Open Rights Group Conference 2010 – aka OrgCon
July 30th, 2010
I seem to be at a lot of conferences at the moment, but last weekends was one of the more interesting, I caught the 5:05 train out of Leeds to head to the big smoke of London for the Open Rights Group’s inaugural OrgCon. The Open Rights Group promotes democracy, transparency and new creative possibilities in the digital world and the speakers were a who’s who on online democracy activists.
Minutes after arriving I was grinning like a kid on Christmas day as I got to briefly meet Cory Doctorow (pic) who if you don’t know is not only a big online activist himself, but also co-owner of the excellent Boing-Boing website and author of the brilliant Little Brother which is a not only a great read, but has also been a real eye-opener for some of my less technical friends. You can download it for free, but you are encouraged (as I did) to buy a copy for a friend if you like it. I didn’t realise at the time, but before Cory noticed my phone had a front face camera, the bloke he asked to take the pic was Blur’s Drummer and Linux geek, Dave Rowntree. I only twigged afterwards and instead talked to Cory about how cheap CCDs must be now for them to put 2 in a phone instead.
The first keynote was Thriving in the Real Digital Economy with Cory Doctorow, Dave Rowntree, Jeff Lynn for COADEC (an organsation who have been at the fore-front of fighting the Digital Economy Act from a business’ stand point), John Buckman of Magnatune (a free music provider) and the Electronic Freedom Frontier and finally Obhi Chatterjee whom I know for heading the Lib Dem’s rejig of their DEBill stance, but seemed to be mainly talking about the distribution model of his movie. It was an interesting often insightful talk, with the crowd very much on side, but I imagine I wasn’t the only one thinking they were preaching to the converted.
Next I headed off to my first workshop “How to talk to your MP”, officially hosted by Jim Kinlock of ORG, but it turned into a Q&A with his assitant, MP and geek hero Tom Watson. Tom gave loads of great advice on how MPs actually work in regards to dealing with the public, it was a real eye opener. Thankfully all the questions ment there was no real time for the roleplay part (which you could see almost everyone was not looking forward to). One surreal moment was where Tom apologised for being late as it was his first time on a bike in 20 years, and he wouldn’t have made it at all without the help of people on twitter, just as I was reading a bunch of tweets between Tom and my good friend LouLouK on the matter of his cycling.
The second keynote was probably my personal an unexpected highlight of the day James Boyle of Duke University on copyright reform. He gave an excellent, incisive, engaging, impassioned and entertaining speech on the need for it’s reform. Once the video is available (all keynotes were videod) I’ll link it, rather than try and cover it here.
The first session after lunch was a politically orientated one with Tom Watson (Lab), Julian Huppert (LD), John Grogan (Lab – Retired) as well Anita Coles (Liberty) and Richard Allan of ORG on Digital Economy Act: What’s Next? (Sadly Eric Joyce MP had been delayed in Panama!). To be fair, John Grogan stole the show by playing up to the audience with some grade A Mandy bashing and a confession he was the driving force behind Tom Watson’s rebel resistance to the DEBill.
The rest of the afternoon I made a few bad calls, it sounded like Tony Curzon’s Open BBC Talk was the place to be (it got rather heated I believe) whilst I went to “Reforming Privacy Law” mainly because it was hosted by Lilian ‘panGloss’ Edwards whose legal blogging on the DEBill I really enjoyed, sadly most of it went over my head. I then headed to “Web Blocking” which seemed to be “IWF Bashing 101″ and finally a talk on ACTA which dragged on and on so much the chair got upset when there was no time for questions and next group wanted the room.
The day ended for me with a Lib Dem Fringe meeting, sadly Julian Huppert who has called it couldn’t make it, but the party members that did show had an interesting impromptu chat partly about the IT Policy Committee (which I intend applying for).
All in all a great day, very enlightening, I got chatting to a lot of interesting people and will definitely be going next year.
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