freedom

Tell your MEPS to #SaveYourInternet before 12 September and to say NO to the Censorship Machines.

This vote is currently scheduled for Wednesday 12 September at 12h00 CEST (provisional date), and the deadline for Amendments is set to Wednesday 5 September at 13h00 CEST. You can call Members of the European Parliament in their Strasbourg office until Wednesday 12 September 10 am CET (the vote is scheduled on that day at … Read more

The Greek Scientix Conference successfully completed

The Greek Scientix Conference for STEM training was successfully completed, the conference was organized by the Open Technologies Alliance(GFOSS), the National Association of Managers of the Natural Science Laboratories (panekfe) and the European SchoolNet on 3-4 September 2018 at the National Technical University of Athens, in the Zografou campus. In the conference 857 participants registered … Read more

On October 13-14, 2018 the 11th FOSSCOMM will be organized in the University of Crete

FOSSCOMM (Free and Open Source Software Communities Meeting) is the pan-Hellenic conference of free and open source software communities. It is addressed at programmers, students and anyone else interested in the open source movement, despite their background. Participating communities include the Hellenic Linux User Group (HELLUG), contributors of open source projects such as Mozilla, Fedora, … Read more

Why we should start taxing the robots that are taking human jobs

This post is also available in: Greek (Image by Shutterstock via The Conversation) Ryan Abbott, University of Surrey and Bret Bogenschneider, University of Surrey  for The Conversation Automation promises to be one of the great social challenges of our generation. The fear that robots will steal our jobs is an old one. But it’s being felt … Read more

Code + Create: Bringing refugee and Greek youth to learn & work together

The scope of this project is to teach young people digital skills with the use of open technologies. We have set up two open labs and  have created open educational material (available at elearn.ellak.gr) to provide free courses to mixed classes of refugees and Greek youth. Code+Create has been designed and implemented in partnership between … Read more

3 Projects That Show How Cities Can Use Technology as a Force for Good – #smartcities

Platforms enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), like Uber and Airbnb, are increasingly being seen as looters by cities. They are like Death Stars, extracting great swaths of value from local communities only to transfer that wealth elsewhere. Indeed, it would seem that the original ideas of sharing and peer-to-peer collaboration have been co-opted … Read more

We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and our core existence

  To everyone who shapes technology today We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and our core existence. It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of “building a better world” with a commitment to … Read more

First German National Action Plan for more Transparency and Open Government

The German federal government adopted its first Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan (NAP) today. With the NAP, the federal government takes important steps to strengthen citizen participation. The 15 commitments in the NAP  will provide new ways to increase transparency, open innovation and enhance the effectiveness of governments and administrations. The Working Group … Read more

#Coding #workshops: building #robots, self-esteem and new #friendships

Teacher George Kalewis slams his hands on the table, and a little orange robot car nudges forward. We are in Athens, and a group of young people has just coded the robot’s sensors to react to sounds. “Good work! Next, we’re going to code the robot car to detect a black line and to follow … Read more

Six ways for citizens to assert power beyond the ballot box

Elections are key milestones for democratic engagement, and referendums such as the UK’s Brexit poll are innovative ways for citizens to be more directly involved in the decision-making process. But voting provides only a limited taste of the variety of ways citizen can participate in government. The real antidote to citizens’ feeling of disenfranchisement lies … Read more