An update on Irish developments by our friend Kevin Flanagan:

“The local hackerspace is going well there is a nice community of people growing in and around it, a nice mix or artists, tech heads and entrepreneurs. Since the Free Culture Forum I’ve set up a mailing list to support people interested in Free Culture here in Ireland and to organise against things like 3 Strikes and to promote positive copyright reform, see https://groups.google.com/group/free-culture-ireland

I’ve also been working with some people from DERI organising Open Data events to raise public awareness of the benefits of Open Government such as OpenDaWest

Ireland is in dire need of reforms that support more openness and transparency in Government. I’ve been adding these updates to the wiki as often as possible http://p2pfoundation.net/Ireland . I was quite inspired by the IMMI project and had discussions with Smari McCarthy about promoting something similar here. There are a number of voices calling for things such as libel reform and greater protection for whistle blowers here. So hopefully we can get together and do something. I’m working with Declan Elliott to organise an Open Space conference with the purpose of writing a manifesto with a positive vision for the future of the country and I see all of the above as critical pieces of that puzzle. So a busy year ahead. Of course this is a detour from the arts practice but its no harm. All things find balance in time. “