[Australia-public-discuss] Help collect petition signatures at Stallman's speeches

[Ben Sturmfels]

Hi Folks,
We've recently collected 1000 signatures on a letter to Senator Kim Carr
against software patents. The next step is to prepare a formal petition
to the House or Representatives (I'm writing this at the moment).

Richard Stallman has encouraged us to collect petition signatures at the
speeches in his upcoming Australian tour (dates below).

Can you help by collecting signatures at a speech near you?

This involves:
 - printing 50 pages of patent handouts and chopping them in half
 - printing 20 page petition form
 - arriving early to the speech to distribute the patent handouts
 - collecting signatures on petition (bring pens and arrange a table)
 - posting the original forms back to me

I'm able to organise for the Melbourne events, though any helpers would
be very welcome.

Your help will make a huge difference to eliminating software patents!

Ben



Richard Stallman's Australian Tour
-----------------------------------
The ACS events Richard will be speaking at on his tour include two
conferences and an "Education Across the Nation" (EdXN) circuit (ACS
run four of these each year; each circuit involves speeches in 8 to 10
cities around Australia). NICTA have made a generous contribution to
the tour and are co-hosting the EdXN events in Melbourne, Brisbane,
Canberra & Sydney as a part of the NICTA "Big Picture Seminar" (BPS)
series. UTas & UWoll have also contributed to the tour -- UTas will be
co-hosting the Hobart EdXN; and an additional speech will be held at
UWoll, earlier on the day of the Wollongong EdXN.

While he's in Australia, Richard will be speaking at the following:

15 Sep Melbourne Uni - 5:30pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN / NICTA BPS
16 Sep RMIT (Melbourne) - 12:30pm - details elsewhere on the list
16 Sep Ballarat - evening - details still tbc
17 Sep Tenison Woods College, Mt Gambier - 6:30 for 7pm - ACS EdXN
19 Sep BCEC, Brisbane - 9:30am to 12:30pm - WCC2010 Masterclass
19 Sep BCEC, Brisbane - 2pm to 5pm - WCC2010 Masterclass
21 Sep BCEC, Brisbane - Keynote speech at WCC2010
23 Sep BCEC, Brisbane - 5:30pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN / NICTA BPS
30 Sep UTas (Hobart) - 5:30pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN / UTas
06 Oct ANU - 4:30pm for 5pm - ACS EdXN / NICTA BPS
11 Oct UNSW (Sydney) - 5:30pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN / NICTA BPS
12 Oct UWollongong - 12noon - UWoll speech
12 Oct Wollongong City Tennis Club - 5:45pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN
14 Oct Darwin Central Hotel - 5pm for 5:15pm - ACS EdXN
19 Oct Hyatt Regency, Perth - 5:30pm - ACS EdXN
21 Oct AFC, Adelaide - Keynote speech at ACS SA Branch Conference
21 Oct AFC, Adelaide - 5:30pm for 6pm - ACS EdXN

At all the EdXN events, RMS will be speaking on "Free software in ethics
and in practice". His keynote speech at WCC2010 will be on "A Just
digital society". His keynote speech at ACSSA2010 will be on "Copyright
vs community in the age of computer networks", as will his speeches at
UWoll & RMIT. His two masterclasses at WCC2010 will be on
"Intermediate/advanced Emacs editing" (morning) and "Emacs Lisp
programming" (afternoon).

The EdXN events are all free to attend, but registration is essential,
as RMS tends to attract big crowds and all venues have limits on how
many people they can allow in, for safety's sake. The speeches at UWoll
& RMIT (and I presume Ballarat too) are also free to attend.

The two conferences and the two workshops are paid events, obviously.
WCC2010 is a massive conference, lasting 4 days (plus the optional
workshop/masterclass days). One & two day passes are also available
at reduced cost. ACSSA2010 is a one-day conference (with optional
workshops the following day) and priced very reasonably.

There is a page on the ACS website summarising the tour, at:
http://www.acs.org.au/rmstour/

The Darwin & Adelaide EdXN events (and the second workshop) aren't on
that page yet, but will be soon. All the other ACS events are listed on
that page, together with the UWoll speech.

Full conference programmes for WCC2010 & ACSSA2010 are available at
http://www.wcc2010.org/content/program and
http://sa.acs.org.au/conf2010/node/4  respectively.