Today the contributor conference started. Yesterday was more business oriented, today the “get things done phase” starts.
Jos opened the conference with a few words, Frank, Joe and Jane repeated their announcements of the Nextcloud box and 50 boxes are available to buy here at the conference for 70 Euro. The missing RaspberryPi is provided for free. Frank said, that he’s looking for a possibility to sell Nextcloud Box as a complete package.
Lightning talks
Some lightning talks were held to introduce Nextcloud people, their responsibilities and offer possibilities to contribute (Lukas Reschke , Morris Jobke, Bjoern Schiessle). Bjoern did an additional and inspiring talk about “what’s special in Nextcloud”.
Beside Nextcloud employees
- Michael Meeks from Collabora showed a short live presentation about the Libre Office integration in Nextcloud. His colleague Andras Timar gave some insights about Collabora Online.
- Andy Scherzinger showed figures about the Nextcloud Android app
The #nextcloud android app has already more than 16000 users and a 4.6 rating on the AppStore /@AndyScherzinger pic.twitter.com/UggsgUQewq
— Hagen Graf (@hagengraf) September 17, 2016
- The calendar guys are simply great
. @georgehrke and @raghunayyar about the #Nextcloud #calendar and what will come in the near future. Great stuff! pic.twitter.com/8b9dP13vgo
— Björn Schießle (@schiessle) September 17, 2016
- Cornelius Schumacher presented the idea of Fair Web Services
fairwebservices.org.Fair Web Services – what makes a webservice free as in freedom? Very important topic addressed by @cschum #Nextcloud pic.twitter.com/6P3FTYUG7m
— Björn Schießle (@schiessle) September 17, 2016
- Marcos (Patria Digitalis) is running a cooperative to look at technology and make it a fair service.
Lunch
… was served by a food truck and the burgers were delicious! The marketing department was working hard :)
.@jospoortvliet describes the whole concept of #nextcloud to @phyllislgraf at #nextcloudconf pic.twitter.com/pWN2An2mCw
— Hagen Graf (@hagengraf) September 17, 2016
Workshop Collabora – Michael Meeks
Michael Meeks gave answers to very detailed questions from the audience. I didn’t understood everything but the way collabora office suite works is now a bit clearer for me. There was a longer discussion how to integrate Collabora in Nextcloud in a “better, easier and faster” way.
Fair web services – Cornelius Schumacher
Fair web services was the last workshop I attend and the topic reminded me why I’m at this conference. Years ago I wanted to backup my photos on Flickr. Backup in the sense of keeping album structures and EXIF data. I tried OwnCloud but it didn’t work. I discovered that OwnCloud was a perfect solution for other projects of mine and so I used it until June. The Flickr backup problem is still unsolved. It’s possible to access my data via API but so far I found nothing that really works for me (may be time to write a Flickr import app for Nextcloud). Today there is also an additional “iTunes Cloud Match” problem. But back to the talk.
There are a number of attempts to solve the problems of freedom of web services. This is a list of relevant references.
- GNU Affero Public License
- Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services
- GNU Ethical Repository Criteria
- ToS;DR
- User Data Manifesto
- Freedom Services
- Trusted Internet Services
- EFF’s Best Practices for Online Service Providers
- Laws
None of the solutions is complete yet or has enough traction to serve as a widely accepted solution … The idea is to create criteria for a certification of services. The certification would allow providers to show that they respect the freedom of users and give users a guideline about what services to use.
I think it’s a good idea – have a look at http://fairwebservices.org.
Link tip:
“I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that. https://tosdr.org
In the workshop I met Marcos Garcia Pedraza, Co-Founder of Patria Digitalis. He wants to offer “fair” services, so it starts and I have a good ok feeling!
At the airport
As I mentioned above I’m not able to attend the whole week, so meanwhile I’m at the airport Berlin Schoenefeld, my Laptop was scanned for drugs, I had to show every piece of my Nextcloud box to the border police. The boarding pass that I printed out in France had the wrong “format” and the plane has a delay. The good news is that Dennis and his friends will come next week to Fitou for a short vacation.
Now I have a little bit time to think about this project that started 6 years ago to make the world a better place.
So far it was an interesting journey!
Trying to change the world with a personal cloud – a session with the founders #nextcloudconf #owncloud #nextcloud pic.twitter.com/JZSYaSkcYQ
— Hagen Graf (@hagengraf) September 17, 2016
Someone replied to that tweet that he didn’t get the idea because it already exists and it’s called NAS or Synology.
The journey will continue :)
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