Next week, I'll be in Utrecht (The Netherlands) for two very different events:

  1. On Thursday March 5th, the Annual NOIV Congress (Open and Connected Government initiative), which goal is to promote Open Source and Open Standards within the Dutch administration
  2. On Friday March 6th, the first MozCamp in The Netherlands, a community-oriented event. More technical, less formal, more "bazaar-like" where we'll demonstrate Open Web demos (with the now famous Paul Rouget)

Both events are of course... Open, but registration is needed in both cases.

Laptop, Janskerkhof, Utrecht

Laptop & bikes in Utrecht, under Creative Commons licence by Prupert

Here are more details below about MozCamp Utrecht:

  • What is it about? It's an event for people passionate about the open web. Each event includes discussion, hands-on-demos and collaborative scheming about ways to promote and protect the open participatory nature of the internet. It's not just about Mozilla. It's about making the web more open. More details on the agenda.
  • Who should attend and participate? Local Mozillians, bloggers, designers, hackers, creative commonors and other open web aficionados
  • Where? SURFnet
  • When? Friday 6 March, 2009 from 10:00 to 17:00
  • Want to know more? Please visit the MozCamp Utrech Wiki page
  • Interested? Please register.

The overarching idea behind MozCamp Utrecht is that the Open Web is both powerful and flexible. For those who have attended Mark Surman's talk at Fosdem recently, you may remember that Mark has mentioned "Hackability"/"Malleability" (ordinary users can bend / remix / shape / invent new stuff based on the Web) as one of the values needed for the Web and the Open Source world. What we want to do in this MozCamp is demonstrate the power of the Open Web by showing amazing stuff that you can do in 2009 with the new wave of modern browsers. But we also want to demonstrate the creativity that can happen with such a flexible technology based on Web standards (GreaseMonkey, Add-ons and Ubiquity, anyone?). Also, we want people to participate. I'm sure that what we'll show and discuss will be very interesting (Paul demos are already a big hit) and exciting, but I want to discuss on how people can participate to the Open Web / Open Source movements. Interested? Register!