How to Build Your Own Freedom Toaster at iSummit '06

The Freedom Toaster will be visiting the iCommons Summit being held in Rio de Janeiro from 23 to 25 June 2006. Incubated by Creative Commons, the summit organisation aims to bring together pioneers in the fields of free and open source software, open access, open content and open science in a creative and co-operative environment. A workshop will be held during the summit that will educate attendees in creating their own Freedom Toaster and managing content for it.

Says Jason Hudson, Freedom Toaster project manager for The Shuttleworth Foundation, “We will be hosting a few interactive workshops at the iSummit that will deal with building your own Freedom Toaster and creating a community around it in a practical way".

These workshops will include education surrounding the practical running of a Freedom Toaster within a community centre, the actual construction and installation of a Freedom Toaster unit, what content to offer from the Toaster, and how to maintain the unit.

“We will have machines available at the summit" explains Hudson, “and attendees will literally build their own Freedom Toasters in the workshops. There will also be other workshops where attendees will produce their own content and we will then show them how to make that content available from the Freedom Toasters they have constructed".

Part of the project’s focus for the summit is to break down the perceptions of the Freedom Toaster being difficult to construct. “Many people think that it is difficult and complicated to build a Freedom Toaster", says Hudson. “We are hoping to dispel this notion at the summit by showing them that the Freedom Toaster is essentially just a computer with some special PERL scripts and content that is made available freely and easily. It is easy to get up and running and to populate with content".

For more information about the iCommons Summit 2006, visit http://www.icommons.org.