OpenStreetMap

The Free Wiki World Map

6-8 September 2013 (Friday-Sunday)

State of the Map will be at Aston University Business School Conference Centre, Aston Street, Birmingham, England. View on OSM

OpenStreetMap’s annual international conference, State of the Map is returning to the UK, the first time it has come to the UK since the very first State of the Map in 2007.

 OWASP European Tour 2013 – further information (124 Kb)

Everyone is free to participate in OWASP and all of our materials are available under a free and open software

license. Apart from OWASP’s Top 10, most OWASP Projects are not widely used and understood. In most cases
this is not due to lack of quality and usefulness of those Document & Tool projects, but due to a lack of
understanding of where they fit in an Enterprise’s security ecosystem or in the Web Application Development
Life-cycle.
This event aims to change that by providing an insight into the issues of cybercrime, its impact and detection
and a selection of mature and enterprise ready approaches together with practical examples of how to use
them.

Further details of the event can also be found at: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/EUTour2013

Where

Hotel Marina, Manzioli Palace
Izola/Isola, Slovenia
June 25-28, 2013
(http://oss2013.case.unibz.it)

Theme of the Conference

The goal of the 9th International Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2013 is to provide an international forum where a diverse community of professionals from academia, industry and public sector, and diverse FOSS initiatives can come together to share research findings and practical experiences. The conference is meant to provide information to practitioners, identify directions for further research, and to be an ongoing platform for technology transfer, no matter which form of FOSS is being pursued.

Topics of Interest

FOSS Verification
- Dynamic FOSS Verification: FOSS Testing, Debugging, type of tests,
use of test suits
- Static FOSS Verification – software analysis
- Formal FOSS Verification
- Detection of bad practices and adoption of coding conventions
- OSS metrics: measuring FOSS Performance, Safety, and Quality
- Standardization of verification processes and presentation of
verification results

FOSS as innovation
- Adoption/ use / acceptance of FOSS
- Dissemination / redistribution / crowdsourcing of FOSS systems
- Expanding scientific research and technology development methods
through openness
- Adopting innovation in FOSS projects
- Role of FOSS in ICT and sustainable development

FOSS practices and methods
- FOSS and traditional / agile development methods
- FOSS and decentralized development
- Knowledge and documentation management in FOSS

FOSS technologies
- FOSS over the Internet
- Security of FOSS
- Interoperability / portability / scalability of FOSS
- Open standards / open data / open cloud / open hardware / open
exhibits
- Reuse in FOSS
- FOSS for entertainment
- FOSS for education
- Architecture and design of FOSS

Economic / organizational / social issues on FOSS
- Economic analysis of FOSS
- Sustainability business models of FOSS
- Maturity models of FOSS
- FOSS in public sector
- FOSS intellectual property, copyrights and licensing
- Non-Governmental Organizations and FOSS

More information

For more information please see the conference’s web site.

Background Information

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. There are many Free and Open Source Software licenses under which software can be released with these freedoms. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people. FOSS contributors do various things: software development, system administration, user interface design, graphic design, documentation, community management, marketing, identifying issues and reporting bugs, helping users, event organization, and translations.

Many people work on FOSS as a hobby in their spare time and some are employed by companies and non-profit organizations, including ones that are sponsoring this program! Elego, Google, Mozilla, Rackspace, and Red Hat have been the corporate sponsors of the program. GNOME Foundation, Open Technology Institute, OpenITP, OpenStack Foundation, The Tor Project, and Wikimedia Foundation have been the non-profit organizations sponsoring this program. Hobbyist FOSS experience is highly valuable in the professional world because seeing the publicly available contributions and history of collaboration gives confidence to employers when making hiring decisions.

Outreach Program for Women (OPW) internships were inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code and by how few women applied for it in the past. This was reflective of a generally low number of women participating in the FOSS development. The GNOME Foundation first started the internships program with one round in 2006, and then resumed the effort in 2010 with rounds organized every half a year. In the May-August 2012 round, the Software Freedom Conservancy joined the Outreach Program for Women with one internship with the Twisted project. In the January-April 2013 round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program.

By having a program targeted specifically towards women, we found that we reached talented and passionate participants, who were uncertain about how to start otherwise. We hope this effort will help many women learn how exciting, varied and valuable work on FOSS projects can be and how inclusive the community really is. This program is a welcoming link that will connect you with people working on individual projects in various FOSS organizations and guide you through your first contribution.

