This year I had the honor to do the keynote speech at OpenExpo, ‘my own event’ ;)

(Just for the record: I didn’t nominate myself, it was Hannes who asked me to speak and also he invented this bragging title!)

Digitale Nachhaltigkeit in der Schweiz – ein Bericht zur Lage der Nation
Die parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit fördert den nachhaltigen und innovativen Umgang mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (ICT) und setzt sich ein für den öffentlichen Zugang zu Wissensgütern. Diese und andere Initiativen stellen sicher, dass in der Schweiz das Engagement für eine nachhaltige und offene IT gerade in der Rezession nicht blosses Lippenbekenntnis bleibt.

Tonight I had the honor to help Free Software movement founder Richard Stallman to cook noodles at Théo’s place nicely located up in the Lausanne vineyards:

Before Richard and I had a hot dispute about Free Software vs. Open Source. As Norbert correctly said: It’s like convincing the pope that women should become bishops… The issue was that RMS doesn’t want to speak at an event which uses the terminology of open source software. Therefore we found the compromise that I’ll rename OpenExpo to “libre OpenExpo” and then RMS will come again to Switzerland 2010 and speak at our open source - uhm - Free Software event, great!!

Richard’s talk about copyleft in the afternoon at 8ème Forum eCulture in Lausanne was fascinating. I was really impressed of his French speaking skills talking 2h in an almost accent-free French!

In the end he auctioned his book “Free Software, Free Society” for 300 Swiss francs!

Following a lot of advices from PhD Comics I finally found the right title for my thesis: “How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation”

And here my favorite comic on how (not) to talk to PhD students:

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