New York City is home to fantastic set of libraries, including the the mothership of libraries, the NYPL. My favorite library is one that is much smaller, located in the north of Manhattan on the campus of Columbia University: East Asian Starr. Quiet and compact, there are tall ceilings, dark wood, stained class windows, and reading nooks. When I enter, it feels like I step back in time (if I ignore the laptops, at least). When I was an undergraduate there, it was my library of choice and I logged many hours there and have yet to find a library I so love.

I also was fond of the place because of their discreet open door policy. When I was a student there, over a decade back, they were supposed to ask for you ID but they never did. When I returned back to NYC in 2007, I was thrilled to find this practice of ethical inattentiveness was still followed by the student works behind the desk. I always wanted to find out more about what sustained this practice but I never dared or was too lazy to do so.

So I was pretty saddened when I popped in the library on Friday to discover a new security system that requires you to scan your ID to get in. There were large signs also indicating such, clearly seething with some passive aggressive anger expressing disbelief that this library had managed to evade security for over decade. So while it is a real shame that this gem is no longer a place that one–anyone–can enter at will, it is nice to know that it took so long for someone to notice.

FLOSS Manuals is proud to announce a three day book sprint for the Pure
Data FLOSS Manual. This sprint will take place simultaneously in New
York City and Berlin from Saturday 4 April to Monday 6 April.

The Pure Data FLOSS Manual:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/puredata

There are possibilities to participate in person by coming to one of the
locations below, or remotely via the IRC interface built into the FLOSS
Manuals editing interface. Video conferencing may take place between the
venues as well.

To participate, create a login at the PD FLOSS Manuals page:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/login/TWiki/WebHome?origurl=/bin/view/PureData/Introduction&skin=floss2

Discussion may also take place in the Pure Data mailing list:

http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list

If you are in New York or Berlin, please join us at these locations!

—NEW YORK CITY

* Contact:

Hans-Christoph Steiner: hans@eds.org 718 360 4872

* Location (bring ID, you’ll need to sign in):

ITP/NYU Conference Room
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
NY, NY, USA
email me or call in case you can get past security: 718 360 4872

* Schedule:
Saturday: noon-midnight
Sunday: 10am-midnight
Monday: 9am-5:30pm (if we go later, we’ll be in a different room)

—BERLIN

* Contacts

Derek Holzer: derek@umatic.nl +49 176 2812 5845
Adam Hyde: adam@flossmanuals.net +49 15 2230 54563

NK
ElsenStr. 52 (2.Hof)
Berlin, Germany
+49 176 20626386

http://www.myspace.com/enka52

* Schedule:
Saturday: noon-late
Sunday: noon-late
Monday: noon-late

(more…)

As an die hard anthropologist, I never thought I would cavort so much with legal types. But given the nature of my project, it is pretty much impossible to avoid. Thankfully, the legal crowd dealing with digital issues, is pretty entertaining, interesting, and fun to listen to. And probably one of my favorite legal thinkers is coming to NYU to give a talk this coming Monday. If you are into this sort of thing and have not heard FVL speak, do make the time to join.

If you are in the NY-area and would like to help out with the project described below, they are looking for volunteers. Help FLOSSIFY the enormously popular book Digital Foundations. The event is being hosted Feb 6-8 at the lovely Eyebeam with some Free as in Beer and Grub provided!

*******************************************************

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
For a long time educational courses have been cheap marketing
for proprietary software companies. Can a student really afford all
those expensive softwares required by the courses? No. Ever hear of a
software company kicking up a fuss because students are using
‘unofficial’ versions? Well, it does happen but not often. And why not?
Because proprietary software companies know, as the universities know,
that once the students leave their training they will be indoctrinated
with those tools and simply slipstream into being paid up proprietary
software citizens. Simply put, unlicensed software used in education is
tolerated because it is cheap marketing.

This is how tools become ‘industry standards’.

FLOSS Manuals is fighting this flow by converting textbooks that
use proprietary software to using free software in their examples.

We call this process “FLOSSify”. We convert the book from
closed software to Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) hence we
‘FLOSSify’ the book.

Our first text book is the wonderful Digital Foundations book produced
by Michael Mandiberg and Xtine Burrough
(http://digital-foundations.net/). Its a text book designed to teach
software by teaching design. The current toolset it uses is the Adobe
Creative Suite and we will convert these examples entirely to using free
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations will focus on a fun 3 day event at
Eyebeam, NYC. Anyone is welcome to attend and some food and beer will be
provided. Come and meet some of your old geek friends, make some new,
and help make a step towards unshackling education from proprietary
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
Eyebeam, New York City
Feb 6-8
starts 10ish
finishes when we are done
fast connection, a table, some chairs, and beer and food provided
contact adam@flossmanuals.net for more info

venue:

http://eyebeam.org/

540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
Tel. 212.937.6580 Fax: 212.937.6582

Craft Hackers is a panel being held tonight at the New Museum in NYC. Looks craftastic.

Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high-tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming. Panelists include Cat Mazza, who translates moving images into stills knit in yarn; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the World Wide Web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist

Last weekend at the Software Freedom Day party, I was a little surprised to find myself among hundreds of attendees and supporters. Even if NYC is not known, like Silicon Valley is, for its vibrant tech scene, this event reminded me that we definitely have a thriving community of programmers and advocates but we have lacked a central “place” to check for computer-related events in the area.

At least until now. James Vasile, a lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Center will now be publishing an event feed. Please send him an email if there is any event you want advertised (contact details on his page), you can subscribe here, and here is a calendar.