Image: “Keep calm and use open source” (MedithIT/CC by)
2nd edition of Free Education Day, in Rennes
After Lyon in 2022, Rennes will host, on Friday April 7, the Free Educational Day. The 400 expected participants will be spoiled for choice (online program): “70 speakers (from all over France and even from Barcelona, Florence, Copenhagen and Tokyo) will present 35 projects and will animate 21 workshops, 14 flash presentations, 10 stands, 4 conferences and 3 round tables.”
With an inaugural conference, “For a democratic and open digital education on a European scale”, by Simona Levi, professor of technopolitics and rights at the University of Barcelona and founder of Xnet (see the article – extensive – dedicated to her Wikipedia). And as a “great witness” in the afternoon, Olivier Ertzscheid, lecturer in information and communication sciences, author of several books (see Wikipedia) and blogger (highly recommended readings).
This new edition is co-organized by the Academy of Rennes, the Academy of Nantes and the Department of Digital Education of the Ministry of National Education and Youth. The plenary interventions (in the space of La Nef) will be filmed for later posting.
Three months as President of April and a lot of work!
Magali Garnero became president of April in December (the library association, born in 1996, has almost 3,000 members, she says). “Neither a computer scientist, nor a lawyer, nor a politician”, she testifies – she is a bookseller -, administrator for ten years and member for 15 years, the new president recounts her projects and her objectives past her first three months in office.
Three commitments for her, explains Magali Garnero with great enthusiasm: updating herself on April’s institutional files, listing and subscribing to the various working groups and meeting booksellers (this is a summary summary, the text is much longer 🙂 ).
“Subjects are very close to my heart, on which I would like to work, such as the priority of free software for all software used by the State and administrations; the obligation of interoperability everywhere; digital sobriety because the depletion of raw materials needed for digital technology worries me; National Education which remains under the yoke of GAFAM, I think it must make students aware of all the alternatives in order to be able to make informed choices, why are they deprived of free software?
A polytechnician for Mozilla’s AI company
Mozilla announced in early March among its 2023 goals the creation of Mozilla.ai, a company for “trusted” and open source artificial intelligence. Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, said in a March 22 post that Mozilla.ai, which aims to build a trusted, decentralized and independent open source AI ecosystem, is receiving an initial investment of $30 million. foundation dollars.
The new company will be led by Moez Draief, Managing Director. This polytechnician worked on the practical applications of artificial intelligence for a decade, as a teacher at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Imperial College (also in London) and in the tech industry, notably as scientific director for three years at Capgemini Invent, and previously at Huawei. Karim Lakhani (a professor at Harvard), Navrina Singh (CEO of the company Credo AI) and Mark Surman will form the initial board of directors of Mozilla.ai.
The benefits of open source: the costs, but not only
The Linux Foundation has published a study (PDF) on the economic benefits of Open Source. “Beyond the cost of access to the technology, interoperability and the benefits in terms of speed of development are put forward”, explains this article from CIO-Online in its summary of the study.
Read also
Mozilla creates two new companies – March 15, 2023
Digital Commons and Free Software in the National Education Strategy – January 30, 2023
The rise of the open source market continues in France – November 10, 2022
April is 20 years old, and all its teeth to defend free software – February 12, 2017