Today I gave my keynote at Digital Odyssey 2012, the annual conference of the Ontario Library and Information Technology Association. I was flattered to be asked, and immediately wondered if @lisaslo was behind it. She is among a few rad librarians I know, including @copystar and @tararobertson as well as Liz Hunter, who (likley wisely) eschews social media.

I couldn’t have been happier to talk about the conference theme and my favourite topic – liberation technology. Libtech is the apple of my academic eye and has been the focus of my academic investigations for the last 8 years. Aside from being brutally jetlagged, the talk went well (incomprehensible slides here). There was an enthusiastic response to my ever passionate exposition of “technologies of resistance” that tech activists build to support and advance contemporary social movements. It’s a good talk where you play a Downfall video, reference South Park (the infamous “South Park blink”) and call Quebec the “Fuck You Province” (in the context of the Printemps Erable, bien sur). There were lots of engaged questions (incl. great commentary on the Twitter backchannel), and I ended basically on time, which is always the best. And I got a goody bag and a bottle of wine for my troubles. Thanks #olita!

My keynote was followed by @librarycult’s fascinating talk on open hardware. What a fun research gig to travel from hacker space to hacker space, hanging out with maker geeks. He promised that slides and resources would be available on his blog. I’m heading back shortly for the afternoon program for the session on Tor. The closing keynote is by Carys Craig, from Osgoode, on digital copyright. What a good day… Free software and the open web for the win! Go radical librarians!

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