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Dear Free Software Supporter,

International Women’s Day is coming up this Sunday, March 8, and it’s
the perfect opportunity to highlight the accomplishments of some of
the amazing women in free software we’ll be featuring at the
[LibrePlanet 2020 conference][1], coming up next weekend (March
14-15). As you’ll see, many women are doing exciting and important
work that ties into our "Free the Future" theme, demonstrating how
free software has the potential to unlock a better future for us all,
and building projects that will help us get there.

[1]: [link removed]

If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, we encourage you to
[register today][2]. Registration is possible online until March 10,
10:00 a.m Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Walk-in registration is also
normally possible, but we can't guarantee it. Plus, registering in
advance helps us anticipate how many people to expect! And remember:
if you are a student or a Free Software Foundation (FSF) [associate
member][3], you can attend the conference gratis.

[2]: [link removed]
[3]: [link removed]

With that said: as we [recently announced][4], we’re proud to be
welcoming [Public Lab][5] co-founder Shannon Dosemagen as one of our
keynote speakers. Protecting the planet -- whatever that might mean to
you -- is of increasing concern in the year 2020, so Shannon was a
perfect fit for this year’s lineup: we know that the philosophy of the
four freedoms has something special and crucial to offer every social
movement. Her work demonstrates how both scientists and ordinary
people can apply ethics inspired by the free software philosophy. As
an environmental health advocate and community science champion,
Shannon has a lot to say about how "freeing the future" will help to
ensure that we *have* a future at all.

[4]: [link removed]
[5]: [link removed]

Another extraordinary activist will be kicking off the conference on
Saturday morning as part of our initial keynote panel, featuring
talented young free software developers: Alyssa Rosenzweig, a college
student who [interned at the FSF in 2018][6]. She is currently
studying Applied Mathematics at the University of Toronto, while also
working at Collabora and leading the Panfrost project to build a free
graphics stack for Mali GPUs. As you can see from her [internship
wrap-up post][7], her commitment and contributions to the free
software movement are vast already, and we can’t wait to hear what
insights she’ll be offering at the conference.

[6]: [link removed]
[7]: [link removed]

Another activist who has long kept her eyes trained on the future is
Micky Metts, a worker/owner of Agaric (agaric.coop) and last year’s
[closing keynote speaker][8]. Micky is a veteran of the free software
movement and a perennial LibrePlanet speaker. Her work concentrates on
the intersection of free software, platform cooperativism, technology
networks, design justice, and cooperative development. Her talk,
["Platform cooperativism, surveillance capitalism, predictive
analysis, and you,"][9] will concentrate on how this work is our best
hope to protect our data from surveillance and the increasingly
Orwellian future she addressed in [last year’s keynote][10].

[8]: [link removed]
[9]: [link removed]
[10]: [link removed]

[Lucy Ingham][11] is a comparative newcomer to the world of free
software, but as a technology journalist zeroing in on how technology
shapes the world we live in, she has spent a lot of time warning the
world about the dangers of what she describes as the "Life as a
Service (LaaS)" model. The abstract she submitted for her talk,
"Rented future: The dangerous rise of life as a service" shares many
themes with [Cory Doctorow’s novella "Unauthorized Bread,"][12],
connecting that ominous near-future to the unsettling realities of the
present.

[11]: [link removed]
[12]: [link removed]

These are only a few of the women who will be bringing their insights
and their work to LibrePlanet 2020, and we hope you’ll join us to see
them all, here in Boston next week!

Happy hacking!

Dana Morgenstein
Outreach and Communications Coordinator


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