Application Process

The application process is highly collaborative. You are expected to start working with a mentor and ask many questions during the application process.

If you have general questions at any point during the application process, you are welcome to email them to opw-list@gnome.org or ask them on the #opw IRC channel on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org) , where you are encouraged to hang out throughout the application process. opw-list@gnome.org is a private list and your inquiries will only be visible to the coordinators and mentors for the program. Please start the subject line for all your e-mails to this list with a string [INQUIRY]. For organization-specific questions, please use the communication channels described on the page for each organization. Each project you will consider will have its IRC channel, and you should join it for the fastest way to get your project-specific questions answered and communicate with your mentor. It’s easy to connect to IRC.

You can see further information about the internships and application process here.

Thursday 18th April 2013, 18:00 – 20:00 at Centre for Creative
Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG.

Sponsored by Quick2Wire: http://quick2wire.com/

Registration: http://oshug.org/event/25

The twenty-fifth meeting marks our third anniversary, and will feature a talk on writing embedded firmware and a panel discussion that will explore the future of open source hardware.

Writing firmware for the AVR: A Morse Code Beacon

In this talk we will look at a number of techniques for making the most of the miniscule MSP430 and ATTiny embedded microcontrollers.

Explaining how to approach the task of developing software for constrained systems such as those with only a few hundred bytes of RAM or a few kilobytes of Flash. Predominantly writing in C and using Chris Swan’s Morse Code Beacon as an example, revealing why code needs to be structured in ways that may initially seem counter-intuitive or undesirable, as well as how the resources are used and allocated.

Such techniques are essential for getting almost any useful program to run in small systems, and when applied to slightly bigger machines such as the ATmega — found in platforms such as Arduino — they can allow really comprehensive programs to be executed successfully.

Andy Bennett is an engineer that likes to inhabit the void between hardware and the software that runs on it. After graduating from
Imperial College with a degree in Electronic & Electrical Engineering, he joined Access Devices Digital Limited where he designed software and FPGAs for the UK’s first Dual Tuner Personal Video Recorders. He continued working on Advanced Product Development at Pace Micro Technology before leaving to build distributed database engines at GenieDB. One year ago he founded Knodium where he applies his finely honed ability to produce software on a shoestring.

Panel discussion: The Future of Open Source Hardware

Interest in open source hardware continues to grow unabated and the movement has come a long way in the three years since our first
meeting. However, could it ever provide opportunities on the same scale as those afforded by its much older and now well understood
cousin, open source software? What are the barriers to growth? How are the intellectual property and economic considerations different to those of open source software? These are just some of the questions
that we plan to explore as part of this panel discussion.

* Moderated by: Paul Downey.

Professor Cornelia Boldyreff is Visiting Professor in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Greenwich, and Chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. She is a Fellow of the BCS and HEA, and a member of the ACM and the BCS Women’s Committee. She has over 30 years experience in software engineering and has lead extensive research within open source software.

Sukkin Pang is a design engineer and a director at SK Pang Electronics Ltd. He graduated from the University of Hertfordshire and has over 20 years of industrial experience. He is passionate about open source hardware and has four Arduino shields published. He used to tinker in assembler on the Z80, 6502, PIC and AVR, but nowadays he mainly uses C and C++.

Alan Wood originally trained in systems engineering, got lost in software engineering and open source for a decade, before returning
back to his hardware roots via the open source hardware and makers movement that has gathered momentum over the last few years.

Nigel Rix is Director of Electronics at the ESP KTN, part of the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board. Nigel has over 30 years experience working with a variety high tech companies from multi-nationals to start-ups and on hardware and software based products from electron beam lithography and laser systems to solutions for the security sector.

Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 – 18:20 as the event will start
at 18:30 prompt.

Registration: http://oshug.org/event/25

A series of three one day workshops for women returners aimed at raising awareness of Open Source development as a dual skillset or second career.

The first workshop will be held on 13th May 2013, 10:00 – 13th May 2013, 17:00 at BCS, 1st Floor, The Davidson Buidling, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA, London.

See the BCS Events calendar page:  http://www.bcs.org/content/conEvent/7751

and the registration page:  http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/50183

The course will aim to build awareness and confidence and help women take some first steps either towards learning to code or to update existing skills and to learn how they might contribute to Open Source projects. It will aim to raise awareness of self-training opportunities and of Open Source career paths and entry points.

