant at TietoEnator - we had a great chat on the train back from Tampere about dying languages, culture, First Nations and User-Centered Design.
- Mats Östling, from the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions
- Michael Shiloh, Developer Relations and Evangelism from openmoko
- Mikko Ahonen, Researcher at the University of Tampere's Hypermedia Laboratory
- Mikko Puhakka, early investor in MySQL; mover and shaker in the Nordic Open Source scene - in a noisy bar, I briefed Mikko about the Nordic work I am engaged in and he returned the favour. I hope that we can work together in the near future.
- Monty, MySQL co-founder and excellent cook - we disussed more ideas about open business models and open operations models
- Morten Kjærsgaard, Chairman of the Danish Open Source Business Association
- Niklas Vainio, Researcher at the University of Tampere's Hypermedia Laboratory - I subjected Niklas to a 20 minute version of the Age of Literate Machines.
- Peter van Gorsel, Directeur of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam
- Petri Räsänen, Founder and Director of COSS (the Finnish Center for Open Source Solutions) - we discussed some ideas on working together on various Nordic projects.
- Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party - we chatted about getting ready for presentations, helping the Pirate Party get more contacts and our various projects.
- Ruben Robert, Founder and Chief Marketer at fellowforce - I meant to talk more with Ruben, but the bar was loud and I was tired. fellowforce seems like a neat project and Ruben is engaging enthusiastic about it. I hope that we can follow up.
- Stephe Walli, FOSS networker deluxe and consultant-at-large - Stephe and I got in at least an hour of discussion (combined with some healthy shooting the breeze) - I really enjoyed his insights into the bigger players in the industry.
- Teemu Kurppa, Jaiku co-founder - well, I didn't really talk to Teemu, but he Jaiku'd that I was great, so how could I not mention him. Besides, Jaiku is freakin' awesome. It was one of the few ways I could get more accurate direct feedback on my presentation. Good stuff.
- Tere Vadén, Professor at the University of Tampere's Hypermedia Laboratory - Tere also suffered through an abbreviated version of my presentation. We talked a bit about his work at the Hypermedia Lab as well, but his stomach and circumstance interrupted a few times and we didn't finish our discussion.
- Tor-Arne Bellika, Nordic Open Innovation go-getter and CEO of Innovation Performance AS - Tor-Arne and I are working together on various Nordic electronic frontier development projects. We used the event as a chance to catch up on what we are doing and to set the ground rules for moving ahead more rapidly.
- Ville Oksanen, Founder of the Ville Oksanen, Founder of the Electronic Frontier Finland - Ville and I talked a lot about metal and music and a bit about civil liberties and the electronic frontier.
Action Items
After the event, I have these things to do:
- Involve Mikko P., Mats, Stephe and other potential stakeholders and collaborators in our Nordic electronic frontier development work
- See how serious various people are about running a general electronic frontier conference in Norway
- Catch up with the Mozilla Foundation team about the event - see how the opportunities here fit with our mission and mandate
- Help develop contacts for Rickard and the Pirate Party. Include a small personal sign of support in my presentations. Write about what the party is doing and why they matter.
- Invite Jim, Ville, Petri, Heidi and others to the FLOSS Foundations mailing list.
- … and likely a large set of other things that I have forgotten. :)
Live and Learn
I tried a few things out at the conference, notably:
- Actively liveblogging, which I think worked well (but I could use more practice)
- During my keynote, asking for people to find me after my session to talk about Mozilla Foundation stuff, as well as Electronic Frontier development - this didn't seem to bear much fruit. Simply talking to people and introducing myself was effective as usual. However, I don't see any harm in repeating the experiment.
- Not practicing my Age of Literate Machines keynote the night before. I noticed a large difference in quality between the times when I practiced a full run of the session the day before and when I didn't. I need to make sure to do a dry run every time.
- Going to bed when I was tired. Sounds simple, but I usually stay up till I am quite exhausted. Getting a few extra hours of sleep each night made the conference a much more pleasant (and effective) experience.
