Ahem, lemme actually REPLY to this one before hitting "send"... On Saturday 03 April 2004 15:19, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- > Subject: Speaking at Linucon > From: "Brandon Wiley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Fri, April 2, 2004 3:30 pm > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > David Rose (SXSW technical coordinator) referred me to your delightful > local Linux/gaming conference. He suggested that you might have a place > for me to give a talk or participate in or organize a panel.
Yes. We're currently planning to start scheduling specific panels about 3 months before the event (the event's in october, so this would be somewhere in july), but we're happily accepting panel ideas now. > My expertise is primarily in peer-to-peer software. My focus is not on > file-sharing applications, but on applying techniques of > decentralization to a wide range of problems such as Internet radio, > MMORPGs, and censorship resistance. My most popular Open Source project > was Freenet, a peer-to-peer network designed to facilitate > censorship-resistant web sites. I am the President of The Foundation for > Decentralization Research, a 501(c)3 non-profit foundation which > sponsors research into the application of peer-to-peer technology to the > real problems of people. Very nice. We'd definitely like a panel on freenet. We're already toying with two other panels that you might like to be on as well: one's a technical panel on bittorrent (and applying bittorent style technology to more general file distribution problems). The other is on the legal aspects of digital distribution (peer to peer file sharing, copyright, fair use, what is and isn't a viable business model, when a "viable business model" is and isn't needed, seperating the questions of content creation and content distribution...) Our general policy (at the moment) is "three panels and we comp your membership". Once our budget for free membership slots starts getting down a bit more, the barrier will probably go up (might just be discounted membership, etc), but you're getting in early... We haven't got budget for transportation or lodging for anybody but our guests of honor. We're a non-profit and not-for-profit event. We'd be doing this on a shoestring if we could afford one. Right now we're borrowing bits of shoestring in places, and using "Advanced Shoestring Substitute" for the rest. (In some cases we've been forced to resort to "I Can't Believe It's Not Shoestring", but by the actual con we should have real honest to goodness shoestring in all the places convention attendees will actually see.) The aglets we're still brainstorming about... > I have spoken at a number of conferences previously including SXSW, > Defcon, Blackhat, CodeCon, O'Reilly's Peer-to-Peer Conferences, academic > conferences at Berkeley and MIT, and the Linux Lunacy Geek Cruise, at > which one of your other speakers, Eric Raymond, also spoke. Cool. > I have contributed to books for O'Reilly, Hungry Minds, and > Addison-Welsey and written articles for Linux Journal. Nice. Wanna be on some of the publishing panels? (I assume you're aware of our general theme: linux expo meets science fiction convention. You seem to have the Linux expo part down. The SF side has three tracks: Literary/publishing (anchored by Eric Flint of baen books), Gaming (anchored by Steve Jackson), and Anime (we're still evaluating anchors, might end up being Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo, or somebody from ADV or Funimation). There are going to be a lot of crossover panels on things like electronic publishing (and/or publishing on demand), the use of computer graphics in movies, Machinima (like Red vs Blue), the increasing importance of DVD sales (not just direct to video sequels of movies like the little mermaid or the lion king, but also reviving dead series like "The Family Guy" or "Firefly", and now that DVD sales are the primary profit center and network and theatre exposure is basically advertising for the DVD, why not try free online distribution of video with the intent to drive DVD sales? Hey, if it works for the books with the Baen free library...) > I have a number of ideas for speaking topics that might be suitable to > this conference. From reading over the website, I think the most > compelling idea I have is a talk or panel on decentralizing MMORPGs. This > emerging game form is dominated by large corporations because of the high > cost of entry and maintenance. We've invited John Carmack to come (he lives in Mesquite Texas, about four hours away by car), but the X-prize deadline is the same week as our convention so he says the odds of him being available are low. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com If he CAN come, or if somebody else can, this would be great. (Can you think of somebody else we could pair you with on this panel? We're having trouble getting in touch with Richard Garriott...) > This limits the creativity of the games by > making quick return on investment the primary motivation behind design > choices. With the application of peer-to-peer technology to MMORPGs, the > servers are eliminated and thus the cost of running them. Hardware and > bandwidth costs shrink to nothing. The focus is then on creating content > and providing technical support. This lowers the cost of entry so as to > make it accessible to small companies and > hobbyists. That would be an excellent panel. > We have a demonstration engine which shows off this technology called > Gnosis. It's free and open source and runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X. Website? > If you'd like to discuss this further, you can reach me by e-mail or at my > mobile phone at This is that email. :) Rob
