Review of the Students for Free Culture Conference in NYC

Thanks to available travel funding I was able to attend this year’s Free Culture Conference and meet some interesting like-minded people.  One thing I thought was extremely beneficial is that not everyone was tech savvy.  Events such as this tend to draw a very one-sided crowd, but the Free Culture Conference was different.  This lead to a greater variety of ideas and opinions being expressed.

Although the panelists were well-informed in their respective fields, and many were very tech savvy as well, the fashion panel was extremely accessible to everyone.  Admittedly, I was not a fan of the fashion panel idea and thought I would find it of little interests.  I was completely wrong.  The information in the discussion lead by Lana Swartz came up during many discussions at the unconference.  She pointed out that “you don’t need copyright protection for a vibrant market” and, “the fashion industry is so vibrant and moving so quickly because there are fewer legal difficulties in building on past ideas.”  These are great points that can help further the cause for free culture and the open sharing of ideas.

I’m a graduate student at UNC studying TransAtlantic Political Science with a focus on information technology policies.  When the announcement about the Free Culture Conference and travel funding came across my RSS feed reader I was already sold.  However, there were others in the group such as lawyers that were more interested in intellectual property rights law, community members that just wanted to learn about progress on Diaspora, and students from other programs that simply wanted to find out what free culture was.  This mix of people with different ideas and from different backgrounds created more diverse conference questions and more interesting discussions at the unconference.

A couple of people had even received travel funding to fly in from Europe.  During one of the unconference sessions, these people lead a discussion about planning a Free Culture Conference in Europe.  Being that I will be in Barcelona as part of my graduate studies, I am looking into way I can help plan this event.  We are taking the things we liked from the conference this year and mixing in some new ideas for next year.

Thanks to my experience at the Free Culture Conference this year I am looking forward to attending the conference in Europe next year.  Additionally, I am eager to follow-up on the many projects, ideas, and products I learned about.  I have come away from this conference inspired and educated yet still full of new questions and ideas.  That’s the sign of a good conference.

Related articles

• Burning Student Question: Is There Life After Microsoft Office? (wired.com)