What a wonderful and engaging day!

Bowling begins ~8pm tonight at the lanes near 21 & H Street. Tomorrow, chapter leaders should plan to arrive ~930am and the main activities will begin ~10:30am.

If you have yet to submit your workshop, please do so as soon as possible:

http://conference.freeculture.org/workshops

When you get here tomorrow, be sure to say thanks to:

• Kevin Donovan and Elizabeth West for taking care of all the “on the ground” details (and there were many!), and
• Greg Grossmeier for hooking up the video stream.

Finally, sponsorship from Google, Shareable, and the Mozilla Foundation was critical for funding student travel. Couldn’t have done it without them!

Tune in here on February 13, 9:30 EST for live streaming of the Free Culture X conference. We’re streaming in 100% open source and royalty-free Theora video, so we recommend using the latest version of Firefox or making sure your browser is properly equipped for Theora. Alternatively, you can stream in VLC, by pointing to the network stream at http://event.mozilla.stream.flumotion.com/mozilla/event.ogg.m3u.

Check out videos of the last Free Culture conference, FC2008…

We want to give a big thanks to long-time free culture supporters, Mozilla, who have agreed to sponsor Free Culture X. Their commitment to supporting free / open source software, an open Internet and free culture more generally is one of the best things to happen to this movement. We look forward to making this weekend’s event a great experience for all involved!

CC-BY-NC-ND, Katskiphoto

Neither snow nor rain nor dark of night will stop FCX from going down this weekend! For anyone concerned that soggy weather could stop us, fret not.  It’ll be sunny (if melty) and we’ll all be warm inside.

Space remains for a few more tables outside of the main conference hall on Saturday. This is a great opportunity to show off a project, share information about your organization, and meet the conference attendees. If last year’s event is any indication, the tabling area will be the heart of the conference: a bustling center of activity and conversation. To reserve a table, send an email to conf10 /at/ freeculture.org!

Shareable.net, an online magazine that tells the story of sharing, has joined the slate of sponsors helping make Free Culture X possible. Shareable covers the people, places, and projects that are bringing a shareable world to life. They also share tools and tips to help you make a shareable world real in your life. If you’re interested in becoming an event sponsor, don’t hesitate to be in touch!

We’re happy to announce that Zachary Katz, Deputy Chief from the FCC’s Office of Strategic Policy & Planning Analysis, will be joining us on the Politics of Open Networks panel. (You may recognize Zac from his video message regarding the recent FCC hearings.)

Zac will be speaking alongside panelists Steve Worona of EDUCAUSE, Chris Riley of Free Press, Timothy B. Lee of Princeton University and moderator Michael Nelson of Georgetown. This panel promises a unique opportunity to discuss the difficult questions of network openness, neutrality, and competition through the lens of education. How should campus computing resources be allocated? What role must students and educators play in shaping the politics of protocols?

Is there a viewpoint not addressed by this panel? Suggest a workshop for Sunday and let’s make it happen!

Free Culture X is only two weeks away. If you have not yet registered, now is the time to do it! Register now!

Give a dollar, $25, $100—it’s up to you. 100% of the proceeds will fund future Students for Free Culture projects. To sweeten the deal for you, we’re announcing some cool gifts:

•If you register at $50 or more, get a DVD with the complete Free Culture 2008 videos archive

•If you register at $75 or more, get a signed copy of one of these books:

• Remix by Lawrence Lessig OR
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

•If you register at $100 or more, get one of these badges of coolness:

• a yourname@freeculture.org email address OR
• a custom answering machine greeting by none other than cyberscholar Jonathan Zittrain

Just register by February 9th at your chosen level and we’ll contact you to get your gift preferences. Gifts are cumulative, so if you register at $100 or more you get a DVD, a signed book, and a badge of coolness. Gifts apply to all previous registrations, too.

Questions? Email board@freeculture.org.

Thanks to a generous grant from Google, we’re going to be able to provide travel sponsorship to some students coming to Free Culture X!

However, with the conference fast approaching, the deadline for funding is coming up quick. In order to be considered for these sponsorships, please fill out the application form by this Friday, January 29. You will be notified of your grant status by Saturday, January 30.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as we can at this conference! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to e-mail the board.