Day 1: Programming for mobile devices using AppInventor

• Introduction to FLOSS culture and licensing models
• Programming for Android mobile devices using MIT AppInventor
• Panel discussion – What is it like working in Open Source communities and in technology generally?

Day 2: Introduction to Open Source and Git

• Introduction to Open Source projects and resources
• How are Open Source projects organised? Brief overview of development roles (feedback, support, bug reporting, new feature requests, writing/updating software/creating artwork/documentation/translation). Introduction to development methods: test driven, agile
• Introduction to Git

Day 3: Introduction to Python

• Overview of current programming languages and their uses
• Introduction to Python
• Resources for next steps
• Talks by women working in the industry and networking

OpenTech 2013 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, experience and democracy. Talks by people who work on things that matter, guarantees a day of thoughtful talks leading to conversations with friends.

Besides the sessions which will challenge or inspire, there’s plenty of time to talk in the bar with friends both old and new.

OpenTech 2013 is sponsored by the Open Data Institute.

Chip Hack is a two day hands-on workshop on programming FPGAs aimed at complete beginners.

Led by a team of experienced FPGA designers, and working with the DE0-nano board, you’ll start with simple hardware designs to control LED’s counters and push buttons and move on to a UART transmitter and (for the more ambitious) receiver.

The event coincides with Hardware Freedom Day (http://www.hfday.org) and you’ll be using open source designs throughout the weekend. In the final session you will see how to bring up a complete ready-made OpenRISC system-on-chip.

No HDL or FPGA programming experience is required, but you will need to have some programming experience and an understanding of basic digital electronics.

The workshop is sponsored by Embecosm, and will run at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in Acton Street, London.

Monday 18th March 2013

Speaker: Nick Whitelegg

Time: 6.00pm for 6.30pm

Venue: Southampton Solent University, Reginald Mitchell Building, third floor, room RM326, SO14 0RD
Maps: Directions and maps at www.solent.ac.uk

Joint with the BCS Hampshire Branch, and Southampton Solent University

This event is free, open to all, but please if possible book through the BCS website https://events.bcs.org/book/584/ , when available, both for BCS members and non-members for arranging refreshments, and particularly as the numbers are limited.

This technically-focused talk will introduce what the OpenStreetMap project is all about, but focus on how to use the data in your own projects.
The OpenStreetMap API will be introduced along with a number of tools for making use of the data, such as Osmosis, osm2pgsql, Mapnik and kothic-js.

The Freemap site and Android apps will be introduced as examples of third-party software making use of OSM data.

Nick Whitelegg is a senior lecturer in Computing (Web Development) at Southampton Solent University and teaches on a range of undergraduate software development courses including Java and web development. He has contributed software and data to the OpenStreetMap mapping project and has developed an open source mapping site and associated tools for walkers.

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event on Apache Hadoop from 1800 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA ( http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf).

This event is a joint meeting with the BCS SPA SG (Software Practice Advancement Specialist Group, http://bcs-spa.org).

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments.

Students are particularly welcome to attend.

Closing date for booking is 1^st May at 09:00 am.

Speakers

Shashin Shah (LinkedIn profile) and Christy Kulasingam (LinkedIn profile) of Onepoint IQ

Timings

18:00 – Registration & buffet
18:30 – Presentation
20:00 – Networking Session

Synopsis

Discover and appreciate the rising importance and prominence of the Open Source Apache Hadoop ecosystem in the Big Data space. Come and learn about the history of Hadoop, what business challenges it solves, why it has such widespread adoption not seen before in the Open Source world, and how innovative solutions from leading vendors such as MapR are built on top of Apache Hadoop. Session will comprise of presentations and demonstrations of the Hadoop ecosystem.

About the Speakers

Shashin and Christy have over 50 years combined experience helping major clients with their Business & IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture and Open Source covering multiple industry verticals on major business and technology transformation projects.

Shashin and Christy are co-founders off Onepoint IQ, a niche consulting company focused on helping clients realize the value from data (big and small).