When, Where, etc.
Both events were held from October 2nd to 4th at the Scandic Hotel Rosendahl in Tampere, Finland. OpenMind was produced by COSS - the Finnish Center for Open Source Solutions, while MindTrek was produced by the MindTrek Association, a "non-profit umbrella organization for societies working in the fields of digital media and information society" [1]. For additional details on the conference sponsors, partners and programs, visit the conference websites.
Disclosure
I attended the events on behalf of eZ Systems, the Mozilla Foundation and Foo Associates. Foo Associates paid for all of the time that I spent at the event. Foo was, in turn, supported by eZ Systems and the Mozilla Foundation for this event.
Additionally, the Mozilla Foundation sponsored my air travel to the events, the OpenMind team covered the cost of my accommodations in Tampere and Foo Associates covered my incidental costs such as meals, taxi fares and train tickets.
Notes
[0] An excellent keynote on the last day of MindTrek was given by Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party.
[1] As described at http://www.mindtrek.org/about/mindtrek-ry_en.
Link Summary
- http://openmind.fi
- http://www.mindtrek.org/
- http://ez.no
- http://www.amyjiangsu.com/
- http://canonical.com
- http://novell.com
- http://www.digi.no/php/bransje.php?id=11401
- http://www.ikt-norge.no/
- http://cafe.teria.no/heidi/weblog/
- http://friprog.no
- http://bergie.iki.fi/
- http://www.nemein.com/en
- http://www.midgard-project.org/
- http://openlife.cc/author
- http://openlife.cc/
- http://www.linkedin.com/in/zemlin
- http://www.linux-foundation.org
- http://www.samsontech...tpage.cfm?prodID=1916
- http://www.tiimi.net/tiimi_demo/info.nsf
- http://tietoenator.com
- http://www.linkedin.com/in/matsostling
- http://skl.se
- http://www.michaelshiloh.com/
- http://openmoko.com
- http://beyondcreativity.blogs.com/
- http://www.uta.fi/hyper/index_en.html
- http://pukkis.blogspot.com/
- http://mysql.com
- http://osl.dk
- http://pingviini.net/nikke/
- http://www.hva.nl/
- http://coss.fi
- http://en.wikipedia.o...iki/Rickard_Falkvinge
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
- http://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenrobert
- http://www.fellowforce.com/
- http://stephesblog.blogs.com/
- http://www.sange.fi/~teequ/
- http://jaiku.com
- http://nuvatsia.terevaden.net/
- http://i-perform.no/
- Ville Oksanen
- http://en.wikipedia.o...onic_Frontier_Finland
- http://www.mozillafoundation.org/
- http://flossfoundations.org/
- http://www.scandic-hotels.com/rosendahl
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampere
- http://www.mindtrek.org/about/mindtrek-ry_en
- http://mozillafoundation.org
- http://fooassociates.com
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Posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 9:51
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October 15th, 2007 at 13:45
[...] Zak Greant attended and represented the Foundation at the OpenMind 2007 and MindTrek 2007 conferences. [...]
October 20th, 2007 at 0:05
Just to make your list complete (I didn't have any buisness cards):
Henrik Ingo, author of a book about Open Source community and business models and working as a manager for a bunch of mobile programmers in Helsinki.
In addition to your keynote, your experiences from MySQL and Mozilla were interesteing to listen to. Actually, I tought of you the other day when a client was interested in Open Source community consulting.
I hope you enjoyed Finland.
October 21st, 2007 at 21:10
Hi Henrik,
Thanks for the reminder! I'll have to check the book out.
Cheers!
–zak
October 26th, 2007 at 10:18
I forgot about Henri Bergius as well. At least I have the excuse of already knowing Henri. I'll add both of you.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:19
[...] last year, I gave a keynote at paired Finnish conferences MindTrek and OpenMind. While the events were well worth attending, afterwards I spent a few bleak hours thinking about the actual costs of my attendance. If I had [...]