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FOSDEM 2020 event report

FOSDEM 2020, pt. 2: Can Free Software include ethical AI systems?

2020 April 21 / / 1 Comment

This post is a follow-up to FOSDEM 2020, pt. 1: Play by play. This post summarizes the talk given by me and my colleague, Mike Nolan, at FOSDEM 2020.

FOSDEM 2020 took place from Saturday, 1 February, 2020 to Sunday, 2 February, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium (shortly after Sustain OSS 2020 and CHAOSScon EU 2020). On Saturday, together with my colleague and friend Mike Nolan, we presented on a topic he and I have co-conspired on for the last six months. What are the intersections of Free Software and artificial intelligence (AI)?

What is a rights-based approach for designing minimally safe and transparent guidelines for AI systems? In this talk, we explore what a Free AI system might look like. Then, taking research and guidelines from organizations such as Google and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, we propose practical policies and tools to ensure those building an AI system respect user freedom. Lastly, we propose the outlines of a new kind of framework where all derivative works also respect those freedoms.

Freedom and AI: Can Free Software include ethical AI systems? Exploring the intersection of Free software and AI
Video recording from FOSDEM 2020

This post is an abridged summary of the key ideas and thoughts Mike and I presented at our FOSDEM 2020 session.

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How did Free Software build a social movement?

How did Free Software build a social movement?

2020 April 14 / / 1 Comment

The Free Software movement is rooted to origins in the 1980s. As part of a talk I gave with my colleague and friend Mike Nolan at FOSDEM 2020, we analyzed how the Free Software movement emerged as a response to a changing digital world in three different phases. This blog post is an exploration and framing of that history to understand how the social movement we call “Free Software” was constructed.

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FOSDEM 2020 event report

FOSDEM 2020, pt. 1: Play by play

2020 March 5 / / 1 Comment

FOSDEM 2020 took place from Saturday, 1 February, 2020 to Sunday, 2 February, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium (shortly after Sustain OSS 2020 and CHAOSScon EU 2020):

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organized by the community for the community. The goal is to provide free and open source software developers and communities a place to meet to:

– Get in touch with other developers and projects;

– Be informed about the latest developments in the free software world;

– Be informed about the latest developments in the open source world;

– Attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by project leaders and committers;

– To promote the development and benefits of free software and open source solutions.

fosdem.org/2020/about/

This is my third time attending FOSDEM. I attended on behalf of RIT LibreCorps to represent our engagement with the UNICEF Office of Innovation and the Innovation Fund. For FOSDEM 2020, I arrived ready to give my talk (coming in pt. 2) and honestly to see where the weekend took me.

Planning out FOSDEM is hard. So, my strategy is to figure it out as I go, since most of what I get out of FOSDEM comes from casual conversations and “hallway track.”

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2017 - Justin W. Flory's Year in Review

2017 – My Year in Review

2018 February 12 / / 7 Comments

I can’t remember how writing an annual reflection became a tradition, but after writing them for the last two years, it is now a habit. Every time I look back on all that the last year brought into my life, it is surreal. Many things that happened, I could never have expected one or two years ago. And perhaps now, I see that life is defined by the unexpected moments: the things that surprise us, warm our hearts, sadden us, and remind us of our humanity. Thus, I present my year in review of 2017.

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Analyzing Fedora’s impact at FOSDEM and beyond

2016 March 9 / / 0 Comments

FOSDEM conference goers in Brussels, Belgium

Conference goers attend the FOSDEM conference in Brussels, Belgium.

Yesterday, Fedora contributor and CommOps team member Bee Padalkar published an article on her blog about measuring the impact of Fedora’s participation at the FOSDEM conference in Europe.

Looking at FOSDEM

In her analysis, Bee looked at people who scanned the FOSDEM badges for 2014, 2015, 2016. Leveraging tools like fedmsg, she was able to draw conclusive evidence of how people who scanned the badge began contributing for the first time or started contributing more than before the conference. The statistics are fascinating and the analysis is comprehensive in how it measures contributions. It’s worth the full time to read how we’re making an impact at conferences!

Looking ahead

The other awesome factor of this is that these kinds of reports are extendable to other events in the world of Fedora. Other Ambassadors can use tools like Fedora Badges and track metrics of how they impact and affect the people they engage with at conferences and hackathons. I’m hoping for us to be able to use these kinds of analytics for the past event at BrickHack 2016 that I helped organize as an Ambassador. Stay tuned for an event report and plenty more on the Community Blog with details about BrickHack.

Read all about it!

Read the full analysis on her blog!

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