Two Inspiring "5 à 7"

The new format

A while ago Koumbit adopted a new format in which we invite organisations to give presentations in the context of our monthly "5 à 7". This has worked out really well and they have been great. In addition to being a fun learning experience for all involved, they help confirm and build relationships.
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October

The October "5 à 7" was by John Hodgins about the Isuma.tv project, which is both technically sophisticated and socially significant. Isuma.tv's "mission statement" speaks for itself:

IsumaTV is an independent interactive network of Inuit and Indigenous multimedia. IsumaTV uses the power and immediacy of the Web to bring people together to tell stories and support change.

Our tools enable Indigenous people to express reality in their own voices: views of the past, anxieties about the present and hopes for a more decent and honorable future. Our sincere goal is to assist people to listen to one another, to recognize and respect diverse ways of experiencing our world, and honor those differences as a human strength.

IsumaTV uses new networking technology to build a new era of communication and exchange among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities around the globe.

The site currently streams feature length films in high quality, on-demand video and provides a platform for preserving and promoting oral cultures.

While some of us were somewhat familiar with the project since Koumbit had worked on a number of its features from a technical perspective, it was great to put this work into context, and such a great one at that. We all came away feeling very inspired by the work already done, and motivated to do more.

November

About twenty people showed up for the November "5 à 7" to hear Sébastien Grenier's presentation about "Unions and Free Software in Argentina". The presentation was followed by a great discussion about social progress and the politics of open source.

The CTA is an alternative union in Argentina, inclusive of unemployed workers and worker's families in who they seek to represent. Argentinian law prevents the CTA from becoming an officially accredited union, but has not kept them from becoming a considerable political force in Buenos Aires.

The CTA adopted open source at a high level based on a labor analysis of open source development. They see closed source software as a model that divorces the developer from the profits of their work, while accruing profits for shareholders, and are using open source to support an alternative economic model. Their infrastructure is based in large part on tools and approaches developed and maintained by Koumbit. It was nice to hear Sebastien attest to the positive impact Koumbit had for the CTA outside of a typical service-oriented relationship.

A lot of people showed up who we hadn't seen in a long time. It was an interesting re-union of sorts in that many of the people had known each other since when Koumbit was just a dream we had together. How things change. Koumbit is no longer just a dream and the geeks are no longer teenagers. They are essentially the same people they were, with the same general tendencies, but now they are experienced and mature and the level of discussion reflected that. The discussion went beyond simply debating the virtues of FLOSS to explore questions of community governance and technical soverenty in the context of corporate benevolence and pravailing intellectual property laws. A lot of amazing stuff has happened over the last 5 years and one cannot help but wonder what the next five have in hold.