Update (06 May)

Shashin and Christy have kindly shared the slides from their presentation:

• Realising Value from Data
• Apache Drill: interactive, ad-hoc query at scale

Hear maddog talk at Birmingham City University about “Making and Saving Money with Free Software and Open Hardware” - There is much confusion about how people can make or save money with Free Software. As it turns out, there are more ways that people can make money with Free Software than there are with closed source, proprietary software.  This talk illustrates some of those ways, how to formulate a business plan around Free Software and how to avoid traps that make unprofitable companies.

Register for your tickets at: http://lpi-uk.eventbrite.co.uk/

Jon “maddog” Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International (www.li.org), an association of computer users who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author and educator.

He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and SGI. He currently works as an independent consultant, and is currently involved with bringing environmentally friendly computing to emerging marketplaces through Project Cauã (www.projectcaua.org), as well as consulting for Futura Networks, the parent company of Campus-Party.org

Mr Hall has worked on many systems, both proprietary and open, having concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software.

He has taught at Hartford State Technical College (HSTC), Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College. While at HSTC his students gave him the nickname of “maddog”.

Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, “Linux for Dummies”.

Mr. Hall has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia and Brasil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software.

Mr. Hall serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations.

Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software having received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event on Open Educational Resources from 1800 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA ( http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf).

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments. To book a place to attend, please follow this link: https://events.bcs.org/book/539/ (Closing date is 19^th February at 11:59pm).

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OERs) range from learning/teaching tools to complete courses freely available online. OERs are growing in popularity and have featured highly in JISC priorities in the UK. There is a global drive for open resources through organisations such as UNESCO, which hosted the World Open Educational Resources Congress, in June 2012. Some high profile institutions have also shown their support for OERs namely: Oxford University, Open University, The University of Nottingham in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in America.

The aim of this presentation is to clarify the main characteristics of OERs and provide the tools to find and evaluate OERs.  Key themes and issues within the area of Open Educational Resources will be discussed. Current research in the area will also be explored.

Speaker

Ella Mitchell is currently Subject Librarian for the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London. Ella has been working in academic libraries for 6 years and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). In March 2012 was awarded a short-term fellowship at the SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources Education- http://www.open.ac.uk/score/) based at the Open University. Prior to this she was involved in a project team that developed an innovative online Information Literacy tool, Info skills, at the University of East London.  Presently Ella is working on a project with colleagues from across the academic library sector to investigate ways of collating and disseminating Information Literacy Open Educational Resources.

Would you consider helping your Specialist Group to provide a full and varied programme for BCS members and the public?

The Open Source SG of BCS is also looking for volunteers to assist with the running of the SG, which includes its events programme. There are a variety of duties available for everyone no matter how much time you are able to give.

Becoming a volunteer for BCS is a great way to expand on your CV, as well as providing a service for local members.

If you have an interest in helping the BCS Open Source Specialist Group by volunteering your services, then please contact the Member Groups Team on groups@hq.bcs.org.uk for more information on the roles available.

Saturday 27th October 2012

Venue: BCS, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf)

What is an unconference?

An unconference is a conference where what happens is organized by the delegates on the day. The event organizers have to arrange something, the main one being a venue, but the rest is down to the delegates. So all the hassle of talk submissions, review and scheduling is taken away.

Typically at the start of the day everyone gets up in turn and says who they are, what their interests are and what they’d like to do. Based on this people write proposals on Post-It notes and stick these on a board. A moderator may read out the proposals in turn to gauge interest, and if sufficient the proposal will be put on a scheduling board (delegates may adjust the schedule to avoid clashes, etc.).

The unconference starts… Experience shows that the unconference format results in high quality sessions focussed on what delegates want.

Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

Why attend?

There are lots of reasons to attend the OSSG/FLOSS UK Unconference 2012, including:
* Keep abreast with new/emerging technologies
* Network with some of the people who are responsible for developing critical applications
* Become part of the UK Open Source community – build up informal relationships that can be invaluable in problem solving

Benefit from the experience of delegates with similar interests

For more information see: http://www.flossuk.org/unconf2012

The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf) on Thurssday 3rd May 2012, from 1800 to 2100 hours exploring the question: Can Open Source alter and potentially remove the concept of unemployment in the UK?

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments. To book a place to attend please email Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

Background Argument/Proposition
For some time now in the United Kingdom (UK) and many other advanced economic nations there have been high levels of unemployment. This means that a large number of people are simply not able to exchange their labour for monetary wages. There are many problems associated with this phenomenon such as higher crime rates, serious health problems, low self-esteem, and a general feeling of not being part of society.

