2009 Associate Members Meeting -- 3/21 and 3/22 -- aka Libre Planet

[Deborah Nicholson-2]

Dear Associate Member,

The annual meeting date is set! March 21st and 22nd -- that's right, two
whole days! This year's meet-up will be in the Harvard Science Center,
right in Harvard Square on the MBTA's red line. In addition to our usual
meeting with updates from the board and news from the staff, we'll be
using the second day for writing some code and doing in-depth hands-on
work related to our campaigns and furthering the conversation on Freedom
for Network Services.

This year's two-day annual meeting, that we are calling Libre Planet, is
free for members but will also be open (paying a conference fee) for
non-members interested in joining the conversation. Of course once
they've spent the whole weekend with our members, we're pretty sure you
will have convinced them to join up too.

Here's the basic schedule for Libre Planet so you can start making
travel arrangements:

Saturday, March 21st
      * 9:30-5:00 -- Keynotes and details coming soon
      * 6:00-9:00 -- FSF Social Event
Sunday, March 22nd
      * 9:30-5:00 -- Keynotes and Open Spaces style conference

This will be a working conference, so please bring a laptop.
Participation is not limited to coders; we'll also need folks who can do
visual design, write and edit text, and are willing to test-drive stuff
or percolate ideas. Basically, everyone!

Background and details
Alongside our 2008 member meeting, the FSF helped launch the autonomo.us
working group, convened as an independent advisory group of hackers and
activists concerned about the effects of network services on user
freedom.

As part of this year's meeting, together we will be coordinating an Open
Spaces style conference focused on making tangible progress in the area
of network services. Several autonomo.us members will be in attendance
to help lead talks and participate in working groups, including Evan
Prodromou, Benjamin Mako Hill, Henri Poole, Bradley Kuhn, and Mike
Linksvayer.

Please join us as we take the next big step in answering the key
questions: How do we engineer for free network services? What components
do we need to build first? What should the free software community do to
promote a culture of free network services?

With all of these hackers and activists together, we hope not only to
hammer out some answers, but to also progress the software needed to
turn that language into usable reality.

RSVP for Libre Planet and next steps
     1. By March 2, please let us know at membership@... if you're
        coming so we can save you a spot and make sure you get a bagel
        each morning.
     2. Forward this to friends and colleagues that you think would
        really enjoy a weekend hacking with the FSF.
Recordings from previous years
We've finally made the recordings from the 2007 and 2008 member meetings
available -- check them out at:

      * http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2007/schedule.html
      * http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2008/schedule.html

Cheers,
Deborah Nicholson
Membership Coordinator