Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit (FSCONS) is a Nordic conference trying to bridge the gap between software and cultural freedom held each autumn in Gothenburg, Sweden. It shares many similarities with FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) in the way in which the event is structured, but where the latter attracts speakers and visitors primarily interested in Free software, FSCONS aims to attract a more diverse crowd. The conference was organised 2007-2011 by FFKP, the Society for Free Culture and Software. In 2012, a new member run association was formed to take over the organisation of conference.
Conference history The event was first organised by members of the Free Software Foundation Europe, in particular its Swedish teamIDG.se article: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.130680 (Swedish) and the then current intern in their Gothenburg office. It was organised the 7–8 December 2007 and attracted about 80 visitors. Some of the speakers were Jonas Öberg,FSCONS 2007 official site: http://fscons.org/2007/node/12 Mats Östling,LinuxWiki.org: http://linuxwiki.de/FSCONS2007 Lars Aronsson and Georg C. F. Greve.Georg's about page at FSFE: http://fsfe.org/about/greve/
Through the years 2008-2011, the conference was organised once a year, always in October or November. In 2008, the FSFE was joined by Wikimedia SverigeWikimedia Sverige webpage: http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:FSCONS_2008 and Creative Commons Swedencreativecommons.se as co-organisers of the event.
Notable speakers over the years include Richard Stallman,FSF.org: http://www.fsf.org/events/20111112-dialogue-gothenburg Smári McCarthy,Smári's homepage: http://smarimccarthy.is/events/selected.html Oscar Swartz,Oscar's homepage: http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/live-talare-panelist.html Dr. Ansgar Bernardi, Christina Haralanova,Christina's homepage: http://www.ludost.org/about Amelia Andersdotter, Marcin Jakubowski, Erik Zachte, Edmund Harriss, Karin Kosina, Henri Bergius, Glyn Moody,Open dot dot dot: https://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/11/tale-of-two-conferences.html Erik de Bruijn, and, Alessandro Rubini, to mention a few.
In 2012 the member-run association Föreningen FSCONS was formed to take over the organisation of the conference from FFKP. The conference has continued to be held in November each year.
Nordic Free Software Award FSFE and is presenting the winner of the yearly Nordic Free Software Award, given to the person/project that have made a contribution to the advancement of Free Software in the Nordic countries. The jury consists of member from FSFE and Föreningen fri kultur och programvara (Free Culture and Software) and members from the free software community.
Winners 2007 : Skolelinux 2008 : Mats Östling 2009 : Simon Josefsson & Daniel Stenberg 2010 : Bjarni Rúnar EinarssonFSFE: http://fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20101108-01.en.html 2011 : Erik H. JosefssonFSFE: http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111114-01.en.html 2012 : Otto Kekäläinen and Ole Tange
References
External links
Official website fscons.org FSCONS conference blog Summaries of previous FSCONS conferences Press mentions "Frihetskämpar möts i Göteborg" (ComputerSweden - Swedish) 2011-11-11 17:00 "Hallå Håkan Lidbo!" (GP - Swedish) 2011-11-11 "Fri programvara en väg till arbetarmakt" (Fria tidningen - Swedish) 2010-11-11 10:05 "När kommer öppen hårdvara?" (ComputerSweden - Swedish) 2010-11-17 16:06 "Solidarisk programvara" (Fria tidningen - Swedish) 2011-05-04 08:00 "Konferens som vidgar samtalet" (Fria tidningen - Swedish) 2011-05-18 08:00 "Nördfeministisk kraftsamling" (Fria tidningen - Swedish) 2011-05-18 08:00 "Das Openmoko-Projekt um die gleichnamige freie Handyplattform lädt im Rahmen der FSCONS in Göteborg, Schweden" (Linux Magazine - German) 2008-10-08 (Miljömagasinet - Swedish) "De vill arbeta för fri programvara", 2010-06-24 "Konferens om fri programvara" (Fria tidningen - Swedish) 2010 "Teknikjournalisten och författaren Glyn Moody till Sverige" (Webfinanser - Swedish) 2010-10-19 13:51 "Linux-Norge overhaler Danmark indenom" (Computerworld - Danish) 2007-12-12 "Späckat schema på FSCONS i Göteborg" (ComputerWorld/LinuxWorld - Swedish) 2007-12-12 "U-landsdatorn blev hans stora hobby" (ComputerSweden - Swedish) 2007-12-11 "Skolelinux fikk pris for fri programvare" (Computerworld - Norwegian) 2007-12-10