So what can Open Source activity do about this? In the first instance might it not be acceptable to suggest that those unemployed in the traditional sense could still add to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by being involved in Open Source software projects? Therefore in an unconventional sense they might be seen as employed. At the very least such involvement with Open Source software projects might help in making individuals feel of value to society. It might also be suggested that this idea fits with David Cameron’s Big Society concept in that the opportunity is there through Open Source to produce benefits for society through voluntary activity.

Another possibly way Open Source could alter the concept of unemployment is that people engaged with the Open Source community are in fact keeping their skills up to date. Such opportunity probably would not be possible in the traditional world of employment simply because unemployment offers no chance to practice skills in such a meaningful way. Better still the unemployed can engage in ‘cutting-edge’ innovative Open Source projects that push forward technological boundaries. In the traditional world of business, ‘spin-offs’ from such projects might well lead to increased employment opportunities as indeed could the resulting interaction between the unemployed and business working in partnership.

Alternatively if Open Source software coding brought about by open collaboration can solve problems then perhaps Open Source activity might be able to crack economic and social code to bring about solutions to reduce or even eradicate unemployment.

The Speakers

Mark Elkins, Chair, BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG)

Gerry Gavigan, Chair, Open Source Consortium (OSC), http://www.opensourceconsortium.org

Michael Judd, Akuna Group, http://www.akunagroup.com

The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding a detailed event around the future of HM Government Desktop/Client side computing at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf) on Wednesday 4th April 2012, from 1000 to 1700 hours.

Rationale for this event

With HM Government looking with renewed vigour at its computer systems and in particular what benefits open source may bring, this event intends to take a detailed look at what HMG Desktop/Client side computing may consist of in the near future. For example should it be based primarily around web services where accessible would not be platform dependent so that for instance Civil Servants can load whatever operating system they like on to an HMG funded laptop. Alternatively could the future follow more closely the success (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/limux-munich-linux-migration-project-reports-success) of the City of Munich using the Limux operating system based around Ubuntu Linux 10.10 or perhaps should some form of rigidly controlled thin client system running off of blade servers be used.

Another possible way forward is through the use of what has been termed the ‘Jigsaw approach’ where business applications are all fully vendor independent of each other and can be swapped from one product to another with relative ease. For instance one Office Suite or Browser product might be used for say 6 months and therefore form part of the HMG desktop for that period of time, but can easily be changed for another product after that period of time.

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments (Breakfast served from 0930, Lunch from around 1300, Afternoon Tea and Cakes from 1530, Wine and Nibbles from around 1700). To book a place to attend please email Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

The Speakers

Gerry Gavigan, Chair, Open Source Consortium (OSC), http://www.opensourceconsortium.org

Chris Kenyon, VP Sales & Business Development, Canonical http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/overview/management-team Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu. Chris has had the privilege of being responsible for Canonical’s  commercial engagements with industry partners Dell, HP, Intel and ARM and has helped lead commercial growth of the company over the last five years.  Chris spends much of time on the road with customers in North America, Europe and China.  His present role spans commercial engagements with both end customers and industry partners.

Event Abstract:
- What do desktops of the future look like?
- How do we give civil servants, health-care professionals, teachers and the armed services access to the tools, they need?
- How would an alternative HMG desktop look like?
- Learning from large Linux deployments globally:
- What are some of the best practices for using Linux desktops and proprietary software together?
- What are some of the obstacles that large non-Microsoft desktop deployments face?
- Is a bring your own device culture an opportunity or a threat to the HMG desktop?

Steve Lamb, Open Source Strategy Lead, Microsoft UK. Steve works with Open Source developers, communities and business leaders to enable & encourage a growing ecosystem of Open Source projects on Microsoft technologies including Windows Azure. Steve is a technologist with solid business and communications experience who’s worked at Microsoft for the last ten years with the previous ten being specialised in UNIX. He thrives on breaking down unnecessary barriers, working with amazing people to understand complicated problems and helping communities be more successful. He has paid great attention to cloud technologies (and social media) for many years. Steve has spoken at major conferences around Europe including TechEd – he’s not “a speaker” by trade.

