[Sfd] Wizards of OS forum 14-16.9.2006 including: Brazil, the Free Culture Nation

[Janet Hawtin]

http://www.wizards-of-os.org/

Brazil, the Free Culture Nation
Saturday, 16 September 2006, 20:00, Columbia Hall

Brazil has emerged as the prime promoter of free culture, not only in 
international fora but also domestically. „We are going to tropicalize the 
digital revolution." Under this motto by Brazil‘s Minister of Culture Gilberto 
Gil, the country is developing a broad range of activities for promoting digital 
culture. WOS 4 together with the Ministry of Culture and other Brasilian 
partners wants to show a representative spectrum.

Starting point is a vibrant local culture. From the poor neigbourhoods of Rio de 
Janeiro or Belem new musical genres are touching the ears and hearts of people 
across the globe, via Internet withouth any intermediary. „Pontos de Cultura" is 
the master-plan of bringing 600 cultural projects across the country into the 
digital age. Groups working with music or video, indigenous crafts or copoeira, 
graffiti and circus will be equipped with multimedia hardware, free software and 
a budget in order to produce, document and freely share with the world their 
cultural expressions. WOS 4 will present an overview of the works coming out of 
these Culture Spots. Recycled hardware and free software play a crucial role as 
infrastructure far beyond the Pontos. The questions here as with all of WOS is: 
how are we going to achieve cultural and financial autonomy? How can we achieve 
cultural diversity?
	
Chair: Volker Grassmuck
project lead Wizards of OS & project lead iRights.info & researcher, Humboldt 
University, Berlin

Claudio Prado
Head of the Department of Digital Culture, Ministry of Culture, Brasilia

Felipe Fonseca
MetaReciclagem, São Paulo

Sérgio Amadeu
Professor of information theory, Faculty of Social Communications Cásper Líbero, 
University of São Paulo;
former Director-President of Brazil's National Institute of Information 
Technology and Chairman Free Software Technical Implementation Committee, now 
founder of the NGO Free Network for training youngsters on GNU/Linux technical 
support, spreading the idea of sharing knowledge for development communities in 
Brazil

Fernanda Weiden
system administrator, council member of Free Software Foundation Latin America; 
participant of Debian Women and organizer of the Fórum Internacional Software 
Livre (FISL); founder of Women in Free Software Project in Brazil; currently 
with Google, Zurich