Those of you who couldn't make it to Chicago for AoIR 6 last October, here's your chance for a visit, and those of you who were here, it would be great to see you again (when I'm _not_ running around in a daze!). Sj

First Monday Conference FM10 Openness: Code, science and content 15-17 May 2006, at The University of Illinois at Chicago

Celebrate ten years of First Monday!

Register at http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Send an abstract or paper to http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

Thanks to a grant from The Open Society Institute, as many as 20 participants from developing countries may receive grants to attend the Conference. An application form can be found at http:// firstmonday.org/fm10/FM10_OSI_fundreq.doc. Deadline 10 February 2006.

The Conference is generously sponsored by The Open Society Institute, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The University of Illinois at Chicago University Library and The Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), University of Maastricht.

About the Conference

Recent years have seen a strong interest among academics, policy makers, activists, business and other practitioners on open collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. In some areas, such as free software / open source, sustainable business models have emerged that are holding their own against more traditional, proprietary software industries. In the sciences, the notions of open science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of openness in the academic community that, despite its past successes, is increasingly under threat. And open access journals and other open content provide inspiring examples of collaborative creativity and participatory access, such as Wikipedia, while still in search of models to ensure sustainability.

There are clear links between these areas of openness: open content often looks explicitly towards open source software for business models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of the potential of openness, how it can work, as well as a warning of the threats it may face. Finally, open collaboration is closely linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries.

Despite these clear links, there has been surprisingly little thoughtful analysis of this convergence, or of the real value of the common aspect of open collaboration. In particular, while open source software - due to its strong impact on business and on bridging the digital divide - has drawn much attention, it may provide false hopes for the sustainability of openness in other areas of content that need careful examination. The conference -- FM10 Openness: Code, science and content - Making collaborative creativity sustainable -- provides a platform for such analysis and discussion, resulting in concrete proposals for sustainable models for open collaboration in creative domains.

The Conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the foremost online, peer-reviewed academic journal covering these issues since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous papers by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration, open access, and open content in its various forms, it is itself an example of open collaboration in practice: for a decade, the journal has been published on a purely voluntary basis, with no subscription fees, advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The success of First Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers around the world, downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each month.

For more details, contact Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor of First Monday at ejv@uic.edu. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!