Here is some of the feedback from the round during the conference
plenary session.

See also: http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Project/Conferences/Notes

Conference quality
==================

* Many interesting talks

Nearly everybody emphasized that there were many, many interesting
talks. For instance someone said that there was not a single slot
where he found no interesting slot.

* Different areas people are coming from

Many emphasized that there were people from different areas of
knowledge which led to very interesting and interdisciplinary
discussions. On the other hand people came from science as well as
from activism and many shades in between. This added to the
discussions. In fact there is probably no place on the planet where
all these types of people cooperate in such a fruitful way.

Format
======

* Too small for three tracks

Some people said that the conference audience has been too small for
three tracks.

Indeed AFAICS two sessions had nearly no audience – which is of
course a pity.

* Very short warm-up sessions

One person suggested to have a common session consisting of very
short warm-up sessions (5 minutes) from every speaker so everyone
has a better idea of what a talk is going to be about.

* Long slots are great

A lot of people appreciated the long slots of 90 minutes giving room
for 45 minutes of talk and 30 minutes of discussion.

* Three tracks make you loose two third

Some found it a pity that they loose two third of the conference by
the three tracks. Suggestions were to have only two tracks.

* Adding more plenary sessions

Someone suggested to have more plenary sessions for general
discussion.

General
=======

* Too few visitors

Some said that there would have been much more potential of
interested people and that it is sad, that this potential could not
have been made real.

BTW: I now added all numbers and they add up to ~90 visitors
including speakers.

* Oekonux Conference in parallel / close to another conference

Some suggested to have an Oekonux Conference in parallel or close to
another conference. One concrete suggestion was the FOSDEM (sp?).

* More accessible web site

Some complained about the accessiblity and the look of the web site.

I’ll also put some of this stuff to the general `conference notes`_
which is a collective memory for Oekonux Conferences.

.. _conference notes: http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Project/Conferences/Notes

Via http://www.keimform.de/2009/04/01/notes-from-the-fourth-oekonux-conference-i/

“Here are some quick notes which I wrote down during the conference sessions and polished and extended a bit afterwards.

During the first day, I didn’t took many notes, since I was busy as session helper (moderating the discussions and so on). Stefan Merten talked about Current limitations of peer production, and ideas on how to overcome them. Since Stefan doesn’t like idea of social agreements between producers which might involve a coupling between giving and taking (as I discuss in my book), he is stuck with having to hope for technical solutions. Computers are machines for making perfect copies of digital goods, and Stefan hopes for machines can take make perfect copies of physical goods—the old Replicator dream.

Among other things, this completely neglects how to get the resources necessary for production, and how to organize tasks that cannot be handled by machines, e.g. health and elder care or education. I don’t think that such an approach could ever be sufficient—both technical solutions and social agreements are necessary and need to be interwoven.

The second and last session of the first day was given by Jacco Lammers, who talked about the c,mm,n car, which has already been discussed (in German) in the Keimform blog. Cars, of course, are a very individualistic and somehow “capitalistic” way of movement; accordingly, Jacco’s talk was quite business-oriented, too. Still, it’s an interesting project—one of the most ambitious open hardware endeavors which has made some reasonable progress so far.

After the session, I talked with Jacco about licensing issues—most open hardware projects use licenses designed for software (e.g. the GNU GPL) or content (Creative Commons). These are quite inappropriate for hardware, since the license covers only the designs, not the hardware itself—a manufacturer who produces and sells open source hardware wouldn’t be bound by the copyleft clause of the GPL, for example. Jacco said that they have found a license that seems to solve this issue and are now in the process of evaluating it—I’ll have to check that out.

The second day started with a joint introduction by Michel Bauwens and Stefan Merten, who explained the goals and philosophy of Oekonux and the P2P Foundation, the two projects organizing the conference. Stefan again expressed his belief that physical production is to become a mere appendix of information production—well, we’ll see. Michel talked about the “distributed production of money,” a toy topic of his I don’t believe in. Still, they’re both doing great jobs in inspiring and leading these organizations and the world would be much worse off without them and their dedicated work. Thanks, Stefan and Michel, for doing what you do and for making this great conference a reality!

In the next slot, it was my turn to talk about Peer Production Everywhere (cf. my submission). In the first part of my talk, I introduced the core ideas of my book about how a society based on commons and peer production might look like; in the second (and shorter) part, I discussed some ideas and approaches for how to get there. (I prepared my talk slides using the S5 file format; they’re designed for viewing on a 1024×768 display in full-screen mode.) The discussion was quite lively and there where the usual questions about whether and when coupling between giving and taking is necessary, and whether it is compatible with the peer mode of production. The general reception was quite positive, I think.”