Event Abstract: Hands up who’d like to use a computer that takes forever to boot, is inflexible, obsolete and expensive? Anyone? No I thought not! Sadly this is the reality for users of the current HMG standard desktop. It really doesn’t have to be this way. My peers will present a range of alternative Open Source platforms. Open Source runs REALLY WELL on Windows Client, Server and in the (Azure) cloud. A MODERN version of Windows can give a MUCH BETTER experience though changing the desktop Operating System is only part of the solution. Having a sensible configuration is critical. Keeping it up to date is key. Keeping costs down is important. Freeing people to work HOW THEY WORK BEST is critical.

Richard Melville, Systems Architect, runs Cellularity (cellularity.co.uk), a company committed to developing and producing the “Stellar System”, a small, silent, user-friendly, distributed desktop system running only free software. Interested in electronics at an early age, and designing transistor radios for fun, Richard first worked in the telecoms industry. Moving on to machine control and thyristor-driven dockside equipment he then decided to take time out and took a Sociology degree at Essex University. On leaving University he ran a PCB design company before joining Racal Electronics, a founder member of Vodafone, when the company was working on installing the UK’s first mobile phone network.

Event Abstract: The landscape of the computer desktop is changing fast, driven in part by the rapid developments taking place in the mobile arena.  Howling towers stuffed under office desks, running proprietary software, and creating an unpleasant noisy working environment are giving way to smaller, more energy-efficient systems.  Over the years we have seen vacillations between server-client to peer-to-peer and back again.  With the proliferation of cheap multi-core processors the time is now right for small distributed desktop systems.  With the low power consumption of such systems and the advancement of battery technology there is the potential of freeing the desktop from the constraints of the mains electricity supply.

Tariq Rashid, Lead Architect HOIT Technology Solutions & Assurance, Home Office, HM Government, explaining the “jigsaw” model and its suggested benefits.

Sam Tuke is UK Coordinator for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). He has been using, developing, and promoting Free Software since 2003, organised and spoken at conferences in Sweden, Britain, and Germany, and is currently working on the Document Freedom Day 2012 campaign for Open Standards.

Event Abstract: Public bodies in Europe and beyond are making use of Free Software in a major way. From Munich City Council, to the schools and universities of Brazil, to the local authorities of Belgium, Free Software is providing new solutions in highly competitive public sector markets. Sam will introduce the most interesting of these deployments, and discuss why Free Software was chosen in each case and what benefits it brought. The talk will conclude with an exploration of the advantages that Free Software can offer to the British public sector.

Jan Wildeboer,Open Source Evangelist, Red Hat

Event Abstract: Building the New Now with Open Standards and Open Source – After a short definition of terms we will go through the history, present and possible future of solutions based on open principles. We will revisit some of the early projects that have worked and more importantly those that didn’t work to learn from their failure.

The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event considering the relationship between Open Standards, Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory terms (FRAND), and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf) on Thursday 29th March 2012, from 1800 to 2100 hours.

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments. To book a place to attend please email Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

Background

The Cabinet Office opened an Open Standards Consultation on 9 February 2012 which closes for comments on 3 May 2012. Within question one http://consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards/question1/ is the sub-question:

How could adopting (Fair) Reasonable and Non Discriminatory ((F)RAND) standards deliver a level playing field for open source and proprietary software solution providers?

Dependent upon on your viewpoint FRAND is possibly one of the most contentious terms that could be applied to FOSS because it conflicts with some potentially important aspects of it. As well as the view of the UK Government and the awaited outcome of the Cabinet Office Open Standards Consultation there is activity taking place in the EU Parliament that may affect the use of FOSS due to FRAND.

Aim of event

This event aims to unravel the relationship between Open Standards, FRAND, and FOSS and therefore make it clear what affect this relationship has for the practical application of Open Source. For instance – Would the use of the GPL licence and other OSI approved licences be affected?; Would the UK Government be constrained in what Open Source software it could use? or Could ways be found around such problems?

The findings from this event will be passed on to the BCS Policy Hub to feed into an overall BCS response to the Cabinet Office Open Standards Consultation. The BCS Policy Hub Consultation can be found at http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/43785 where comments should be submitted by 18th April 2012.

Speaker

Gerry Gavigan, Chair, Open Source Consortium (OSC), http://www.opensourceconsortium.org will discuss Royalty Free (RF) Open Standards and FRAND, which will involve active audience participation in that discussion.

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) and BCS Bedford Branch will be holding a combined event on Thursday 15th March 2012 from 1800 hours at Hub Theatre, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA (Location Maps) about Empirical Studies research at The Open University of Software Development (including mining Open Source repositories).

