LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course
 

Please consider adding [email protected] to your address book, which will ensure that our messages reach you and not your spam box.

Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/community/the-libreplanet-2023-charting-the-course-schedule-is-here-for-march-18-and-19

Dear Free Software Supporter,

Photo of a keynote audience at LibrePlanet. Everybody is standing an clapping hands. A line on top of the photo says: LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course, schedule now online.

Today, we're sharing with you all the sessions that have been confirmed for LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course. Because there are so many high quality talks, you might find that it isn't easy to choose which sessions to attend. We look forward to seeing you at LibrePlanet. Register now to secure your seat today.

A schedule that will excite you

The sessions cover important topics that show how the free software movement can chart the course to full digital freedom in areas such as artificial intelligence, education and research, agriculture, finance, social media, the public sector, and our personal lives. We have a schedule full of carefully selected talks by and for both regulars and newcomers. The schedule also holds our annual Free Software Awards ceremony for 2022. Invitations to the annual associate member meeting will be sent out separately.

  • Previous Free Software Award winner Paul Roberts, Australian hacker Sick Codes, Right to Repair advocate Kevin Kenney, and iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens will use their panel It’s time to jailbreak the farm to discuss how to liberate farmers with free software and usurious OEM-operated software ecosystems from the grip of Big Agriculture.

  • In Problems in the fediverse: Organization, Tomat0 will share lessons she learned during her involvement in various initiatives to help grow the fediverse, including the Copyleft Curator newsletter and The Open Web Project. She will demonstrate how the recent Twitter exodus ties back to the importance of organization and answer questions such as how we encourage people to contribute, how we make it easier to contribute, and how to ensure our efforts are coordinated towards what is most needed for the community.

  • Do Yoon Kim, assistant professor of information systems at Boston College, will share some of the exciting ways data can be used to show the impact that free software is making on the world. Let him take you on a journey from Git commit histories to lists of OpenWRT compatible devices while listening to his talk Using data to see the impact of free software.

  • In Understanding developer advocacy in Wikipedia's technology landscape, Srishti Sethi will explain developer advocacy's role in engaging the technical community behind Wikipedia and its sister projects. You will gather new ideas for building stronger developer communities.

These are just some of the highlights that await you. Check out the full schedule for the more than thirty course-charting sessions that we hope will inspire you.

LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course will be the first fully hybrid LibrePlanet. It's up to you if you want to attend, speak, or volunteer in person or remotely. The Jupiter room will exclusively feature in-person talks, all of which can also be viewed by remote attendees via the live stream. The Saturn room mixes in-person and online talks and the Neptune room will be fully remote. There will be a dedicated room to watch remote sessions in the in-person event, too, so when you come to the event you will not miss out on anything. As always, we will also publish the sessions in podcast and video form after LibrePlanet.

Screenshot of a section of the LibrePlanet schedule showing the following sessions: Topographical maps for all, The long history of metrics before and after cybernetics, JShelter for browsing securely, Finding a job while caring about free software, Life 0.01 - Free software for the end times, and Towards federated forges.

You'll find no workshops in the schedule this year. Like last year, we received many fantastic workshop submissions. To make sure we get the most out of all sessions, and because it was a great success last year, we decided to do a series of LibrePlanet workshops after the conference once again.

The facts about LibrePlanet 2023

LibrePlanet: Charting the Course will be held March 18 and 19, 2023. It is the fifteenth edition of the conference. This is a reason to celebrate! Register today to be part of it! No matter if you'll attend online or in person, registration helps us prepare for the event, and it provides you with some benefits! It is very useful in anticipating the amount of server space we need, or as we plan the number of volunteers we need for things like moderation. FSF associate members and students can attend LibrePlanet for free.

The physical conference will be held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC), a convenient and central location in Boston, MA which is located at 415 Summer Street, Boston, MA, 02210. For information regarding transportation, accommodation, and restaurants, please visit the lodging & travel section of the conference page.

Sponsors and exhibitors make LibrePlanet possible

LibrePlanet cannot exist without the support of the community. If you or your company would like to sponsor or exhibit at LibrePlanet, have a look at this year's prospectus, and email [email protected] for more information. Sponsoring provides you, and your organization, with a unique opportunity to demonstrate commitment to free software and engage with hundreds of legal and policy experts, developers, students, activists, free software and technology enthusiasts, and potential employees via our exhibitor hall. Thanks to conference sponsors, we can offer free admission to students, welcoming event space and social activities, and refreshments for attendees. Support from generous sponsors also enables LibrePlanet to run on free software infrastructure, including livestreaming and session recordings.

Time to socialize -- Birds of a Feather sessions

If you want to contribute to the program, you can organize a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session for LibrePlanet 2023. BoF sessions can be a time for people to get together around a specific topic, project, or identity, either to focus on conversations, to come up with new ideas, or to just spend time socializing. There are already two exciting events listed: a GNU/Linux install fest and a diversity dinner specifically for women, genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming attendees. If you're interested in joining, please email [email protected].

Join LibrePlanet 2023 behind the scenes as a volunteer

If you would like to join us in person, please send an email to [email protected]. In your email, please let us know what days/times of LibrePlanet you will be able to volunteer, and don't forget to mention your T-shirt size (we have unisex S-XXXXL). There will be several training sessions for volunteers, most of them from 18:00 to 20:00 EST in the weeks leading up to the conference.

Spread the word about LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course

Excited about the program? Can't wait to start discussing sessions and ideas around LibrePlanet? Join the discussion mailing list, the IRC channel at #libreplanet, and the wiki community now. Finally, we hope you'll help us spread the word about LibrePlanet 2023. Please blog or microblog using the hashtag #libreplanet to let people know that you'll be there, what sessions you are looking forward to, or to share memories of previous LibrePlanet conferences.

I'm excited to see you in only three and a half weeks at LibrePlanet, in person or online.

Miriam Bastian
Program Manager

Image Copyright © 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc., licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.