Please register for this event by e-mailing to mcs-computing-secretaries@open.ac.uk your dietary requirements and your name and affiliation as it should appear on your badge. Sandwiches and beverages from 18:00.

Speakers

Researchers from the Open University.

Abstract

Professional software practice is easily taken for granted, but the best practice embodies knowledge, experience and insight that can be shared to good effect. Empirical studies of software development aim to understand how software is actually engineered and maintained in practice, in order to develop better techniques and tools to support software developers and managers.

The Open University has a strong research record in qualitative and quantitative empirical research of professional software development, drawing on methods and theory from cognitive psychology and sociology among other disciplines to provide analytic insight. Our research is based on field studies of practices ranging from small start-ups to multi-national corporations.

The evening will start with brief talks overviewing the various research strands, followed by mingling around posters, where you can learn more details and discuss research challenges and opportunities in your organisation. Topics to be presented include ethnographic studies of agile development and scientific software development, mining open source repositories for vocabulary usage and for assessing architectural evolution, studies of expert software design and of meaningful changes in software development.

Full day Training Course by Damian Conway – ‘Presentation Skills’

Monday 16th April 2012

Ambassadors Hotel, 12 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0HX

see: http://www.flossuk.org/Events/PresentationSkills2012

Description: The best and most effective presentations capture the audience
quickly, hold their interest effortlessly, educate and entertain them in equal
measure, and sometimes even inspire them.

This class explores simple and effective techniques for achieving those goals
in any kind of presentation.

The first half of the class focuses on preparation, content selection, visual
design, delivery, handling questions and effective techniques for presenting
various kinds of technical information (code, data, statistics, charts,
structure diagrams etc.)

The second half of the course is an in-depth tutorial on improving the ‘look
and feel’ of presentation materials – especially Powerpoint/Keynote/Impress
presentations. In particular, it demonstrates practical techniques for making
your slides not suck!

Tutor: Damian Conway is a renowned programmer, speaker and educator, best
known for his work on Perl programming language.

Previously as Associate Professor in Computer Science at Australia’s largest
University, for the past decade he has made his living entirely by giving
conference keynotes, technical presentations, programming tutorials and
professional training courses.

He has been keynote speaker at major technical Conferences such as OSCON,
linux.conf.au, OLS, Webstock, DebConf, and GOTO, presenting on topics as
diverse as quantum physics, website design, computational linguistics,
bioinformatics, and programming language design.

He has also been invited to speak and teach at Institutions such as Harvard,
MIT, Carnegie Mellon, U. Toronto and ETH Zurich and has delivered seminars and
taught classes for major corporations including Apple, Yahoo!, Amazon,
Canonical, Xerox, Qualcomm, Canon, Michelin, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Places are limited – early booking is essential Early-bird rates available
until 15th March 2012

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) and the Geospatial Specialist Group on Thursday 3rd November 2011 from 1700 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA will be holding an event on Open Source, Open Minds: Using web technologies to rescue geospatial data from the back office.

To register for this event please visit http://geospatial.bcs.org/web/?q=node/84. This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments.

Blue Fox Technology designs and develops hosted web applications for mapping and provides a comprehensive range of cartographic and GIS services. The company was started in 1999 and its clients have included Experian, The National Trust, the RHS and various Local Authorities and Government Agencies. Opus is the company’s leading software product for publishing and managing interactive mapping and documents online. David is a Director of Blue Fox and is responsible for
converting business and sales opportunities into projects that pay the bills.

JDi Solutions designs and develops hosted web applications in support of e-Government priority outcomes for Local Government. Their e-Consultation system is used by 25 Local Authorities and was instrumental in helping South Cambridgeshire District Council complete its ambitious LDF programme, processing 33 consultation documents over 5 consultations stages in the space of 2 years. Tom is Technical Director at JDi Solutions and is responsible for turning technical ideas and functions into generic software packages that support a client’s business objectives.

Blue Fox and JDi Solutions are passionate about open source technologies and in producing software that is accessible, easy to use and rich in features and functions. The companies have come together to create a collaborative development team tasked with improving and extending its range of hosted software packages. These include a new Document System for authoring and managing documents for web and print-based publication and a Print on Demand system for web-based mapping that allows users to print maps at the scale, size and pagination they want.